All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show.
I am the Director of the Libertarian Institute, Editorial Director of Antiwar.com, author of the book Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and I've recorded more than 5,000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at scotthorton.org.
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The full archive is also available at youtube.com slash scotthorton show.
All right, I'm happy to welcome back to the show Hassan El-Tayeb from the Friends Committee on National Legislation, one of the greatest peace groups in Washington, D.C.
Welcome back.
How are you doing?
I'm doing fantastic.
Thank you so much, Scott.
Big news.
Big news.
First of all, thank you.
Congratulations.
Now tell us everything.
This is, you know, I'm not sure where to even start here, but, you know, I think the, you know, the peace movement has a lot to celebrate right now.
President Joe Biden announced yesterday that they're going to end support for offensive operations in the Saudi-UAE-led coalition's war in Yemen.
They've announced an end to offensive weapons as well.
They announced that they're going to be naming an envoy to help broker a negotiated solution.
So there's a lot there, and I'd love to try to explain to people what this means and what this doesn't mean.
Now, yes, it's wonderful news, but there's still a lot of things that we aren't totally sure about.
What defines offensive operations and defensive operations is still up in the air.
What defines offensive and defensive weapons is also still up in the air.
So there's still a lot of work to do and a lot, you know, a lot that the grassroots and members of Congress should be doing to press the administration for these answers.
As Princess Leia said, it's not over yet.
So listen, I agree with you, though, that this is not just some kind of BS and, oh, defensive weapons means we found a loophole that we can go ahead and continue the war here.
It seemed pretty clear, didn't it?
And you may know more on background about this, but it seemed pretty clear from the way that they stated it that they meant we're going to give them as much kind of Aegis radar and machine guns and Patriot missiles and Iron Dome tech and this kind of stuff to prevent the Houthis kind of as an excuse.
Hey, we're not abandoning our Saudi friends.
We're just not going to help them support this war anymore.
But did you read that the same way that this really does mean a substantive change as far as that goes?
Right.
You know, I do think this is a substantive change.
It hasn't been defined yet.
And from my intel from inside the administration, people I've talked to on the Hill and in the NGO space out here is that there's still an ongoing debate that can be shaped by the public in Congress.
So I think now isn't the time to be complacent.
Now is the time to double down.
And Scott, if I may, I wanted to flag that this historic decision by the president would really not have happened if it wasn't for years of tireless advocacy from grassroots activists and advocates all over the country, led by Yemeni Americans and faith groups, peace groups, libertarian groups, just people that care about the humanitarian crisis in Yemen.
And I just want to just send a big congratulations to all of those who've devoted themselves to bringing about an end to America's shameful involvement in this war.
And, you know, the announcement is a critical first step and a monumental achievement for the peace movement.
Yeah, absolutely right about that.
And huge congratulations to you and everybody at the Friends Committee and all the other peace groups in D.C.
And by the way, I know I always leave some out because I just I can't keep them all at the top of my head.
But obviously Code Pink and JustForeignPolicy.org, where you guys, where you used to be there, are two major ones.
But are there other major and you can call out individuals if you'd like to.
Who are your best allies on the Hill, Hassan, on this?
I appreciate that.
I would definitely say Code Pink, Peace Action, Just Foreign Policy, Demand Progress, Yemeni Alliance Committee, Yemeni Freedom Council, Yemen Relief and Reconstruction Foundation.
Those are all led by, you know, amazing Yemeni activists, Aisha Juman, Jahan Hakeem, Shireen Al-Ademi, Isaac France, Eric Sperling.
You know, I could go on and on and on.
There are just so many amazing activists that just came out of the woodwork.
And one of my Yemeni friends, I actually broke the news to her yesterday.
She was just doing her thing.
I'm not going to name names.
I don't want to out anybody, but she just cried to me on the phone for a long time and just was so appreciative of the amazing advocacy that so many people had done for years and years on this, and yourself included.
And you know, it just means a lot.
So I just wanted to, you know, again, you know, this is not the end.
We have a lot of work to do.
There's still so much, you know, uncertainty and so much suffering going on, but I do think it's important to celebrate the little wins here and in this case, a big win and just favor that.
Yeah.
It's not just that too, right?
It's that in this case, there is no Yemeni lobby, right?
There are no powerful Yemeni interests that have representation, some K Street firm for their oil billionaires or whatever, like any other nation on the Arabian Peninsula.
I bet Oman even has a lobby, but the Yemenis got nothing other than human rights activists, right?
