US troop deployment to Saudi Arabia highlights regime’s weakness: Analyst
The new US troop deployment to Saudi Arabia to boost the country’s defenses after attacks on its oil installations underscores the regime’s weakness and its influence in Washington, says an American political analyst.
The latest American troop deployment “reinforces the fact that the two [regimes] that dictate US foreign policy under the Trump administration and in prior administrations are Saudi Arabia and Israel,” said Rodney Martin, a former congressional staffer based in Arizona.
“Since the [Persian] Gulf War of 1991, the United States has engaged in military operations multiple times at the behest and at the service of both the illegitimate Saudi royal family and the Zionist regime,” Martin told Press TV on Friday.
The troop deployment “also demonstrates just how weak the Saudi military is; the fact that the Saudis apparently cannot defend their own airspace, despite their vast wealth from their oil revenues,” he added.
Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said in a statement on Friday US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper authorized the deployment of additional forces, including two fighter squadrons, two Patriot batteries, and a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense System (THAAD).
Esper has said that such deployments are a first step and the plan might be expanded to include other things down the road.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump said Friday that Washington was sending more troops to Saudi Arabia to help them, but added Riyadh had agreed to "pay us for everything we’re doing."
The four Sentinel radar systems and the Patriot battery are supposed to secure northern Saudi Arabia. Currently, most of the Riyadh regime’s air defenses are closer to the southern border with Yemen.
Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement has been launching missile and drone attacks against targets deep inside Saudi Arabia over the past months in retaliation for the kingdom’s years-long aggression.
The Trump administration claims that Iran is behind the Aramco attacks as well as previous acts of sabotage against international oil tankers passing through the Strait of Hormuz near Iranian territorial waters. Rejecting the claims on Wednesday,
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has rejected the accusations and invited all countries of the region to form a “coalition of hope” and calm tensions across the region.
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