The Yemen Conflict No One Talks About | John Kiriakou

[Music] They're deciding, you know, we don't really like being one Yemen. We kind of preferred things when it was two Yemens. And they start launching Scud missiles on each other. And they had a civil war. And then the North defeated the South and said, "No, you're not going to break away. We're still one Yemen." Well, then the strong man Ali Abdalah in in North Yemen, but he was the president of unified Yemen. He was a Saudi puppet and I I went to Yemen in 2011 and man, it was rough. There was a group of Korean >> Yeah, there was a group of Korean diplomats that flew in a day after I did. We're only allowed to stay in in one hotel, right? There's this one. It's got 30 foot walls with barbed wire all around the hotel. It's fortified. So, I had this armored car. I had two chase cars and they carried me from the airport to the hotel. The next day, six South Korean diplomats flew in and they were ambushed and murdered on the road to the hotel. A few days later, the South Korean implode service sent a group of investigators to figure out who did this and they were ambushed and killed on the road to the hotel. So, it's rough. >> In the meantime, then the >> Were they going after South Koreans in particular? >> No, just going any after anybody who's not a not a foreign Sunni Muslim. Yeah. >> So, um >> Okay. >> Yeah. In the meantime, the Shia are a minority in uh Yemen. They're about 25 or 30% of the population, and they get funding and weapons from Iran. And they decided, you know what? This country is so weak. This government is so weak. We could probably take it over. And so they started using drones to attack the capital. That was in 2009. Then finally in like 2016 they were successful in overthrowing the government and they blew up President Salah. The the pictures are gruesome from the from the uh the assassination and the Houthis have taken over now. Really the Houthies only control Sana the capital and some of the countryside around Sana. The rest of the country is just in a state of chaos. But the Houthies decided to pledge their their um support for Hamas, which is all fine and good. But in that decision, they decided their words to fire on any ship owned by Israel, controlled by Israel, on its way to Israel, or on its way from Israel. Okay. >> Wow. >> Well, these guys, like I say, these guys don't even have shoes. How are they going to know which ship has what and is doing what and is coming from where and going where? So they said, "Ah, what the hell? We'll just fire on every ship." Well, some of those ships are painted gray. >> Wow. >> And have a US flag flying on them and have 50 caliber guns. If it's a US Navy ship, why in blazes are you firing on a US Navy ship? So we we bombed the living daylights out of the Houthies, but said privately, reportedly, "How long do you spend $100,000 to blow up a $10,000 drone, right? Our missiles are expensive." So, he negotiated this deal about three weeks ago >> that they're just going to stop firing on US ships. The Israelis were infuriated because we didn't say anything about not firing on Israeli ships, but that's Israel's problem. So, we've got the Houthis and we've got Israel. And that's why we're in the Red Sea.