This is all very bottom up, grassroots, please, for the love of God and humanity, you have to stop this activism from people like you and people like Code Pink and the groups that you name there that are just, right, students and regular people who care.
And so what a huge victory with no actual institutional interests on our side at all, right?
Absolutely.
Yeah.
I think, you know, there's no we are not as well funded as the Saudis, Raytheon, the UAE and others.
But we have we have the truth on our side and we have morality on our side.
We have the Constitution on our side and we have, you know, way more people than they do who care.
So so that's yeah.
You know, it's a big win.
OK, you guys, check it out.
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Enough already.
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OK, now back to the details here.
So there's so much, but I guess first of all, talk to me a little bit about this envoy.
I read a little bit about him in foreign policy here, and apparently he worked for Trump on this issue.
But everybody thought that he meant well, a little more than everyone else in Trump's government.
And now seems like people are pretty confident that he knows what he's doing and is going to really try to bring the whole war to an end, not just American participation.
Is that right?
Yeah.
I mean, I think this is a really important decision.
I, you know, I'm not going to get super into the weeds about the individual, but I'm going to get more, you know, explain more of what it means that we now have an envoy.
Well, let me at least name him.
The guy's name is Timothy Lender King.
I should have put that in the question there.
Go ahead.
Yeah, absolutely.
And, you know, I I've heard good things as well.
It remains to be seen, you know, what you know, what his exact approach will be.
But the fact that the Biden administration is putting a permanent envoy in place to work towards a diplomatic negotiation in Yemen is very significant.
And I think that's going to have an impact on other countries like Canada, the UK and France and, you know, working to get them to end their weapon sales and military support to the coalition.
I think it's going to have, you know, be really important to have a direct bridge to UN special envoy to Yemen.
Martin Griffiths, who has been working since the start of the war, essentially to try to get a negotiated settlement and a ceasefire.
So it's it's kind of a line in the sand that the Biden administration is putting down and, you know, showing that they are going to be moving towards and working towards a ceasefire agreement and a negotiated settlement, hopefully one that includes all voices in Yemen, not just the warring parties, because we cannot forget about civil society and women and girls and so many people that have been impacted by, you know, by both sides of the conflict.
Yeah.
You know, I got a real problem here.
A guy was just interviewing me about this and was saying, well, listen, if Mike Pompeo just designated the Houthis as a terrorist group three weeks ago, it's like this last ditch FU out the door kind of ridiculous Pompeo thing that he did.
And how come the Biden people couldn't immediately just cancel that instead?
They go, well, we're going to review it for a month.
And then the aid group said, well, that's not good enough.
You know, according to our bylaws at our nonprofit, we can't bring food aid to a partially designated terrorist group or something until this is completely resolved.
And then so here they announced on Thursday that we're stopping the war.
But they didn't say they didn't announce the part of it that should have just been a side effect, a small, you know, a side issue.
Yeah.
And of course, we're reversing Pompeo's designation of the Houthis as a terrorist group, too.
We don't need to review that for a month.
If you're an aid group, set sail.
Let's get this food back where it belongs.
Scott, that's a really good point and a very interesting omission from yesterday's announcements.
Again, the FTO, Foreign Terrorist Organization, designation on the Houthis are deeply troubling because it basically shuts down humanitarian aid operations to about 80 percent of the population of Yemen, you know, a 30 million population, 80 percent of that will not really be able to receive humanitarian assistance if this goes through.
It also shuts down peace negotiations.
Now, the Biden administration, to their credit, they did lift all sanctions on the Houthis.
And that was a significant move.
But that said, the U.N. is still warning that unless the FTO is officially lifted, not just having humanitarian exemptions and lifting sanctions temporarily as they review, it is pushing more and more people into famine.
Right now, there's 50,000 people in Yemen living in a famine right now.
And many of those are children.
Five million people are a step away.
And then 16 million people are at risk of famine.
So it's we need to reverse this, you know, immediately, not wait at all.
The administration, I do think they will be announcing a lifting of that by the end of February.
But it should have happened yesterday.
Yeah.
Yeah, I just I can't understand their thinking.
Who's criticizing them about this that they have to worry about?
John McCain is dead.
Right.
Who cares?
Go ahead and just do it.
Yeah, well, there are a lot of people bringing that up, you know, FCNL included.
We're definitely raising that, raising that with the Hill, trying to get more and more members to speak out.
And I think this is a great reason to call your congressman.
Yeah.
Well, and that's the thing of it, right?
That's the real lesson of the success of the activists here is that the activists have to keep it up and continue to pressure these guys on every facet of this thing as much as we can.
