{"id":172915,"date":"2015-08-14T09:50:02","date_gmt":"2015-08-14T09:50:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-saudi-royals-unchained\/"},"modified":"2015-08-14T16:03:55","modified_gmt":"2015-08-14T16:03:55","slug":"the-saudi-royals-unchained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-saudi-royals-unchained\/","title":{"rendered":"The Saudi Royals \u2013 Unchained"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p><strong>Exclusive:<\/strong> With President Obama afraid of upsetting the Saudis anymore after the Iran-nuclear deal, he has given them pretty much a free hand to bomb and blockade Yemen. Meanwhile, the Saudi royals also are displaying their contempt for the United Nations and its Yemen peace efforts, Joe Lauria reports.<\/p>\n<p>By Joe Lauria<\/p>\n<p>Saudi Arabia\u2019s relations with the United Nations have hit rock bottom after a series of incidents that has left a humbled Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon furious with Riyadh, two U.N. officials close to the U.N. chief have told me.<\/p>\n<p>The relationship matters because only the United Nations has the reputation of neutrality necessary to forge a power-sharing deal that can finally end the conflict in Yemen.<\/p>\n<p>Ban was cool to the Saudi-led operation from the start. On the first day of bombing <u>on March 26<\/u>\u00a0he called on countries to \u201crefrain from external interference\u201d which seeks to \u201cfoment conflict and instability.\u201d Since then the Saudis have shown near total disregard for Ban and the U.N.\u2019s role in the conflict.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014Ban was upset that the Saudis\u2019 military operation in Yemen derailed U.N.-brokered talks in March.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014He believes he was lied to by the Saudis when they didn\u2019t deliver on a promise of aid money to the U.N.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014The Saudis have blockaded ports bringing the U.N. to the verge of declaring a famine in Yemen.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014Ban was apoplectic that Riyadh forced a postponement in June of U.N.-led talks in Geneva; and then later broke two promises to Ban of a humanitarian truce.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014The U.N. made matters worse by ignoring Saudi conditions and declaring an unconditional truce in early July anyway, which never took hold.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014The Saudis unilaterally announced a humanitarian pause at the end of July bypassing the U.N., which also quickly fell apart.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014The Saudi offensive in August aimed at controlling Aden has pushed a UN-brokered negotiated settlement even further off the table.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2015\/08\/14\/the-saudi-royals-unchained\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Exclusive: With President Obama afraid of upsetting the Saudis anymore after the Iran-nuclear deal, he has given them pretty much a free hand to bomb and blockade Yemen. Meanwhile, the Saudi royals also are displaying their contempt for the United Nations and its Yemen peace efforts, Joe Lauria reports. By Joe Lauria Saudi Arabia\u2019s relations [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-172915","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172915\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}