While President Biden is expected to reevaluate the US-Saudi relationship, Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister said Riyadh is optimistic about the new administration.

“We are optimistic of having excellent ties with the US under a Biden administration,” Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan said in an interview with Al-Arabiya on Thursday.

Biden has said he will end US support for the Saudis war in Yemen, something Antony Blinken, the secretary of state nominee, reiterated during Tuesday’s Senate confirmation hearings. But Prince Faisal seems to think Biden will continue support for the brutal war.

“The Biden administration will see that we have common goals with regards to the situation in Yemen,” he said, adding that the Trump administration’s decision to designate Yemen’s Houthis as a terror organization was justified.

Early in the Saudi-led invasion of Yemen, it was decided, mostly by the Saudis, that reports of civilian casualties could be internally investigated, again mostly by the Saudis. That’s what they’ve done since.

Typical of the program, officials reported on their inquiry into incidents this summer in which Saudi warplanes killed a number of Yemeni children in Jawf Province, and also attacked a water truck.

Declaring all the matters “refuted,” the reports seemed to rest on the strategy of just reiterating official reports of what happened, declaring now that this is what happened so alternate reports with casualties must be wrong.

The U.S. Department of Defense announced on January 15 that it was changing its command structure to move Israel from the European Command, or EUCOM, to Central Command, or CENTCOM, which covers the Middle East, Central Asia, and parts of South Asia. The reticence of many Arab and Central Asian countries to work with Israel necessitated the awkward assignment of Israel outside its geographic location, but the rapprochement between Israel and several Arab and Muslim states changed that calculus.

The change is significant, as is the timing, coming just days before the end of the Trump administration. President Biden is not going to reverse this change, but it will present him some significant complications.

In October 2018, the world learned of the brutal murder and dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

Khashoggi had been a government insider in his home country of Saudi Arabia, but his relationship with the ruling family—and particularly Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman—soured as Khashoggi became an influential advocate for free speech and human rights within the kingdom. In September 2017, fearing retaliation, he fled to the United States.

In 2018, Khashoggi walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, to obtain marriage papers and was ambushed by a team of operatives allegedly deployed by Prince Mohammed. As Khashoggi's fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, waited outside for him to return, the Saudi team went to work.

"The global response, the U.S. response, the U.N. response, is basically 'bad boy, we're gonna let you get away with this one,'" says Bryan Fogel, the Oscar-winning filmmaker behind the 2017 Netflix documentary Icarus.

Bryan Fogel made the investigative documentary "The Dissident" to bring to light alleged free-speech suppression efforts by the Saudi government.

Now his film could be a target of the very forces he seeks to expose.

"The Dissident" saw as many as 500 low audience scores out of 2,300 flood the popular film-rating site Rotten Tomatoes on Jan. 12, filmmakers said, an act they believe came from trolls operating on behalf of the Saudi government who wish to create a false sense of dissatisfaction. The movie's approval rating soon plummeted from above 95% to 68%.

A similar dynamic has also appeared to unfold on the movie site IMDb, which has seen 1,175 one-star reviews flood the site since Saturday. In the previous month, the movie rarely collected more than a few dozen such scores in a given day; many more users gave it the highest rating.

Five people who committed crimes in Saudi Arabia as minors have yet to have their death sentences revoked, according to two rights groups, nine months after the kingdom’s Human Rights Commission (HRC) announced an end to capital punishment for juvenile offenders.

The state-backed HRC in April cited a March royal decree by King Salman stipulating that individuals sentenced to death for crimes committed while minors will no longer face execution and would instead serve prison terms of up to 10 years in juvenile detention centers.

The statement did not specify a timeline, but in October, in response to a report by Human Rights Watch (HRW), it said the decree had come into force immediately upon announcement.

Omar Abdulaziz remembers the phone call he received a few months ago. It was from an officer of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and it came with a message of stern warning for the Saudi dissident.

“They said, don’t ever post on social media where you’ll be,” he recalled. “We may not be able to protect you.”

