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Sorry, I'm late.
I had to stop by the Whites Museum again and give the finger to FDR.
We know Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri, is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al-Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America.
And by God, we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very, very much.
I say it, I say it again.
You've been had.
You've been took.
You've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as fact.
He came, he saw us, he died.
We ain't killing they army, we killing them.
We be on CNN like Say Our Name been saying, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
All right, you guys, introducing our friend Nasser Arabi.
He's a reporter based out of Yemen, lives there in Sanaa, Yemen, used to report for the New York Times and the Carnegie Endowment and lots of places.
You can find him online, Nasser Arabi, you know, his writings in English.
And also he runs Yemen Now, Yemen Alon, yemen-alon.com.
And I'm very grateful he spent the last couple of years keeping us updated on the state of America and Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates, I guess among some others, war against the well, the Houthi-Salih government in the capital city of Sanaa there in Yemen, which they took from the American and Saudi sock puppet Hadi back at the beginning of 2015, which precipitated the current state of war.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing, Nasser?
Fine.
Thank you very much, Scott, for your interest.
Very happy to have you on the show here.
Very grateful.
We've got to start out with the worst of the bad news first.
This is almost unbelievable to me, sir.
But I guess, you know, we've covered this on the show and over the last six months I've talked with Clara Manera from Doctors Without Borders.
And she told me in March that there are 30,000 people had cholera.
And then she told me in June it was 300,000.
And then she told me in or I guess it came out, I guess, in in late August, September, that it was up to 700,000.
And now the Red Cross reported, I think, yesterday or the day before yesterday, that they estimate nine hundred thousand Yemenis, almost a million people have cholera now.
Is that right?
Nasser, does that fit with your understanding of the situation there?
Nine hundred thousand people.
Yes.
For cholera, it is this and even more.
But the humanitarian catastrophe is not only in cholera, it's in even more than cholera.
Cholera is just one thing of what this Saudi made the catastrophe is doing in Yemen.
The starvation, the starvation, the Saudi made starvation is now killing millions of Yemenis.
And, you know, we have been under blockade now for about three years.
And last week, only last week, Saudi Arabia declared one more blockade, let me say so.
One more or new blockade and the new war.
This is the new thing that we could talk with you and your audience, Scott.
New blockade and the new war now after three years of massacres and exterminations in Yemen.
And now what exactly do you want?
You mean they're escalating the blockade?
Yes.
After November 4, when Yemenis fired a self-defense missile to the airport of King Khaled inside Riyadh city, the Saudi capital, Saudi Arabia considered this as a turning point in its aggression.
And it considered it as an act of war from Iran, as it said, not from Yemen, but from Iran.
And this is why it is a new turning point in this Saudi or U.S.-backed Saudi aggression.
Saudi Arabia declared that it would close all of the ports, sea, land and air ports of Yemen, which were already closed, in fact, with just a little humanitarian relief that was allowed to enter from time to time because of the pressure of the human rights groups and U.N. agencies.
Now it closed everything, including the lifeline port of Hodeidah, which is the only port that Yemen receives its imports and its foodstuffs, actually.
So this is even more important than the cholera, as I told you.
And now the United Nations yesterday, yesterday only, declared that if this blockade, if the new Saudi procedures continue, millions of Yemenis would die in a week.
And I would say this is right because I see Yemenis die every day because of this starvation, because Yemenis did not have salaries for more than one year now.
And they don't have food, they don't have money.
So this is really a famine, Saudi-made famine.
And unfortunately there is support from U.S. and U.K. for this famine, although the United Nations Security Council yesterday called for opening all these ports, all these closed ports.
But unfortunately Saudi Arabia did not respond to these calls, and they kept closing them because they speak about very strange things by saying that the missile, the self-defense Yemeni missile that was fired to King Khaled Airport in Riyadh, they said that it was Iranian missile, and Hezbollah fired it from Yemeni lands under the control of Houthi, as they say.
This is the statement of the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia, Adel al-Juweir.
And even the crown prince, the de facto king, he said something like this.
He said this is an act of war from Iran.
So they talk about Iran, but they kill and destroy Yemen, unfortunately, for three years.
And not only this, the world condemned the launch of missiles to Riyadh, and they forgot more than 200,000 bombs, including prohibited bombs, like cluster bombs, phosphoric bombs, and fission bombs, and all kinds of prohibited bombs, over three years, killing more than 70,000 Yemeni civilians, and causing the displacement of more than three million Yemenis inside Yemen, and also the cholera that was as a result of destruction of the water facilities here in Yemen.
So this is the humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen.