And because, of course, the other obvious thing to do would be for Biden to say, preferably publicly, but what the hey, I don't know, pick up a telephone and let Mohammed bin Salman know that we expect you to end your war there, too, like by Thursday, pal.
And then that's it.
Right.
Who's the superpower and who's the client state here?
Yeah.
Yeah, I think that's a really good message to raise up right now is that incredible activism got us here and incredible activism is still needed.
In fact, we almost need to double down at this point, you know, as we're in this kind of waiting period and not sure.
And there's a lot of these decisions are being made behind closed doors.
And so as much as we can, we've got to get our members of Congress and our senators to really publicly ask the question, what does this mean?
Where's the executive order?
Let's define what these terms are.
What, you know, a drone.
Is that a defensive weapon or an offensive weapon?
In my opinion, a drone is an offensive weapon.
An F-35 is an offensive aircraft.
You know, bomb sails are all offensive.
And, you know, we really need to make that point.
And members of Congress have been saying that for the past several years and we need to keep saying it.
Yeah.
Here's the other thing, too, right, is we are talking about the very worst part of the war from the last six years through now.
But before that, from 2009 through 2015 was the war against Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
And as they announced here, that war will continue.
And Trump has had some raids against them, but mostly for the last six years, America's been flying as their air cover in the war against the Houthis.
They're part of the Saudi UAE coalition.
And in fact, back a couple of years ago, as Reuters and others did a great job of reporting, AQAP just joined the UAE army and their militia and we've been flying as their air cover.
And so then now that we're switching sides in the war again, not really ending the war, but switching sides in the war again, that means the war against Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which is now far larger, more powerful than ever before, is only just beginning again.
And if 2009 through 15 are any, you know, lesson or, you know, set any precedent, it's only going to be counterproductive.
And the war against them, it won't be as counterproductive as fighting for them.
But, you know, bombing them with drones only grew their group larger and larger the whole time Obama did it before he turned around and took their side against the Houthis.
Scott, let's face it, we have a foreign policy problem.
We think the answer to so many of these issues are more bombs, more weapons, more military support, more attacking terrorism.
And yeah, for a long time, Congress hasn't been a part of this conversation.
The American public hasn't been a part of this conversation.
And so, you know, we're aggressively also moving towards repealing the 2001 terrorism AUMF and the 2002 Iraq AUMF that allowed us to go into Saddam Hussein so many years ago.
And that's a really important piece.
You know, drone strikes against Al-Qaeda destabilized Yemen and caused a lot of resentment against, you know, the United States and Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
And we we just cannot continue this policy.
And yes, it's welcome news that we're ending, you know, offensive support for offensive operations in the Saudi UAE coalition's war against the Houthis.
But, you know, we need to stop trying to fix Yemen with bombs.
I mean, they need humanitarian aid.
They need an end to the blockade.
They need a negotiated ceasefire deal that includes all parties of the conflict and all parts of civil society.
What they don't need is more airstrikes on, you know, anybody.
So so we're going to be lobbying on that as well.
Yeah.
Well, I guess, you know, the UAE pulled out their main ground force, what, two years ago, a year and a half ago, I guess, or so.
Yeah.
But they still have their militia on the ground.
Exactly.
You know, which includes the AQAP guys.
But yeah, 90,000 proxies in Yemen, they're still operating with.
So how many?
The idea that the 90,000.
Oh, man.
Yeah.
And so the the idea that the UAE is magically out of Yemen is just not true.
I think it's significant that, you know, they pulled out militarily because that's, you know, obviously a step in the right direction.
But they're still part of the violence and contributor to the violence.
They're still have plans to annex parts of southern Yemen, including Socotra Island, which is this really amazing, you know, gorgeous island with all this incredible biodiversity.
So we really need to get the UAE out of Yemen as well and stop our weapons sales.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, so.
Is there any word from the different aid groups about, you know, them gearing up for their own kind of full scale invasion of this country at the day after the war is finally called to a halt here?
Because we got people in absolutely desperate straits.
They don't just need sacks of wheat.
They need engineers now to put their water and electricity and most basic necessities of life back together for them immediately.
I mean, not that they don't have their own.
I'm not saying they're a bunch of cavemen or anything, but whatever.
They need capital.
Well, they had their own until Saudi Arabia started blowing up their agricultural infrastructure, their sewage plants, their, you know, livestock markets, weddings, hospitals.
You know, there's been a targeted campaign to destroy the infrastructure of this country by Saudi Arabia and the UAE with U.S. military support.