Saudi Arabia has rung in the new year in a familiar way, with an airstrike targeting a large gathering of civilians at a wedding ceremony in Yemen. On new year’s night, at least five civilians were killed when Saudi-backed militants launched artillery rounds at a wedding ceremony in the populated al-Hawk area in the strategic port city of Hodeida.

Developments taking place across the Middle East are driving the reality home in Yemen that 2021 is unlikely to bring about an end to Saudi Arabia’s nearly six-year-long war on their country. Signs of escalation are beginning to surface gradually in the Yemeni interior and along the Red Sea in the wake of the wave of normalization between the Gulf states and Tel Aviv.

Experts on the adverse effects of the military-industrial complex on Wednesday blasted a plan by the Trump administration to sell nearly half a billion dollars worth of advanced U.S. bombs to Saudi Arabia, which for over five years has been leading an airstrike campaign and starvation blockade that have added tens of thousands of civilian deaths to the already staggering toll in Yemen’s ongoing civil war.

Bloomberg reports the US State Department has notified Congress of its intention to license the sale of some 7,500 Raytheon Paveway precision-guided, air-to-ground munitions valued at $478 million to the kingdom, despite its status as one of the world’s worst human rights violators and prolific perpetrator of U.S.-backed war crimes in Yemen.

If the license is approved, Raytheon will have a green light to sell the arms directly to the Saudi regime.

Prominent Saudi women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul, 31, was convicted by a Saudi court on Monday on charges which include seeking to change the Saudi political system and harming national security. Here are some details about al-Hathloul, who has been detained since 2018.

* Hathloul rose to prominence in 2013 when she began publicly campaigning for women’s right to drive in Saudi Arabia.

She was arrested for the first time in 2014 while attempting to drive across the border from the United Arab Emirates - where she had a valid driver’s licence - to Saudi Arabia. She spent 73 days in a women’s detention facility, an experience she later said helped shape her campaigning against the kingdom’s male guardianship system.

A Saudi terrorism court on Monday sentenced prominent women's rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul to five years and eight months in prison, in a case that has drawn international criticism from rights groups and governments.

The Specialised Criminal Court suspended two years and 10 months of her sentence "if she does not commit any crime" within the next three years, local media reported.

The Riyadh court convicted the 31-year-old under acts that fall under a Saudi law on combating and financing terrorism.

Riyadh has sealed its borders for all passenger travel for at least a week, suspending international flights as well as entry to sea and land ports over a mutant Covid-19 variant that was first discovered in the UK.

With a growing number of European countries locking out travel from the UK, Saudi Arabia has pulled all the stops in its effort to curb the spread of the new strain of the coronavirus, imposing a sweeping ban on all commercial travel, Saudi Press Agency reported on Sunday, citing an ”official source” with the country’s Interior Ministry.

The U.S. government is weighing a request to declare Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman immune from a federal lawsuit accusing him of targeting for assassination a former top intelligence officer who could disclose damaging secrets about the prince’s ascent to power, according to legal documents related to the case.

The Saudi government has asked to shield the prince from liability in response to a complaint brought by Saad Aljabri, a former Saudi counterterrorism leader and longtime U.S. intelligence ally now living in exile in Canada.

Hatice Cengiz, the fiancée of Washington Post columnist and Saudi national Jamal Khashoggi, is urging US President-elect Joe Biden to fulfill his campaign promise for accountability by releasing the CIA's classified intelligence assessment on the journalist's 2018 assassination inside Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul.

"I am calling on the president-elect to release the CIA's assessment and evidence. It will greatly assist in uncovering the truth about who is responsible for Jamal's murder," Cengiz told The Guardian in a report published Friday. She had waited outside while Khashoggi went into the consulate for paperwork for their planned marriage.

The state prosecutor’s office in Saudi Arabia is seeking the maximum possible jail sentence for the women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul, raising the possibility that the campaigner could face 20 years behind bars after a verdict in her case is announced next week.

In a hearing on Wednesday at Saudi Arabia’s notorious terrorism court, the judge said he would deliver a verdict and possible sentencing in the case on Monday, said Hathloul’s sister Lina, who also shared a copy of the prosecution’s indictment with the Guardian.

