 Hello and welcome to NewsClick's International Roundup, where this week we look at the situation in Yemen. So the United States has declared that it will no longer fuel Saudi fighter jets and it has also been talking about a new ceasefire and a new peace treaty and talks which will be held in Stockholm. To talk more about this, we have with us Pravir Purukhaisar, editor-in-chief of NewsClick. Hello Pravir. So Pravir, how do you see the immediate situation on the ground, especially in the battle around Hodeida and how does it have an impact on these calls for ceasefire and these calls for truce? Well, if you see Hueda, which is where the major battle is going on, it's been going on for some months now. The situation on the ground seems to be such that it is possible that the Houthis or the Ansarullah forces lose control of Hodeida. If that happens, this is what feeds 90% of the population, which is being controlled by the Houthis. The area which today serves as something like 20 odd million people. This is the one which is now going to see complete secession of food and other things necessities coming in. Already what is coming in is very small because of the blockade. There is already a blockade of the port, blockade of Yemeni or Houthi occupied territories. That continues, but the fall of the port means that nothing will really come into this area. We are looking at extremely severe, shall we say, disaster in terms of human scale of the tragedy because already it is being talked about something like 10, 11 million people are in extreme conditions of extreme hunger and then we are talking of a stressed population of another 8 billion people. This is a magnitude of hunger or magnitude of starvation, which we haven't seen at any other time. On top of this, we've already had due to breakdown of electricity, of all civic amenities, lack of drinking water. We have had a cholera outbreak estimated to have affected 1 billion people. The figures in terms of death seem to be rather small are coming out of this 1,000, 2,000 big figures. This is probably a gross underestimate of what's happening. The humanity and tragedy that will unfold if Houthi falls is, I think, of a magnitude that we haven't seen in this war even though now the figures say 200,000 people have been killed, et cetera, et cetera. But I think what we're going to see now unfold if Houthi falls is very, very significantly different from anything we have seen before. At the same time, the coalition forces have not really had the kind of success they expected either because although they sent quite a huge army and substantial forces to take over the port, they're not really succeeded as of yet. Well, there is one issue which also is stopping them. One is, of course, the resistance have been fierce. It's a built-up area. Therefore, resistance in the ground is relatively easier to do, particularly if it's an urban area. And the Houthis are very good fighters. Let's face it. The other side are mercenary troops. They really don't have a strong desire to lose their lives. So therefore, you had a problem about the two opposing sides. One is fighting for survival. The other is fighting for money, and that always is a problem. The second problem the troops have had, and the Emirati and the Saudi troops have had, that their ability to march up has been, shall we say, offset by the fact that the Houthis can cut the supply lines more easily. So we have seen attacks on the supply lines, and the supply lines are rather thin. They're between the more hilly region in the interior and the coast. So when the long supply lines are there, it's possible for the Houthis to severe these lines. But at the same time, the Houthis also have the problem. They don't have any air cover. They don't have any armor. Therefore, their ability to severe the lines for long periods is just not there. So this is a touch-and-go. I think at the moment the Emirati and the Saudi forces are looking for being able to take over the town in a month or so. If that happens, we are looking at an enormous human disaster that will therefore take this region. So taking a step back, how would you analyze Saudi Arabia's actual interest in this conflict? Because there's been a lot of international condemnation, even as the Western powers have sold Saudi Arabia and it's huge amounts of arms. But what would you see as some of the key points driving this conflict, despite it lasting nearly three years? There are three reasons why I think the Saudis got into this war. One is that Mohammed bin Salman, the young crown prince, wanted to show his, shall we say, war prowess. And he thought that Yemen would be an easy country to take over, marching in with all his fancy gizmos of war. The support that he has for the United States, United Kingdom and France would mean that the war would be completely one-sided. He was looking at building his image as a strong, young, powerful leader of the Saudis and therefore emerging in this region as a major force. So that was his calculation and the fact that he thought the victory was going to be easy. The second part, and this is the larger historical