And I think that's just that's an obvious fact.
Now, a big focus right now is still lifting the FTO designation because none of that aid can get through if there's this lingering fear that everybody could be penalized.
Aid operations have continued, but at a reduced scale.
So we really need to get that done.
We need to, you know, you know, we suspended aid under the Trump administration to large parts of Yemen, and that sent a signal to other international donors and aid agencies working in Yemen that, you know, that you need to be cautious.
So that slowed everything down.
We need to reverse that.
We need to restore and expand funding to all parts of Yemen.
And the Biden administration needs to do a better job of pressuring Saudi Arabia and the UAE to contribute more to humanitarian aid.
I'll flag that the UAE, despite having twenty three billion dollars for drones and, you know, war planes and bombs, has contributed nothing to, you know, to helping Yemenis in any part of Yemen via humanitarian aid.
So that's a major problem.
We need to put a lot of pressure there.
And, you know, last but not least, this is actually the most important piece is we need to end the blockade.
I think, you know, aid is very important.
But until we end the blockade and, you know, which is stopping the flow of food, fuel, medicine and clean water into the country, Yemen really can't get back on the road to recovery.
So that's a must.
Right.
And, you know, I know that the status at the port of Hodeidah has changed, you know, off and on, whether all international trade is shut down, sometimes including aid organizations and the U.N., sometimes not.
And then I guess it's sometimes the port has been open to international trade, too, I think only for limited, you know, times, you know, six weeks at a time or something here or there or anything like that.
Can you give us a status update on the port of Hodeidah and the extent of the blockade against trade there now?
Yeah.
So the Saudi coalition blockade continues.
And, you know, there are U.N. approved ships even that are sitting out in the harbor sometimes for, you know, 200 days or more.
Yes.
The food rots.
Yeah.
And it's so like I said, we really need to put a lot of pressure on that on that situation and not just the Hodeidah blockade and the sea ports, but also the airport in Sana'a.
You know, there was a promise last year that we would be able to medically evacuate, you know, people that needed emergency medical care.
And, you know, I think Saudi Arabia only allowed 40 or so people to leave.
And that is a real problem.
I mean, people are having these dire medical emergencies and they're unable to leave via the airport.
And as such, it makes Yemen very difficult to navigate and, you know, to get in and out of.
So, yeah, lifting that blockade is absolutely critical, not just on the sea ports, but also the air and land ports of entry.
Yeah.
You know, a guy on Twitter says to me, he goes, you know, this really portends bad news for the Iran deal, right?
Because you go back and as the Obama people told the New York Times, the reason they helped start this genocidal war against the Yemenis was to placate the Saudis over their feelings that maybe their position in our American dominated order in the Middle East was in jeopardy if we made this nuclear deal with Iran.
So to make them feel better about themselves, we started this war for them.
And then so if they want to get back in the Iran deal and they want to stop the war against the Houthis, then what, they're going to start escalating for al-Qaeda in Syria again?
They can't be good on three Shiite things at the same time.
Something's got to give, right?
Well, I, I don't necessarily agree with that.
I think we can, I think we could do it all.
Now, one thing that is really clear and we need to keep making this point is how much leverage the U.S. has over Saudi Arabia.
If we stopped supplying tires to F-15s and Bruce Rydell from Brookings, he's worked for four presidents.
I just sat with him on a Hill briefing panel earlier this week, actually, and he made this point.
If we just stop selling the tires to these F-15s, the Saudis wouldn't have an air fleet.
They wouldn't be able to fly these planes.
They are so dependent on the U.S. and so deeply invested in U.S. hardware that it would take them possibly over a decade to really switch gears and be able to start using all Russia or Chinese hardware.
And, you know, that's a point that we really need to to make loud and clear that we have leverage over here.
We don't need to be, you know, bossed around by authoritarians in the Gulf like Mohammed bin Salman.
And also say is that we do have a lot of momentum for for diplomacy with Iran to, you know, the announcement of Rob Malley by the Biden administration, their repeated calls for compliance, for compliance return.
Granted, things aren't moving as fast as I would hope, but they're doing and saying a lot of the right things, which I'm pleased with.
And also, there's a lot of support now on the Hill, especially among only among Democrats.
But the House, the House members sent a letter in late December of 2020, all saying that they support a return to the Iran nuclear deal.
And that's significant.
So we got to keep supporting a return to the Iran nuclear deal.
Granted, that's that's a whole nother issue we should probably talk more in depth about.
But I think we can do both.
And I'm going to keep advocating that we do both because it's just absolutely necessary.