Later on Wednesday night, however, Loujain’s parents, who act as her legal team, received a text message summoning them to Riyadh’s criminal court on Thursday morning. It is not yet clear what this development means for Hathloul’s case, which was transferred from the criminal court to the terrorism court last month.

Workers from Saudi Arabia's largest marine construction company have gone on strike after not receiving their salaries for the last ten months, forcing some to go hungry and beg for food.

The Huta Marine group employs at least 6,000 people who work in Saudi Arabia from around the world, according to the company's website.

Footage posted online showed dozens of mostly foreign workers from South Asia and East Africa protesting outside Huta's head office in the coastal city of Jeddah.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is on a hiring spree for lobbyists as President-elect Joe Biden, who has signaled that he will take a tougher stance with the nation, prepares to take office.

With the potential for a more turbulent relationship with the U.S., Saudi Arabia has been hiring some lobbyists with ties to Republican congressional leaders.

These lobbyists will potentially have more success engaging with GOP lawmakers in the new Congress instead of Democrats or Biden’s administration. Republicans made gains in the House of Representatives during the 2020 election and could have a slight edge in the Senate if they win one of the seats up for grabs in two Georgia runoffs set for early next month.

Biden told the Council on Foreign Relations last year during the Democratic primary that he would scale back U.S. support for Saudi Arabia on key issues.

A series of unfortunate events linked to the Saudi invasion in Yemen continues to pursue the Kingdom.

On December 14, an explosion hit the Singapore-flagged BW Rhine, a chemical tanker hauling gasoline, off the Saudi port city of Jeddah, which is also known as the distribution center for oil giant SaudiAramco. The BW Group said that the explosion erupted after the Singapore-flagged BW Rhine was hit by “an external source”, but all 22 sailors on board received no injures. Later, Saudi media claimed that the explosion was caused by an attack with a water-born improvised explosive device. At the time of the attack, the ship was carrying more than 60,000 metric tons of gasoline from the Aramco refinery at Yanbu.

Saudi Arabia has launched a new purported anti-corruption crackdown resembling the 2017 campaign, sparking further terror in the kingdom.

Reports say the new crackdown, which has targeted top-ranking military officials as well as low-key municipal, health and environment officials, aims to tighten Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS)’s grip on power.

The drive emphasizes that "there is only one sheriff in town", French news agency AFP quoted an observer in Saudi Arabia as saying.

The crackdown is widely dubbed as a "mini Ritz" operation, a reference to the November 2017 clampdown that saw princes and tycoons rounded up and detained at the luxury Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh over similar corruption charges.

The detentions had been ordered by Saudi Arabia’s so-called Anti-Corruption Committee headed by bin Salman in a crackdown widely believed to be aimed at consolidating his power.

Before the horrific murder of Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul very few people had ever heard of the Firqat el-Nemir, which translates into English as The Tiger Squad.

The squad is said to comprise 50 operatives, the best recruits from different branches of the kingdom's security services who have one thing in common: blind loyalty to their leader, the Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammad bin Salman.

The Tiger Squad has one major mission: Eliminating Saudi dissidents, at home and abroad, in such a way that it would go unnoticed by the media and the international community.

However, the Khashoggi case was a disaster for the group.

As President-elect Biden begins to engage the world, one of his most challenging relationships will be with Saudi Arabia. The oil kingdom and ally against Iran has a dismal record on human rights even in the United States. Case in point, 15-year-old Fallon Smart of Portland, Oregon. She was killed in a hit and run by a Saudi student who vanished before trial. He's among many Saudis accused of serious crimes in the U.S. who mysteriously disappear. Their victims include Fawn Lengvenis, the mother of Fallon Smart. She told us about the day in 2016 that she drove to pick up her daughter at a shop. Fallon only had to cross two-lane Hawthorne Street to reach her mother and two siblings in their car. Fawn Lengvenis waved to her daughter, lost sight of her, and realized something was wrong.

A court in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday sentenced Walid Fitaihi, a doctor who holds dual American and Saudi nationality, to six years in prison on charges that included illegally obtaining U.S. citizenship, a person close to his family said.

