It’s true that in January a UN panel concluded that 119 airstrikes potentially broke international human rights law. And it’s true that among the millions displaced, Yemeni children are among the chief sufferers. But when he is sticking to his official brief, rather than winging it, Johnson continues to maintain that Britain and Saudi Arabia are close allies acting in concert, and that a legal and moral “threshold” has not been crossed by Saudi actions in Yemen. Johnson’s talk of a Sunni-Shia political divide that abuses Islam, and an absence of enlightened regional leaders willing to overcome it, is another truism. In recent years a more assertive Iran, run by a Shia Muslim theocracy, has mounted multiple challenges to Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia’s role as guardian and leader of the Islamic world.
But Britain has taken sides in this fight. It has broadly gone along with US and Israeli efforts to isolate and weaken Tehran, especially since 9/11, using as a lever Iran’s unproven pursuit of nuclear weapons. At the same time, it is one of Saudi Arabia’s biggest arms suppliers.
Britain continues, in effect, to turn a blind eye to Saudi’s human rights abuses, its appalling record of judicial executions, and its repression and jailing of human rights campaigners in its Bahrain satrap. On persistent allegations, vehemently denied by Riyadh, that wealthy Saudi individuals have funded Islamic State and al-Qaida, now and in the past, Britain keeps silent. Last month, after two parliamentary committees recommended the suspension of arms sales to Riyadh, Johnson’s Foreign Office pooh-poohed their advice. Johnson previously opposed a Labour move to halt arms sales, saying it would eliminate British influence with the Saudis “at a stroke”. Ironically, Johnson’s clumsily truthful, insulting comments in Rome may achieve exactly this result.
So what does Johnson now propose should happen? Britain’s relationship with the Saudi regime has long been toxic, corrupting and unhealthy. Those who support it, including all governments in recent times, argue the alliance is of strategic value. David Cameron claimed last year that Saudi intelligence cooperation helped prevent terrorist attacks in Britain.
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