Sputnik News- US moves to expand military support for Saudi and Gulf Arab Emirate forces carrying out air strikes against Houthi rebels could topple Yemen into a famine threatening millions of lives, analysts told Sputnik.

US and Saudi support of the Sanaa government’s efforts to cut off al-Hudaydah, the fourth largest city in Yemen with a population of 400,000 could have rapid and catastrophic consequences, policy director at Just Foreign Policy, Dr. Robert Naiman, told Sputnik.

“The key short-term danger is that US support of the Saudi assault and blockade on Hudaydah will be the thing that tips Yemen into famine — as former US officials have warned,” he said.

According to published reports, US Secretary of Defense James Mattis was a hardline hawk on the issue urging stronger US military support for the Saudis and increased Saudi-led coalition bombing against the Houthis, Naiman noted.

“The Trump Administration has been divided on whether to go forward with what Mattis wants. A bipartisan group of members of Congress is weighing in on the side of the Trump administration people who are skeptical [about increased US involvement],” he said.

Trump campaigned successful in 2016 on ending US widespread involvement in wars across the Middle East and elsewhere. However, Trump also pledged to intensify the fight to destroy Daesh.

California State University Professor Emeritus of Political Science Beau Grosscup told SputnikTrump’s determination to escalate the war in Yemen revealed the confusion of his policymaking and strategy.

Recent developments provided “further evidence of the contradictory  nature of US policy: Support Sunni-Saudi-terrorism in Yemen, while fighting alongside Shi’a Iran [groups] in Iraq,” he said.

Trump, like President Barack Obama before him was passively accepting whatever the Saudis and his own most hawkish generals demanded of him, regardless of the risk or cost, Grosscup pointed out.

“It is the cornerstone of US War of Terror. In terms of US policy toward Saudi-Arabia: ask and you shall receive and even if you don't ask, we will provide,” he said.

Grosscup condemned this approach as already morally and politically bankrupt and certain to provoke and motivate a new wave of extremists to strike back at the United States and its allies.

“The very real danger is more future reminders that revenge is not a one way street by means of terrorist attacks… against US and the other industrial capitalist perpetrators of state terrorism who are betting they can win a war of attrition by means of their technological superiority,” he said.