Welcome to pushback. I'm Aaron Mate. In his first major foreign policy address, President

Joe Biden signaled that he would end U.S. support for the Saudi-led war on Yemen.

This war has to end. And to underscore our commitment, we're ending all American support for offensive operations

in the war in Yemen, including relevant arms sales.

But if you listen closely to Joe Biden's remarks, you'll notice some qualifiers.

He talked about ending support for offensive operations in Yemen

and also pledged to suspend only relevant arms sales

to Saudi Arabia.

So does that leave room for the Saudi-led genocide campaign

in Yemen to continue? Well, joining me is Issa Blumi. He is associate professor

at Stockholm University, author of destroying Yemen, what chaos in Arabia tells us about the world.

Professor Blumi, welcome to pushback. Thank you for having me. What do you make of Biden's

announcement?

Your introduction of the announcement, I think, is quite clairvoyant.

You certainly know how to aim for some of the major weaknesses and indeed areas of concern for this gesture, which in many ways is a gesture towards a constituency

that expects certain kinds of changes,

presumably changes to a Trump policy,

where if we actually think about it in other terms,

it's actually a reflection of the changing dynamics on the ground,

which has forced an American policy that continues back to the Obama administration to actually

change. And what we're beginning to see is with the arrival of the old guard from the

period of the actual beginning of this war in 2014, 2015,

...