It is now, Saudi Arabia is turning it into a regional thing, into a regional thing.
It is connected, the missile, to two countries, Lebanon and Iran, while the country that is under the bombardment for three years, under killing and destruction, is only Yemen.
This is now the problem that must the free people of the world help as much as they could.
And we hope that there will be some kind of help from there or here, because if this famine and this starvation continues, people will die in hundreds and in thousands daily.
And this will be, of course, a shame on the human community.
I got bad news for you, Nasser.
I interviewed Walter Jones, the Republican from North Carolina, from the House of Representatives the other day, and he was just beside himself with frustration that he can't do anything.
He's trying.
Him and some others, the Progressive Caucus of Democrats and the Liberty Republicans, they're trying to do something about this, but they're just outnumbered for now.
And their resolution to try to stop it ended up getting broken down in the Rules Committee.
Supposedly, they're going to at least have a floor debate on a non-binding resolution, but it'll be an opportunity to get some real publicity out.
But you know, we have too many wars, so people start tuning out.
If we were only doing this to Yemen, then it would be the center of attention.
But when there's nine different wars, people just don't bother.
It's just too much.
Exactly.
I'm sorry to say, I know it's the worst one we've got right now.
I want to take this opportunity to thank Walter Jones, and Roe, Kenna, and all these representatives in the House of Representatives.
We follow them.
We follow what they are doing.
And we are very grateful for them.
And we know that they are doing their best.
And I'm in contact with them, actually.
I follow what they are doing, and we also, from time to time, we tweet and retweet what they are doing.
But also, we rely on these people.
We rely on these people, because what's happening in Yemen is dangerous, not only to Yemen, as I always say, but also to the United States and to the international community.
Because what Saudi Arabia is doing now is beyond the reason.
You know, it's asking for the impossible from Yemenis, because, you know, the missile attack, which is the second, but this one was completely different, and if you have time, we can talk.
They launch a new war.
They wanted to launch a new war on Yemen, because of self-defense.
Self-defense is a legitimate right for any country.
And escaping to Iran and talking about Iran is a very funny thing, because they say that it was smuggled from Iran.
It's impossible.
It's impossible to be smuggled this time, because the boats, all the boats, sea, air, and land of Yemen, are under the control of Saudi Arabia.
So how could Iran smuggle something like this, I mean, a big missile?
And for those who talk about Iran, we would tell them that we have a Yemeni expert, and we have a lot of missiles, from the Russian missiles and the Korean missiles, and now they modify it.
Iran could help by email, if they help, or Hezbollah or anyone in the world who can help, he would help in some know-how or in some experience.
Not in smuggling.
Smuggling is impossible.
But we know, of course, when we heard Saudi Arabia talking about smuggling the missiles from Iran, we know what Saudi Arabia means.
We understand that it is very embarrassed, Saudi Arabia is very embarrassed to tell the people that after three years, now it is being attacked by long-range ballistic missiles from Yemen to Riyadh.
And of course, Yemenis now, Houthi and Talih, and all Yemenis, Yemeni batteries, battery tech forces, confirmed to Saudi Arabia that missile attack would continue, and this is a legitimate right, would continue as long as Saudi aggression and blockade continues.
Of course, what we would do.
Right, well, and Jason Ditz points out at news.antiwar.com that even the Saudi officials, just like the Yemeni officials, at the same time identified the missile as a Burkan-2H, which is a Yemeni-manufactured missile, and they admitted that first before they decided to spin it and claim that it came from Iran, and then, as you're saying, came from Iran, what, through the blockade?
They shipped a bunch of missiles, the Iranians did, to the Houthis in Yemen, and then they unloaded them at what port?
I mean, this is obviously a lie.
If it's not a lie, then come on with the details, and they don't have any details, because they're lying.
You know, they said, they said a very silly thing.
They said that it came in box, through, inside the, inside the sacks of, of flour.
This is a very funny thing.
Inside what?
Inside what, Nasser?
Inside the bags of flour.
Bags of flour.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, like Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program was buried in the back garden.
Remember that?
Nobody could, nobody could believe such silly things.
You know?
So, we, in Yemen, we just laugh here.
We laugh, but the problem here is that we feel that it's a lie.
It's a lie.
It's a lie.
It's a lie.
It's a lie.
It's a lie.
It's a lie.
It's a lie.
It's a lie.
It's a lie.
It's a lie.
It's a lie.
It's a lie.
It's a lie.
It's a lie.
The problem here is that we feel that there are a lot of people who can be misled and who can, who, who believe what Saudi Arabia is saying.
But for Yemenis, they are laughing.
