South Asia Center Nonresident Senior Fellow Barbara Slavin writes for Al Monitor on Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s comments on Saudi Arabia’s role in the conflict in Yemen during his first official visit to the United States:
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, concluding his first official visit to the United States, urged a swift end to the war in Yemen, telling a Washington audience April 16 that the conflict there was creating “fallout” and deepening an already serious sectarian divide in the Middle East.
At the same time, Abadi, appearing at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), tried to smooth over criticism of Saudi Arabia for its bombing campaign against Houthi forces in Yemen. A day earlier, the Iraqi prime minister infuriated the Saudi government by telling a small group of US journalists that “there is no logic to the [Saudi] operation at all in the first place.”