The failed missile attacks against United States warships off Yemen’s coast bear the hallmarks of false flag operations that the US is known to have staged in the past to justify military action, according to a former American intelligence linguist.
Scott Rickard told Press TV’s Debate program: “Obviously something may have been fired at a ship in international waters; whether it came from the Houthi [Ansarullah movement] or whether it came from Houthi-controlled areas has not been proven, certainly these kinds of false flags have been used in the past”
Press TV reports:
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The analyst said the US is complicit in the destruction of Yemen through the sale of millions of dollars of weaponry to Saudi Arabia.
The USS Mason, a US Navy destroyer and the USS Ponce, an amphibious warfare ship, were targeted on Sunday in a failed missile attack from territory in the Red Sea off the coast of Yemen, according to the Pentagon.
The USS Mason came under attack on Wednesday for the second time, Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook claimed.
Rickard said the US has not been able to determine what kind of missile has been fired at the warship and who might have shot it; otherwise it would not have hesitated to return fire.
Yemeni forces rejected the US claims that they targeted the American destroyer in the Red Sea.
Yemen’s Saba news agency quoted an unnamed military official allied with the Houthi movement as saying, “These allegations are unfounded and the army and the Popular Committees have nothing to do with this action.”
Meanwhile, the Pentagon said that three radar sites in Yemen had been targeted and destroyed early on Thursday in a retaliatory attack.
“What is clear here is that the United States is the number one provider of weaponry to Saudi Arabia and Saudi Arabia is the number one terrorist-supporting organization in the Middle East at the time alongside Bahrain and Qatar and Kuwait,” Rickard said.
These Arab countries are aligned with the US in wreaking havoc not only in Yemen but in Syria, Iraq, Libya and elsewhere, he said.
In a televised speech on Thursday the leader of Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement said that the US was preparing for an invasion of Yemen’s western coast.
Abdul Malik Badreddin al-Houthi warned that the US military was preparing the ground for an act of aggression against the war-torn Arab country saying the nation and armed forces should stay vigilant and stand fully ready to face the invaders.
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