They are laughing, whether they are with Saudi Arabia or against it, but it's silly to say something like this.
Well, and it's important, the point that you made earlier, too, that they make all this, they hype it up that it's Iran and Iranian influence in Yemen as an excuse to attack Yemen and say, aha, see, we're fighting against this Iranian influence there.
So, you know, they claim they're being attacked by Iran, but they don't dare fight against Iran because if they really attacked Iran, they would be the ones starting it.
And then Iran can actually fight back in a way that poor Yemen cannot.
You know, this couple of missile attempts here notwithstanding.
So, you know, but meanwhile, the people of Yemen then get to be the scapegoat, basically.
They get to take the brunt of Saudi frustration, even though it's not even true that this is an Iranian missile in the first place or, and you know what?
Talk about this.
What exactly, the best of your knowledge, and go ahead and, you know, make admissions, be critical.
What exactly is the relationship between the Houthis and the Iranians?
They're all Zaydi, or the Houthis are Zaydi Shia, and everybody knows the Iranians are Shia, so therefore they're allies.
That's what they say on TV here in America.
Yes.
Let me tell you a very important thing, because we keep talking about this, because it's now politicized.
The Houthis are Yemenis and Muslims, but they are Zaydi.
Zaydi is a moderate sect from Shia, right?
So it's, I mean, what is in Iran is Twelfth, that is the Thana'a Shari'a.
Thana'a Shari'a is completely different from Zaydi.
You know, Zaydi and Shafi'i in Yemen, these are, you know, we don't even have Sunni in Yemen.
We have Shafi'i, which is also a moderate sect, moderate sect of Sunni.
So Shafi'i and Sunni have been, you know, have been living in harmony for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years.
We don't have two mosques in Yemen.
We don't have different mosques for Zaydi and mosque for Sunni, for Shafi'i, at all.
So we pray in the same mosque.
So it's completely different, this is from the sectarian point of view.
But from the political point of view now, Saudi Arabia is pushing us to Iran because of these crimes.
Now, we don't talk about these things at all now.
Nobody talks about these things, but everybody's talking about the crime, the crime.
You can just imagine three years of killing and destroying Yemen, everything in Yemen, in homes, schools, hospitals, weddings, funerals, markets, and everywhere, and at the end they say Iran.
Is this, I mean, is this a justification or the restoring of legitimacy, the so-called legitimacy?
Is it a justification?
Is it true to let Saudi Arabia kill all these and destroy all these things for the restoring the so-called legitimacy?
I mean, it's something that is not reasonable.
So we are talking about this now.
We are talking about what Saudi Arabia is doing is pushing the Yemenis to Iran or to any place.
So it is not right.
What Saudi Arabia is doing is something that is not right.
And I would tell you something, Scott, that Trump is the one who supports and who emboldened the Saudis.
He tweeted this week after the missile, he tweeted about four tweets about this, encouraging the Saudis to do all these procedures.
And they did a lot.
They intensified the blockade.
They also announced a list of 40 people, of 40 officials, as terrorists, which was a very funny list.
Forty people, four zero, four officials, 40 officials.
They branded them as terrorists.
Of course, number one is the top Houthi leader, and 39 are the officials who are working in the government.
And they, of course, they are doing their work normally.
But this is what, this was the result of the encouragement of Trump.
Unfortunately, this is how we look at it.
All right.
Hang on just one second.
Hey, everybody.
Check out the show notes.
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All right, now, so let me get back to the humanitarian crisis for a minute here.
The media likes to say, and I've seen some pro-war hawks kind of glomming on to the number 10,000.
Oh, look, I saw a right-wing, I guess, Likudnik pro-Israel lobbyist type on Twitter saying, look, it's only 10,000 people have died, and anybody who says it's more than that, that's just Houthi and Iranian propaganda.
It's actually, apparently, one of the most humane wars ever fought or something here, so can you give us your best estimate and explain how you get your best estimates of the number of people, first of all, killed in violence, in air attacks and in other attacks, you know, in violence, battles on the ground, and then also, you know, I guess separately from that, the deprivation, whether cholera, starvation, and other situations where people can't get to the hospital when they're injured and all these, the excess deaths, as they put it in Iraq War II.
Right.
Let me start with the two most recent massacres after the missile attack.
Saudi Arabia intensified the airstrikes, or maximized its airstrikes, its daily airstrikes now, more than 100 per day, airstrike, more than 100.
Over the last week, 100 airstrikes daily, over the 24 hours.
So they made two massacres, one in Sa'dah and one in Hajjah last week.
