Saudi arabia

An executive in charge of a security company based in Arkansas has given the New York Times a document confirming that they trained four members of Saudi Arabia’s so-called Tiger Squad, responsible for murdering the dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi. As has now been established by several different investigations, Khashoggi was lured to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, injected with a drug — perhaps morphine — and suffocated with a plastic bag, his body then cut into pieces, apparently on the Saudi deputy consul’s desk. This latest information raises the question of what the US might have known about the Tiger Squad and its operations. Could the US intelligence agencies have warned Khashoggi not to go to Istanbul?

A few weeks ago, the Saudi human rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul was summoned to the offices of the General Directorate of Investigation at the Interior Ministry in Riyadh. Ostensibly, the Saudi secret police — the Mabahith — simply wanted to tell her that her appeal against her conviction for ‘treason and terrorism’ had been turned down. But her brother, Walid told me it was really a warning: Keep quiet, we’re watching you; the Americans may have got you out of prison; we can send you back whenever we want. She has been out of prison since February, serving the rest of her sentence on probation. Though aged 31, her long black hair is now streaked with gray, the outward sign perhaps of what her family say was an attempt to ‘break’ her in prison.

On September 15, representatives from the oil-rich Kingdom of Bahrain will meet Israeli leaders at the White House to sign a historic peace deal. It will normalize relations between the Muslim state and the Jewish one, not long after the United Arab Emirates concluded a similar pact. Expect more such 'normalization deals'. They supplement other White House initiatives, such as the deal it brokered between Serbia and Kosovo, which includes both countries establishing closer relations with Israel. The deals are significant for several reasons. First, they represent a common regional front against the Iranian threat, which has been developing beneath the surface for some time.

American alliances and security commitments tend to live on long after the world has changed. Many of our far flung military bases are legacies of a Cold War that ended decades ago. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Nato alliance became all but obsolete, so it eagerly embraced conflicts in the Balkans, Libya, Syria and other locations far from the Central European theater it was originally designed to protect. However, none of these holdover security commitments seem as absurd as US military operations in the Persian Gulf during a COVID-19 oil market.As recently as last month, the United States was keeping two aircraft carrier battle groups deployed near the Persian Gulf.

Observing the rocky relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia is like watching two men balancing on a log in the middle of a fast-flowing river. Even when both manage to get what appears to be a secure foothold, you know it is only a matter of time before they go hurtling back into the water. The latest fall out between the two countries centers on the Saudi Air Force's Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, who last week murdered three sailors and wounded eight others at Pensacola navy base before being shot dead himself. Amid initial reports that he may have acted in conjunction with a number of other Saudis, wild analogies were quickly drawn with the September 11 attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, carried out by mostly Saudi hijackers.

It fell under the radar when it was announced, but a new project with some major names from the political right have come together to fight fraud and corruption in the Middle East at a pivotal time for US relations in the tumultuous region. Launched last month at the National Press Club in Washington, the Global Justice Foundation includes former Clinton-era independent counsel Kenneth Starr and Sidney Powell, a former federal prosecutor who has been outspoken in calling out corruption in the Deep State’s war against President Donald Trump. The first case the group has highlighted is Tameer Holding, which they claim is among the largest-ever cases of real estate fraud in the Middle East.

It’s not every day that global diplomat and ex-Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt makes a fool of himself on Twitter. On some days, Carl’s too busy to tweet. But on Friday, the Stockholm speculator went full wag-the-dog. https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/1139117308838891520 ‘Are there state or non-state actors that have an interest in provoking a conflict between Tehran and the US? It is difficult to see any other motive behind the tanker attack.

On Monday, Sen. Bernie Sanders circulated an open letter, calling on Congress to override last week’s presidential veto of a bill demanding a halt to US participation in Yemen’s civil war. The bipartisan bill was the first time Congress invoked the 1973 War Powers Resolution to check presidential foreign policy. Amid the president’s myriad other current problems, a potential veto override could be a chance to rub salt in the wounds. The issue of Yemen, then, will linger. Was Yemen worth the veto? The war, occurring the most secluded and oil-poor corner of the Arabian Peninsula, seems, to many, tangential to American interests.

Freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar has received a lot of attention after she claimed that the relationship between the United States and Israel was ‘all about the Benjamins’ and that Israel supporters promote ‘allegiance to a foreign country.’ Omar apologized for her remarks, then doubled-down on them a few weeks later. The House proposed a toothless condemnation of anti-Semitism, then settled on a meaningless resolution condemning hate. While many have pointed out the dangerous insinuations behind Omar’s remarks, the nut of her accusation has remained more or less unexamined: do foreign nations and their money influence our policy, and is our foreign policy unduly influenced by money from Israel and Jews?