The sentencing came despite the Trump administration's repeated appeals to the Saudi government to release Fitaihi, who founded a prominent hospital in the kingdom.

He was arrested in November 2017 as Saudi authorities detained hundreds of business executives, government officials and royal family members. ­Fitaihi was held for nearly two years without trial and tortured while in custody, he told family members.

When the Obama Administration reached the P5+1 nuclear deal with Iran, among the biggest opponents was Saudi Arabia. With President-elect Joe Biden expected to rejoin the process, the Saudis are stepping forward again.

Saudi FM Prince Faisal bin Farhan is warning that any move to rejoin the Iran deal could only be sustainable if Biden consults with the Gulf Arab states first. He added he is “ready to engage” when Biden takes office.

The incoming administration hasn’t commented, but there are reasons to doubt this happening. The talks would be high risk for little reward, as the Saudis are almost certain to remain opposed to the deal, and the US oughtn’t give the impression they need a Saudi imprimatur to make the move.

Saudi planes bombing Yemen received 2,323 spare parts from the UK military last year, according to the government’s annual report into strategic export controls, which was published four months later than usual due to the coronavirus.

The long-awaited report shows that supplies to Saudi Arabia’s air force and navy continued despite a court order in June 2019 banning new export licences for use in Yemen.

Tornado spare parts were exempt from the arms embargo because they were covered by licences issued prior to the court ruling. The equipment was diverted from the Royal Air Force (RAF), which stopped flying its own Tornado fleet in March 2019.

Saudi Arabia continues to use Tornados on combat operations in Yemen, having purchased the planes from BAE Systems in the 1980s and 1990s under the notoriously corrupt Al-Yamamah series of arms deals.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said this week that every terrorist group in our region received its teachings in religious schools funded by Saudi Arabia. Specifically he charged "Every terrorist group in our region has graduated from Saudi-funded Madrassas".

Khatibzadeh tweeted on Thursday "No amount of Saudi confusion can hide this ugly reality." He added in another statement about Saudi Arabia, "Their atrocities in Yemen, and the infamous killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi are just some of their other stunts, and the latest of this is their standing with the state sponsor of terror against the Palestinians."

"The Saudis must change course," he continued. "The policy of inflaming tensions can no longer be defended."

After President-Elect Joe Biden told The New York Times this past week that should Iran return to compliance to the 2015 nuclear deal (particularly caps placed on enrichment) he'll return the US to participation in the Obama-era agreement, the Saudis have registered their alarm.

Saudi Arabia's top diplomat said Saturday that Washington must consult the kingdom and Gulf state allies before moving forward with reentry to the JCPOA. The Sunni kingdom sees Shia Iran as its number one threat and enemy in the region.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan told AFP, "Primarily what we expect is that we are fully consulted, that we and our other regional friends are fully consulted in what goes on vis a vis the negotiations with Iran."

Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister has said Saudi Arabia would only normalise ties with Israel within a plan that would deliver a sovereign state to Palestinians, quashing speculation that the kingdom may soon become the latest Arab country to establish full diplomatic relations with Israel.

“What we need to make [normalisation of ties with Israel] happen is a peace deal that delivers a Palestinian state with dignity and with a workable sovereignty that Palestinians can accept,” Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud said on Friday.

Mohammed bin Nayef, the detained former Saudi crown prince, has been put at risk by a malicious social media campaign accusing him of plotting a coup, lawyers acting for him have warned.

The prince's lawyers on Friday told the Guardian they had written to YouTube to ask the site to take down a video in which it was claimed that Mohammed bin Nayef had been involved in a plot to overthrow his powerful replacement, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

The video claims that bin Nayef - who has been detained since March 2020 - is in fact at large, and implies he is conspiring with US President-elect Joe Biden to undermine Saudi Arabia's government.

While the administration of Donald Trump readies its exit from the White House and the Middle East, Saudi Arabia’s use of American diplomatic cover and weapons alike has taken on a fevered pace as the Kingdom deepens the tragedy it has afflicted upon Yemen, where millions of forgotten people are struggling against a cold winter, starvation, epidemics, and the worst blockade in the modern era.