60 at least, 60 civilians were killed in the market of Al-Lail, that is the market, the popular market in Sa'dah, killing the shoppers, the vendors and some people who were shopping, very, very poor people who were shopping in a village market, killing everyone and destroying the market.
And simply they said it was a training, shamelessly, they just said, no, it was a training camp with five Iranian military experts or missile experts inside.
And the media of Yemen and the media of the world showed that it was a village market with very poor people taking their needs from this market.
Right.
And that is true.
That was widely reported.
Yes.
The second massacre was here in Hajjah only yesterday, or the day before, also about 60 in three houses.
In three houses, about 20 men and, I mean, women and children.
But when the responders came to help, they were killed also.
So about 60.
This is what Saudi Arabia is doing when it's angry.
When the Saudi officials are angry, they just come and kill people.
So those people who say there are about, I mean, UN, let me say, UN estimates, when UN estimates that about 10 Yemenis, 10,000 Yemenis, 10,000 Yemeni civilians were killed over the three years, I would tell them that this number is not updated and the United Nations does not hide this.
They tell us, the United Nations officials here in Yemen know that this number is not updated for about 18 months, more than 18 months.
It is not updated.
They say we do not have documents.
They say the health facilities were destroyed.
About 60% of the health facilities that the UN was depending on are already destroyed.
They can't report to UN, they can't document anything.
And most, by the way, most of the massacres are not in Sana'a, you know, the health facilities are in the cities, not in the countryside, not in the villages.
And most of the massacres happen in the countryside, in the villages, in the rural areas, not in the urban areas, which means these victims are not documented at all, because of many difficult things, even before this Saudi aggression.
So my estimation for the Yemeni civilians who were killed over the three years in homes, hospitals, schools, funerals, weddings, markets, and farms are more than 70,000, 70, 70,000.
How can I know this number?
I have a lot of local groups who also have statistics, and I mentioned a lot to some people who called me to ask about this number, because I tweeted this number always, and I tell them about my sources.
Many local groups say this, UN agencies acknowledge that they did not update their figures, and my own observation as a journalist from the very beginning, I followed every massacre, allows me to say this number, and even more.
And when we talk about 70,000 Yemeni civilians were killed, we talk about the direct killing.
We are not talking about those who died because of the aggression, like those who died because of the cholera, those who died because of the hunger or hunger-related reasons, and those who died because they couldn't go abroad for further treatment, and all these things.
No, we talk about those who were killed by bombing, by direct bombing, by airstrikes.
And now the Saudis and the UAE and the Hadi forces, they do still control the city of Aden in the south, right?
The port city there?
Yes.
And so, in terms of, you know, the battle lines and the amount of territory that's controlled by the different factions, are the things changing at all, or it's just a stalemate now?
Well, thank you very much for this question.
The south, the so-called liberated part, like Aden, now is the most dangerous place in Yemen.
Hadi is still in Riyadh.
His government is still in Riyadh.
No one here at all.
No one.
There are only one who was appointed by Emirates, by United Arab Emirates, who is there, who is in Aden.
But let me tell you now that Qaeda, ISIS, or ISIS in particular now, they attacked the most secure place of security in Aden only last week.
And they killed about 46, and they injured about 44.
So about 90 persons were killed in the headquarters of security of this city.
Yes, but of course, ISIS claimed it and gave the details.
And the people who attacked the place, they attacked the place with a suicide car bomb, a suicide car bomber, who blowed himself up at the beginning, and followed by 12 ISIS operatives who stormed the headquarters there, and they killed about 40 prisoners as hostages.
And they stayed from 8 in the morning to 8 in the evening.
I want you to just imagine what I am saying.
They stayed in clashes with Saudi or Hadi forces from 8 in the morning into 8 in the evening.
So about 12 hours they stayed in fight with the United Arab Emirates-backed forces.
And at the end, only four who were killed, four ISIS operatives were killed, only four from 12, only four, the suicide bomber and three others.
And the other eight ISIS operatives could, at the end of the day, they could escape.
Where?
Escape to the city.
The city of Aden is a safe haven for Kaida ISIS.
You can just imagine those who call and who tell some U.N. officials to come to Aden, to stay, because they want to-Saudi Arabia wanted to intensify its blockade by telling people to go to Aden, by telling the ships to go to Aden, the commercial ships, or the flights to go to Aden.
Nobody can go to Aden because of these things.
Nobody.
No one from Europe or from the United States can come to Aden because you could be killed in minutes.
But unfortunately, Saudi Arabia is trying to tell people that Aden is safe.
It is not safe because of what happened only the day before.
I think you heard about this, or you read about it.
