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Following British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s announcement on the 27th of March that he had tested positive for COVID-19, and his subsequent admission to the Intensive Care Unit of London’s Saint Thomas’ Hospital last Sunday, the reaction of the mainstream British media and political spectrum towards the Conservative Party leader has so far been one of universal sympathy.

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, and opposition party leaders, Keir Starmer of Labour and Ed Davey of the Liberal Democrats, all put aside political differences to express their best wishes towards the British Premier; as did many mainstream British media outlets not previously sympathetic towards Tory party policy.

This outpouring of goodwill from the British establishment towards Boris Johnson in light of his COVID-19 infection, however, is in stark contrast to its stance towards the victims of UK-ally Saudi Arabia’s now five-year-long war on neighbouring Yemen, one in which Johnson himself has played a key role.

The role of the British government in this bloody conflict goes far beyond mere arms sales, however, with British military advisors playing a key role in the Saudi command room, alongside their US counterparts, in the selection of targets for the Royal Saudi Air Force; more than 100 Saudi pilots have also been trained at RAF airbases in Britain during the past decade alone, with both government policies remaining in place since Boris Johnson entered Downing Street in July 2019, alongside the continued sale of British weapons to the oil-rich desert kingdom.

This support of Riyadh by the UK helps to fulfil a geopolitical ambition that London shares with the United States - the containment of Iran within the region; a former British and US ally, until the 1979 Islamic Revolution seen the US-Anglo backed Shah being deposed and subsequently replaced by the anti-Western Ayatollah Khomeini, with Tehran having remained a steadfast foe of the US-NATO hegemony ever since.

The role of the Islamic Republic is relevant to the Yemeni conflict, with the initial fighting having begun in March 2015 when the Houthi Ansarallah movement, long accused of being backed by Tehran, seized the capital Sana’a; forcing Saudi Arabia’s favoured Presidential candidate Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi into exile, and Riyadh subsequently launching a US-Anglo backed air campaign in a bid to restore him to power.

US and British support for this Saudi-led air campaign, and the atrocities it has resulted in, has led to a widespread media whitewash in the West, however; something that has been never been more apparent than in the past week, when the hospitalisation of Boris Johnson – himself instrumental in the conflict for the past several years – has garnered more sympathetic media attention than what has now amounted to a modern-day genocide in Yemen.

*(Top image: UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson ‘Claps for our Carers’ outside 11 Downing Street.

Credit: Pippa Fowles/ No 10 Downing Street/ Flickr

Original Article Source: American Herald Tribune | Published on Friday, 10 April 2020 01:38 (about 1448 days ago)