Since November 3, 2020, when the fifty-ninth quadrennial presidential election began followed by the widespread controversy, lawsuits, and recounts across several states, the oil-riched Kingdom has waged a scorched-earth campaign against the Yemeni districts of Marib and Al-Jawf, as well as border areas in Sana’a, Sadaa, Hajjah, Amran, and Hodeida.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman says Saudi Arabia has to revisit its decades-old policy of fueling tensions throughout the region.

Tweeting on Thursday, Saeed Khatibzadeh reminded that “for decades, Wahabism—nurtured by colonial powers—has been the source of bigotry, hatred & terrorism in our region — and beyond.”

1/ For decades, Wahabism—nurtured by colonial powers—has been *the* source of bigotry, hatred & terrorism in our region — and beyond.

Fact: Every terrorist group in our region has graduated from Saudi-funded Madrassas.

No amount of Saudi obfuscation can hide this ugly reality.

— Saeed Khatibzadeh (@SKhatibzadeh) December 3, 2020

Yemen’s Foreign Minister Hisham Sharaf Abdullah says Saudi Arabia has been desperately attempting to evade responsibility for an unfolding catastrophe against the backdrop of its campaign of death and destruction against Yemen.

Abdullah said in a statement on Monday that authorities in Riyadh must be held accountable for causing the worst humanitarian crisis in recent history.

The minister also accused the Saudi regime of playing a game of deception and hindering any effort sponsored by the United Nations on achieving a humanitarian ceasefire.

Elsewhere in his remarks, the Yemeni minister called on the international community to pressure the Saudi-led coalition into ending its onslaught and blockade on the Yemeni people.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman reportedly pulled back from a normalization deal with Israel due to US President-elect Joe Biden’s election win this month and the prince’s desire to build ties with the incoming administration.

Bin Salman, son of the 84-year-old King Salman and the kingdom’s de facto ruler, is reluctant “to take the step now, when he could use a deal later to help cement relations with the new American leader,” the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Friday.

The US-backed Saudi-led coalition bombed several targets inside Yemen on Friday. According to AFP, airstrikes targeted Houthi camps in Yemen’s capital Sanaa, the city of Amran, which is just north of Sanaa, and the western port city of Hodeidah.

According to Iran’s Press TV, one civilian was killed in the strikes, and another four were wounded in Sanaa. Yemen’s Ministry of Health said most of the airstrikes targeted residential areas, a common tactic for the Saudi-led coalition.

The airstrikes came after the Houthis launched a missile that hit a Saudi oil facility in Jeddah. Most media outlets framed the Saudi strikes as retaliation, but the Houthis and Yemen have been under a US-backed Saudi-led siege since 2015.

Saudi Arabian’s cabinet said on Tuesday that Houthi attacks committed against vital installations target the backbone of the global economy and the security of its supplies, state news agency (SPA) reported.

On Monday, a fire broke out in a fuel tank at a petroleum products distribution station in the Saudi city of Jeddah as a result of a Houthi attack, SPA had reported.

The cabinet also stressed the importance of facing up to “such sabotage and terrorist acts and the parties behind them.”

Saudi Arabia's state oil company Saudi Aramco says a Yemeni missile attack that targeted its distribution facility in the city of Jeddah on Monday caused major damage.

Abdullah al-Ghamdi, the manager of the North Jeddah Bulk Plant, told reporters during a tour of the facility on Tuesday that one of the 13 tanks used for diesel oil, gasoline, and jet fuel at the facility had been damaged and was out of service.

"This tank, as you see, is hit from the top side... there is major damage to the roof itself, it's a big hole that is almost two meters by two meters," he said.

Ghamdi added that the attack triggered an explosion and fire, "but it was controlled." He said the Monday attack had caused no casualties.

