After four years of fighting, the United Arab Emirates [UAE] is abandoning their Saudi allies in Yemen as they begin to draw down their ground forces in what they are calling a  “strategic redeployment." They had provided the bulk of the ground forces for the Sunni alliance as they have battled Yemen's Houthi rebels. The UAE's decision to begin withdrawing their forces seems to signal that they no longer believe a military victory is possible. The New York Times: "The Emirat

The US House of Representatives voted 248-to-177 yesterday to to end military assistance to Saudi Arabia for its war in Yemen. 18 Republicans joined the Democratic House majority in censuring the Saudis. It's now up to the Republican controlled Senate to join them and send the resolution to President Trump who has threatened to veto it. Axios: "The bill, which passed 248-177 and now heads to the Senate, is a rebuke of President Trump's foreign policy amid broader pushback ove

Donald Trump's Mid East policy is built upon our alliance with Saudi Arabia to counter growing Iranian influence in the region. As part of that strategy, America has armed Saudi Arabia and its allies in Yemen's civil war to off-set Iran's support for the Houthi rebels there, despite a series of bloody Saudi attacks that resulted in the deaths of scores of civilians, many of them children. It now appears that some of the arms that we sold to Saudi Arabia have been transferred

The United Nations announced yesterday that a Saudi airstrike was responsible for the deaths of at least 22 children and and other civilians in Yemen as they fled fighting near the Red Sea port city of Al Hudaydah. This follows the deaths of dozens of schoolchildren in another Saudi attack less than two weeks ago. The United States is facing increasing pressure to reevaluate its open-ended support for the Saudi-led coalition fighting Houthi rebels in Yemen. New York Times: "H

A report by CNN confirmed that the bomb that hit a bus containing 40 Yemeni school students last week was a MK82 "Paveway", a laser-guided bomb made by Lockheed Martin and sold to the Saudis. And this is not the first time that US made bombs have been used to kill civilians in Yemen. CNN: The bomb is very similar to the one that wreaked devastation in an attack on a funeral hall in Yemen in October 2016 in which 155 people were killed and hundreds more wounded. However, the d

In the often forgotten, and very complicated civil war in Yemen, America supports a Saudi-led coalition against the [mostly] Zaidi Shia Houthi rebels backed by Iran. And, in a sense, Yemen's civil war embodies the ongoing struggle in the Middle East between Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia, and Shia Muslim Iran for dominance in the region. The United States provides intelligence, military advice, and logistical support to the Saudi-led coalition to protect its regional allies and to