Posted on 08/21/2016 12:37:52 PM PDT by amorphous
While Obama was golfing in the midst of another Louisiana natural disaster, and is set to end his vacation so he can do what is truly important, support Hillary Clinton in the presidential race, Putin has been busy making new friends: first he did the seemingly impossible, having rekindled relations with Turkey to the point where Ankara itself is warning it may quit NATO to seek "military cooperation" with Russia, followed quickly by strengthening relations with Iran to the point where Russia is now using an Iranian airbase to strike ISIS, much to the angry dismay of the US and the United Nations, the latest stunning pivot toward Russia comes from yet another civil war-torn nation, Yemen, whose former president, Abdullah Saleh, said its newly-formed governing council could work with Russia to "fight terrorism" by allowing Moscow use of the war-torn country's military bases.
What makes the announcement even more striking is that Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen's ex-president who was toppled by mass protests in 2011 as part of the Arab Spring launched by none other than the US when it "intervened" in Libya and Egypt, was a former staunch counter-terrorism ally of the US; it is this former US ally who told state-owned channel Russia 24 that Yemen was ready to grant Moscow access to air and naval bases.
"In the fight against terrorism we reach out and offer all facilities. Our airports, our ports... We are ready to provide this to the Russian Federation," Saleh said in an interview in Sanaa.
While the ex-strongman may lack the clout to implement such an offer, Reuters admits that officials from the party he heads now run a political council that controls much of the country along with the Houthi movement allied to Iran.
Russia is the only major country that maintains a diplomatic presence in Yemen where a 16-month war between a Saudi-led coalition and the Houthi rebels has killed over 6,500 people and raised the prospect of famine in the Arab World's poorest country. Russia abstained from a United Nations Security Council resolution in 2015 that imposed an arms embargo on the Houthi rebels.
Many have condemned ongoing Saudi airstrikes which have led to thousands of civilian casualties, culminating last week with the death of over a dozen hospital workers killed in a Saudi bombing raid at a Doctors without Borders facility. Ironically, just two months ago, the Saudis had threatened to leave the UN over human rights criticism in Yemen.
The Yemen civil war, stoked by the Saudi airstrikes, has allowed Islamist militants including al Qaeda and the Islamic State to flourish, even though the United States has for years launched drone strikes against groups in Yemen.
Moscow's relations with Yemen date back decades and until the break-up of the USSR, Reuters recalls: thousands of Soviet military advisers and trainers worked in the formerly-independent south.
On Saturday tens of thousands of Yemenis rallied in the capital to show support for the Houthi-led bloc as the head of the group's new governing council vowed to form a full government in the coming days.
In an apparent response to the Houthi show of force, ambassadors from the G18 group of nations, including Russia, that has backed U.N. peace talks to end Yemen's civil war issued a statement condemning "unconstitutional and unilateral actions in Sanaa."
As for the latest Yemeni pivot, it confirms that far from content with its recent diplomatic success in Turkey and Iran, Putin continues to expand his middle-east axis, in the process sending Saudi Arabia a message that going forward any Saudi attacks against the region's Shiite nations will be frowned upon by the Kremlin, which is becoming an increasingly dominant military force in the region.
Finally, the Yemen pivot takes place just 5 days after China appears to have finally joined the Syria proxy war, announcing it would provide "aid and military training" to the Assad government, in effect siding with Russia's "vision" on the future of Syria, and perhaps the entire region.
https://twitter.com/GissiSim/status/766914266423328768?lang=en
The Saudis bombed very near this crowd at the video linked above.
Nature abhors a vacuum. 0bama and his regime have created a vacuum. Putin and Russia will fill it.
So will the Chicoms in the east.
This regime’s foreign policy has been a disaster. From Tunisia through Libya to Egypt and Syria. Isolate Israel, and give nukes to the Persian mullahs. All according to plan.
And none dare call it treason .
5.56mm
“the ex-strongman may lack the clout to implement such an offer”
Indeed...
Nonetheless Russia certainly has motivation to be China’s catspaw in the Middle East. IE: Chinese money.
And China can profit financially from a stable Middle East.
The West, OTOH, no longer has money to invest or reason to do so.
‘Disaster’, ‘catastrophe’, all words history will prove too weak in describing the outcome of Obunga and Hitlery’s M.E. policies.
How soon will Putin tell Obama that US ships have to go around the Cape of Good Hope?
These Yemenis are some fearless fighters. There are a number of videos online of their battles with Saudi forces.
Has Obunga allowed our ships back into the Strait of Hormuz since Iran captured our navy?
Where the Russians go, Saudi's ask permission to fly.
The Ayatollahs don't have nukes and if they did, they would be targeted by the Pakis (who already have the Islamicnuclerbombs)
"A week after allowing Russian planes to fly bombing runs into Syria from a base inside its borders, Iran reversed course on Monday and withdrew permission for the flights, complaining that the Kremlin had been too public about the arrangement. The about-face and the explanation for it from Iran’s Foreign Ministry seemed to surprise Russia, where state news media had been trumpeting the deal as a sign of a growing friendship with Iran."
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/23/world/middleeast/iran-russia-syria.html
Also, Israel attacked Syrian artillery today, after a mortar strike on the Israeli side of the Golan Heights.
No problem. Thanks for the reply.
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