The Yemeni Houthis have fired their new cruise missile, the Quds-2, at a Saudi Aramco oil company distribution station in the kingdom’s city of Jeddah, the group’s media news wing announced early on November 23. A spokesperson for the Armed Forces of the Houthi-led government, Yahya Sarea, said foreign companies and residents in Saudi Arabia should stay away from the military and oil infrastructure of Saudi Arabia as “operations will continue”. He emphasized that the missile precisely hit its target causing notable damage.

European intelligence officials are alarmed about the possibility of military action towards Iran in the waning days of the Trump administration.? Concern that Trump — who has pushed for maximum pressure on Iran — or a combination of Israel or Saudi Arabia creating a military confrontation in the waning days of the administration has been a concern for over a week, according to three European intelligence officials who spoke with Insider.

The news that last week the president requested a list of military options from his military and diplomatic advisors has sent these concerns into overdrive.?

Saudi Arabia is continuing to try to sort out some progress on peace in Yemen, and is now offering to endorse a UN-backed ceasefire if the Houthis agree to a buffer zone at the Yemen-Saudi border.

Yemen and the Saudis have fought along the border for years, and it’s not surprising that the Saudis would want to at least preclude more such fighting as part of the peace process. They may need to hurry, however.

That’s because the Trump Administration is reportedly planning to declare the Houthis “terrorists” for nominally having ties with Iran, and once they do so, it will virtually forbid further peace talks going forward.

Saudi human rights activists told British MPs on Tuesday that political prisoners in Saudi Arabia face dire conditons in detention, including rape, torture and murder.

Speaking at a fact-finding panel investigating the detention conditions of two senior Saudi princes - former Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef and Prince Ahmed bin Abdulaziz - the activists detailed a litany of abuses carried out against detainees, with little oversight or transparency.

One panelist said they had received reports of detainees being "sodomised to death" in prisons.

Alia al-Hathloul, sister of imprisoned women's rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul, said she and her family have had no updates on her sister's health condition since she began a hunger strike on 28 October.

A fire has broken out near a floating platform of an oil distribution station in Saudi Arabia’s southern region of Jizan, after Saudi forces purportedly destroyed two explosive-laden boats believed to have been launched by Yemeni fighters.

The Saudi Ministry of Energy, in a statement carried by the state-run Saudi Press Agency (SPA), said on Friday it dealt with the blaze.

Other than the damage caused by the fire to the floating hoses in the platform, no injuries were reported, the statement added.

The purported bomb-laden boat attack came as the Saudi-led coalition involved in a devastating military campaign against Yemen claimed on Thursday that it had thwarted a Yemeni drone strike.

Nine months on from Saudi Arabia’s second major oil price war in the last five years, more negative consequences are manifesting themselves. Aside from the irrevocably damaged core relationship with the U.S., the permanent distrust of international investors, and the further alienation of many of its fellow OPEC members, Saudi Arabia is now beginning to discover the true depth and breadth of damage that it has done to its own economy, which will endure for many years to come.

Pushed together by repression, disparate groups from Saudi Arabia’s long-fractured civil society are uniting in opposition to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. And forced to act in exile, the dissidents are set to prove that the road to change in Riyadh runs through Washington.

An advocacy group founded by slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi filed a suit this week against the crown prince in U.S. federal court, even as Saudi activists – united in a new party – began mapping out their goal of a democratically elected government.

These were among the first in a flurry of moves designed to damage Saudi Arabia’s ties with the West and provide a platform for the voices of the kingdom’s increasingly frustrated citizens.

Forty-five American lawmakers have urged the US government to boycott next month's G20 summit in Riyadh unless Saudi authorities address key human rights concerns, according to correspondence released Wednesday.

The letter from US Congress members to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo comes after European lawmakers passed a resolution this month calling for the European Union to downgrade its attendance at the summit, also over human rights.

The developments are a source of embarrassment for the kingdom, the current G20 president, as it gears up to host world leaders next month at what is widely seen as a crucial event for Saudi international diplomacy.

Saudi detainees accused of committing crimes while children are still at risk of execution, despite reforms announced earlier this year scrapping capital punishment for minors, human rights advocates have warned.

In April, King Salman issued a royal decree ending death sentences for crimes committed as a minor, instead making the maximum sentence 10 years in a juvenile detention facility.