context, the Saudis want an alternative for their oil that right now most of their oil is shipped from the states of Hormuz. Iranians are sitting on that and if there is any war which might happen because Saudis, Israelis are both egging on the United States to take out Iranians, their competition in the region, in which case Iranians quite conceivably might block the states of Hormuz. So that's going to affect Saudi Arabia very adversely. So therefore they're also thinking of a pipe, shall we say, a line of control by which they have an alternative access to the oceans and therefore looking at Aden as a possible outlet. Taking over that part of Yemen, therefore up to Aden which gives them a sea access or Houthia for the matters means they have an independent access to the oceans, independent that is of the states of Hormuz. So there is a strategic reason why they're interested in this area. The third is of course that Saudis could be conceivably running out of oil, not in the immediate future but say in the foreseeable future. Therefore hedging their bets, the need to take over Yemen's part of Yemen's shall we say northern areas which have claimed reserves of gas and oil that could conceivably supplement Saudi Arabia's reserves. These are underdeveloped because Yemen has not been able to get over its various civil war conditions. It has been always in the state of ferment and we've seen now also the civil war which was going on. So all of this meant that the Saudis thought that the takeover northern Yemen that then they could also supplement their oil and gas reserves. So this could be a third reason that Saudi Arabia really entered the war with Emiratis being their partners. So how do you see the future of this so-called peace proposal with the United States has been presenting? Is it likely to have any concrete impact? You know the United States peace proposals if we want to look at it seriously seems again an ultimatum to the Houthis or what the Ansarullah forces to surrender after which they will step in and see the Saudi Arabia doesn't bomb them any further. Now normally when you talk of a ceasefire you ask both sides to ceasefire you don't ask for a sequential surrender as it were one side before the other side ceases fire. So that itself causes the problem. The Americans are now saying that they will not support the Saudis in terms of fueling their flights. Now actually this was important in the beginning of the war. Today is no longer that important. Therefore this is really not a major issue. The major issue are the still in the control centers from which the bombing is being carried out refueling is only a small part of the game. The real issue is they're supposedly they're directing the fire which the Saudi Arabians in terms of missiles and bombs are directing at the Houthis or the Houthi built areas. As you know a number of such bombings have taken out wedding processions schools hospitals and so on. So that is the bigger issue are they going to continue with that or not and the fact that they also service all this equipment without which I doubt the Saudis can really have a viable air force or a viable bombing operations on northern Yemen. So I think the goodwill towards negotiations would be a lot greater if they put concrete pressures in Saudi Arabia and Trump talking about the great arms trade arms deals that the Saudis are offering and therefore not rocking this bin Salman boat does not also yield too much confidence on their being sort of honest brokers in the deal. I think yes the west is now coming under pressure because the humanitarian tragedy in Yemen is coming to light and the fact that Salman washed up the his Khashoggi operation which has really put him or shown up Saudi Arabia and the current crown prince in very bad light has also meant a weakening of Saudi Arabia in the international arena and therefore the United States trying to appear to be a little more malleable shall we say to a peace process in Yemen because the issue of Yemen is now increasingly hitting the mainstream media as well which has kept it at the wraps for quite some time. So I think one must see what's happening on the Khashoggi bin Salman issue and the fact that we now have records of the tapes which have been given to all the western power leaders which obviously show that Khashoggi was killed inside the embassy inside the consulate the things that are coming out which are really gory that his body was cut into pieces and then melted with acid to pour down the drain all of this means that Saudi Arabia is looking what it always was a medieval monarchy and this medieval monarchy being exposed in this fashion also means that the tragedy of Yemen is also gaining some salience in the in the western media which is what makes the western powers a little more amenable to talking nice about the Yemen war in terms of peace and so on but how much how serious they're going to be about it is really way is really to be seen because Saudis arms deals could really keep this shall we say French UK and the US economy afloat. Thank you. That's all we have time for today. Keep watching NewsClick.