



Why it took so long for the Western mainstream media to 'discover' the war in Yemen and the war crimes committed by the Saudi coalition in full co-operation with the US?





One might think that the humanitarian disaster there - caused also by the blockade of goods for the relief of the civilians - has become so obvious, condemned multiple times by the UN, that the media finally forced to speak about it.





In previous article we attempted to explain the 'unexplained phenomenon' and the fact that CNN surprisingly returned to the issue to openly condemn the US support to the Saudi coalition atrocities against civilians in Yemen.





Yet, despite that the Saudi regimes have been, traditionally, the best allies of the Western neocolonialists, this time, the US had serious reasons to overthrow the Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS). And, surprisingly enough, at the center of this underground conflict lies an attempt by the US to privatize Aramco , Saudi Arabia's state oil company.





As many of you know, this is the same reason for which the US and the UK had overthrown, through a coup, the democratically elected Iranian president Mohammad Mosaddegh, back in 1953. And this is why the US is trying to overthrow all Venezuelan administrations since Hugo Chavez nationalized PDVSA, the state-owned oil and natural gas company, and took it from the hands of the US corporations.





As MintPressNews revealed : (emphasis added)





Though the media has long spun Vision 2030 as MBS’ “ambitious” plan to wean the Saudi economy off its dependency on oil, the plan itself is actually a free-for-all for private interests and involves the neoliberalization of Saudi state-owned assets. Among its pillars are the opening of Saudi financial markets to Wall Street and the privatization of essentially everything in the Gulf Kingdom, including healthcare and, of course, Aramco.

[...]

Vision 2030 certainly seemed to win MBS the affection of the international elite across the board — and it seemed that the new Crown Prince enjoyed the limelight, at least for a while. However, it seems reality began to set in for MBS, and he has consequently spent the past several months looking for a way to indefinitely delay the plan’s implementation.

This first became clear earlier this year following speculation in July that the Saudi Aramco Initial Public Offering (IPO) — i.e., the beginning of the partial privatization of the Saudi state oil company through the selling of shares — may not materialize after all. Then, it was announced in late August that the entire IPO would be shelved. Bloomberg called this “the most significant reversal in Prince Mohammed’s plans” and added: “Rather than marking a watershed in one of the most ambitious economic projects in history, it [the shelving of the Aramco IPO] now highlights the unpredictability of the country under a young leader who has centralized political power in his own hands since becoming de facto ruler a little over a year ago.”

As a result, what would have been the biggest IPO in history was called off overnight. The move was surely a disappointment to Trump, who had personally lobbied MBS to list Aramco on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), as doing so would have awarded the NYSE with the largest stock market listing ever.

However, it was a much, much bigger disappointment for the behemoth financial institutions that had worked frantically to secure their roles in the deal — Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and CitiGroup, among others — as the shelving of the IPO meant that all their work on the deal would now go without compensation, as banks are typically only paid when such deals are finalized. In other words, MBS’ decision to put the IPO indefinitely on hold meant that the most powerful, politically-connected banks had essentially been forced to work for free.

[...]

Far beyond the cancellation of the IPO itself — MBS has endangered other parts of the plan that these powerful financial interests had been counting on for well over a year. That includes Vision 2030’s plan to increase the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) — which is managed by a group of HSBC and Bank of America directors and a CitiGroup investment banking alumnus — from its current $230 billion in assets to a massive $2 trillion. The dramatic increase in the fund’s size would make the PIF the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world. Without that injection of cash into the PIF from the Aramco IPO, media reports have warned of a “ripple effect” on the U.S. economy, including massive U.S. tech companies like Uber, given that the PIF has invested heavily in such companies.





So, it seems that the economic interests in this case are huge. The US corporate dictatorship and the Wall Street mafia heavily invested on the rapid neoliberalization of the Saudi Arabian economy, including the privatization of the state-owned oil company. When Mohammed bin Salman stepped back from the deal, the war has started.





The Western mainstream media fired some warning shots against the Saudi regime, as they suddenly 'discovered' the Saudi-coalition war crimes in Yemen. But there was a problem. Exposing too much the humanitarian disaster in Yemen, would expose the US and the Western involvement in the war crimes to increasingly broader audiences.





So, the Western mainstream media grabbed the opportunity and focused on the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi. In the midst of continuing war crimes in Yemen - with thousands still dying from famine and cholera - the media turned all the lights to Khashoggi case for days, in order to use it as a more convenient 'tool' against Mohammed bin Salman. And they did it. The story went viral.





And the US has already found the man who will replace Mohammed bin Salman in power. His brother, prince Ahmad bin Abdulaziz, who flew back to Riyadh from London on Tuesday:









The whole story also explains why Mohammed bin Salman tried to approach Russia and make some deals with Putin. But it is certain that this move has brought additional anxiety to his Western 'allies' who probably accelerated the process of his removal from power.





The US big banks and corporations are still at risk of losing everything in Saudi Arabia.





So, here is a possible scenario: their puppet Donald Trump already pushes for a ceasefire in Yemen , as the situation is completely out of control and the US-Saudi coalition faces a dead end. Nothing to gain there except an elevating rage by the global community for the humanitarian disaster.





The other puppet, Ahmad bin Abdulaziz, will be installed in Saudi Arabia to restart the huge project of the neoliberalization of the Saudi economy. Western banks and corporations will invade to grab all the wealth while the people will continue to suffer from the continuing brutality of the regime and the rising poverty.