No, actually I had missed that one, but it doesn't surprise me.
I actually did see there was a guy wrote an article and he had a map from, I don't know if it was Jane's Defense or something, somebody had done a map of the territory that's now outright controlled by Al-Qaeda, or what they used to call Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula there.
I don't know exactly which groups call themselves what.
But it's also reported, Nasser, that Trump, I guess Obama really had kept at least the CIA drone war going against these guys, or at least some of their leadership, really the whole time.
And Trump apparently has now put special operations forces, military guys on the ground in a couple of different raids, which have at least, at least two of which have led to civilian casualties and have been total debacles.
But America's really, is it your understanding then too, that America's really fighting on both sides of this war right now, fighting against the Salah Houthi government in the capital and in the north, and at, you know, by way of the Saudis, working with the Saudis on that, and then at the same time fighting against, to some degree or another, fighting against the Al-Qaeda or ISIS forces in the south and east of the country, is that right?
Yes.
It's very complicated now for Trump to understand the situation here, because simply Trump depends on Mohammed bin Zayed of the Emirates, and Mohammed bin Zayed is very naive about Yemen.
He doesn't know Yemen, because now, for the south, for the south in particular, it's only under the control of United Arab Emirates.
It's, I mean, they are, they are the decision makers, and they are doing everything.
Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaeda is expanding now for, in the south, for, for two reasons, three reasons, actually, at least.
The first one is because of the conflict between Saudi Arabia and, and, and the Emirates.
It's not actually a conflict in the, in the high level.
It's because Mohammed bin Zayed and Mohammed bin Salman are in, in, in a big harmony, and the, they, they're okay, but the problem is under, in the, in the, in the lower level.
Saudi, Saudi Arabia has the brotherhood and the Qaeda and ISIS bro people, those who are in connected with the Qaeda, ISIS people.
These, these are the men of the, the supporters of Saudi Arabia in the south, brotherhood and Qaeda, ISIS, let me say, the tribe, the tribesmen who are close to Qaeda, ISIS in the south.
And the United Arab Emirates has only the, the, the Salafis and the Hiraq.
Hiraq is the separatists, the separatists.
This is the, you know, some of the socialists, the Marxists, and, and those who talk about separation of the south.
So we know that it is a problem, it is a, I mean, this problem, the problem of the south is the, is one of the essential problems of Yemen since 2006, not from now.
So Trump, when Trump talk about, when Trump depends, depends 100% on, on Mohammed bin Zayed, he's wrong to fight the Qaeda, ISIS, because we see now what Trump is doing for the foreign policy now is in favor of, of Qaeda, ISIS.
Why?
Because they, they, they help Qaeda, ISIS because of the misleading, because of the Saudi misleading, and because of Saudi, United Arab Emirates misleading, they are misleading Trump administration about Houthi and Salih.
And we know that Trump administration doesn't care about, what they care about is only about, about Qaeda, but Qaeda is expanding, Qaeda is benefiting from this.
They, they, they, they, even the drones, sometimes the drones, as I, as I, as I say always, they help and do not help, not help the Qaeda, ISIS, because the, the intelligence and the initiatives are not clear with the, with those who implement the operations by the drones.
So I, what we need, if the, if United, if United, if United States wants to fight Qaeda, we need to stop the aggression, the Saudi aggression, the Saudi and Emirati aggression on Yemen.
Then they could easily fight Qaeda, ISIS, terrorism.
Otherwise, they only help them.
And the evidence we have now is Aden, Aden and Mukalla.
They said that they got out, they, they, they, they cleaned Aden from Al-Qaeda, ISIS.
But what happened this week shows that they did not do anything, and Al-Qaeda, ISIS is still inside Aden, the capital of the south, and what Saudi Arabia is, is called the, the temporary, the temporary capital of, of, of, of Yemen.
Unfortunately, it is full of, of Qaeda, ISIS operatives, not, not, not legitimacy.
The so-called legitimacy ministers and officials are based in Riyadh, and they are doing nothing unfortunately.
All right.
Well, listen, I really appreciate you coming back on the show, Nasser, helping get the word out here about it at least.
Okay.
Good deal.
Thanks very much, Nasser.
Appreciate it.
Thank you very much.
Okay.
Bye.
All right, you guys, that's Nasser Arabi.
He runs YemenNow, YemenAlan.com, and a former reporter for the New York Times.
You can read all his stuff about, that he wrote about Al-Qaeda back before the, this current war started.
And read all his coverage of America's continuing assault on one of the oldest civilizations on earth.
All right.
That's the Scott Horton Show.