Yeah.
Well, you know, the foreign minister of Iran, Javad Zarif, has said in a few times over the last weeks and months, but most recently just a few days ago, like, hey, come on, guys, let's find a way to make this easy.
And in fact, it even says in the deal, here's how you get the Europeans to oversee a reintegration commission in case there's ever any hiccups.
So in other words, we kind of turn it over to a third party within the deal to help them go back to the limitations in the deal at the same time that the Americans lift the sanctions in a way that nobody really is giving up too much because they're kind of turning over the authority to the third party to do it for them, which is everybody's friends, the Europeans anyway, and make it so easy for everyone.
Of course, the Biden people said no, but I agree with you that I think they're probably going to say yes in a few weeks anyway.
Right.
Sooner than later.
Yeah, absolutely.
And, you know, that's it's just so critical.
I mean, you know, this is a major national security threat to the United States having this instability and all these tensions with Iran.
And so we need to get back to diplomacy.
And and, you know, there's a wide range of areas of disagreement between the U.S. and Iran.
And, you know, restoring the JCPOA, this is my bottom line for people, is that restoring the JCPOA, the 2015 deal, is the best way to start addressing everything else that we have to address.
So, you know, we get back into the deal and then let's move forward and address all these other areas of concern.
There's a couple of deadlines I want folks to know, you know, Iran has threatened to kick out the IAEA inspectors on February 21 if sanctions aren't lifted.
So that's, you know, there's a real strong push to get something going in February.
And I think, you know, calling your members, your reps and senators right now saying that you support a return to the Iran nuclear deal is really critical.
And also in June, Iran is going to be holding some new elections.
They're going to have a new president.
And what we do now will impact what's going to happen in Iran and their election cycle.
Are more moderates going to, you know, win the day who want diplomacy?
Or Ahmadinejad 2.0 people that don't want diplomacy, are they going to win?
It really depends on us.
Yeah.
And you're right, because, boy, you know, summer's coming real quick in election season time periods.
You know, these things can go very quickly.
And there are right wingers.
I know Ahmadinejad himself is at least talking about running.
And there are a lot of other hardliners like him.
And after all, Trump has absolutely humiliated the Ayatollah and especially the current president, Rouhani, by breaking this deal when Rouhani told the entire rest of the Iranian political establishment, trust me, this is going to work.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, maximum pressure has been a maximum failure.
It pushed, you know, it kind of isolated America, you know, alienated our allies, pushed Iran, you know, to start enriching more uranium.
Granted, they're still pretty far away from where they would need to be to develop, you know, a bunch of nuclear weapons.
It's all still low enriched.
And yeah, it's all low enriched and also can be easily reversed.
So I want to flag that for people where not, you know, they haven't crossed any red lines that can't be, you know, returned.
But but the fact is that the deal was working.
They were about, you know, a year away from being able to develop a weapon.
And now they're, you know, a few months away from being able to develop a weapon.
And to, you know, yeah, it's just a really complex issue.
But what we need to do is actually pretty simple.
We need to get back into the Iran deal.
Yeah, absolutely agree with that.
All right.
And then just one last word real quick.
Can you tell us about Robert Malley?
I know a little bit about him.
But one thing is that the Hawks were really angry to hear that he was appointed envoy to Iran.
I think this was a great choice.
Personally, he's, you know, spoken out on this issue is really integral in the original Iran deal.
And it has, you know, some great analysis on so many of these issues.
I signed a joint letter with, I think, over 200 experts, you know, calling for folks to support this person and as you know, in his important work.
So that to me signals that the Biden administration is really serious.
You know, if I may, I know we got on the Iran train here, but I wanted to just say a couple of things about Yemen before I before I go, if that's all right.
Yeah, real quick.
Go ahead.
OK, you know, as as we celebrate the news that we're going to end support for the war, you know, we really have to do and just understand that so much more needs to be done.
One thing that FCNL is pushing is for there to be a permanent ban on U.S. support for the Saudi war in Yemen.
And that's going to take Congress.
You know, we're urging folks to support another Yemen war powers resolution to, you know, basically make this the law of the land that no executive order can overturn.
And I urge everyone that listens to work on that with us.
Yeah, absolutely.
That is great.
And that is the Friends Committee on National Legislation, FCNL.org, one of the greatest peace groups in Washington, D.C., and that is Hassan El-Tayeb.
Thank you so much.
And congratulations for your great success in helping to get this done, Hassan.
Really appreciate it.
Thanks so much, Scott.
The Scott Horton Show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A.
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