Trump says Saudi Arabia may accept Israeli help against Houthis

WASHINGTON: United States President Donald Trump has said Saudi Arabia may accept Israel’s help in operations against Yemen’s Houthi rebels. According to The Jerusalem Post, he said this on Friday while speaking to reporters as he left the White House for Dalton, Georgia, via Joint Base Andrews.

Asked whether Saudi Arabia should accept the help offered by Israel, Trump said he thought it should. Asked whether he had spoken to the Saudi leadership, he said Saudi Arabia would certainly do so. He said Israel had helped Saudi Arabia a great deal, and that Saudi Arabia was happy to receive cooperation from both Israel and the United States.

Asked about the Abraham Accords, Trump said the agreement was one of the biggest achievements of the United States, and that the chances of Saudi Arabia joining were perhaps even higher than before.

Saudi Arabia has not established formal diplomatic relations with Israel. There has been no formal confirmation from it so far on Trump’s statement. Normalising Saudi Arabia’s relations with Israel has been a major goal of Trump’s Middle East policy. He has also said earlier that a civil nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia depends on Riyadh joining the Abraham Accords and normalising ties with Israel.

According to The Jerusalem Post, the statements came as the Houthis stepped up attacks on Saudi Arabia. The newspaper said that on Thursday the Houthis targeted the Saudi presidential palace compound, killing five people. In a separate attack, King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh was targeted, killing 17 people and injuring more than 300.

According to The Washington Post, after the deadly attack on Riyadh airport, the Houthis have also targeted the Saudi state oil company Aramco and the presidential palace of the Saudi-backed government in Yemen. The newspaper describes this as the most unstable front of the regional conflict that began with the attack by the United States and Israel on Iran, with no clear way to end it in sight.