However, there was no indication of when the decree would take effect, and rights groups have this week warned several youths still face the death penalty.

Whatever the theoretical value of the United Nations system, its agencies are a source of frequent farce. Among the worst performers is the Human Rights Council. Nominally devoted to promoting people’s basic rights, the body often protects the world’s worst human rights abusers instead. Indeed, authoritarian governments routinely sit on the 47-member body.

Over the years 117 countries have served on the Council. Among the more vicious oppressors: Bahrain, China, Burundi, Vietnam, Sudan, United Arab Emirates, Russia, Algeria, Kazakhstan, Eritrea, Cuba, Egypt, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia.

A Saudi pro-democracy campaigner has reportedly suffered a life-threatening stroke after being deliberately poisoned by regime authorities at a maximum-security prison south of the capital Riyadh.

The Prisoners of Conscience, an independent non-governmental organization advocating human rights in Saudi Arabia, announced in a post on its official Twitter page that Sheikh Muhammad bin Dalim al-Qahtani, a leader of the Umma Islamic Party, suffered the serious medical condition after he was poisoned on purpose at al-Ha'ir Prison.

The post added that Qahtani has been transferred to al-Iman Hospital in Riyadh, and is apparently in critical condition.

Saudi Arabia’s al-Huwaitat tribe has sent an urgent communication to the United Nations calling for an investigation into allegations of forced displacement and abuse by Saudi authorities.

The request, submitted in late September, comes after months of alleged harassment, arrests, and abductions by Saudi forces apparently due to the tribe’s refusal to relocate to facilitate the government’s NEOM mega-city project.

Will they or won't they? It's a question on a lot of people's minds in the Middle East right now.

Are Saudi Arabia's rulers, historically critics of Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians, finally edging closer to normalising relations with the country often dismissively referred to in the past by Arab media as "the Zionist entity"?

Prompting feverish speculation on social media has been the scathing set of interviews given to Al-Arabiya TV by former Saudi intelligence chief and longtime ambassador to Washington, Prince Bandar Bin Sultan al-Saud, who lambasted Palestinian leaders for criticising recent peace moves with Israel by Gulf Arab states.

"This low level of discourse is not what we expect from officials who seek to gain global support for their cause," said Prince Bandar in the three-part interview.

A Houthi court in Yemen has sentenced 10 people to death, including US President Donald Trump, Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz, and his son Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Arabi21 reported.

The Houthi-run Specialised Criminal Court in Saada ruled against the accused in absentia on Thursday, according to the Houthi-affiliated Saba agency.

The charges were made in the case of a 2019 airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition on a school bus in the town of Dhahyan which killed 51 civilians, including 40 children.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has in a controversial move praised what it called Saudi Arabia’s “humanitarian” role in Yemen, closing its eyes to years of atrocities committed by Riyadh and its allies against the civilian population there, leaving a large number of children dead, maimed and malnourished.

Executive Director of the world body Henrietta Fore, in a letter sent to the so-called King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center (KSRelief), lauded Saudi Arabia over what she described as the kingdom's “generous support” for the projects of the United Nations Humanitarian Response Plan in Yemen 2020.

Fore went on to say that UNICEF will use the financial support to help Yemeni children and their families in different fields, including health, nutrition, water, sanitation and education.

Ajlan al-Ajlan, the head of Saudi Arabia’s Chamber of Commerce, declared in a statement this weekend that a full boycott of all Turkish products was “the responsibility of every Saudi.”

Tensions between Turkey and Saudi Arabia have remained high since the killing of columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan — under whose command Turkey has become the world’s most prolific jailer of journalists after China — used Khashoggi’s killing at the hands of Saudi agents to declare himself a friend of the free press and demonize Riyadh, suggesting that the homicide was a direct order from “the highest levels of the Saudi government,” as he wrote in the Washington Post.

Dozens were reported killed over the past three days in central Yemen, according to various reports. The main fighting was in Maarib Province, where the Houthis are contesting the oil-producing areas, and Saudi-backed forces tried to push into the vital aid port of Hodeidah.

Government officials said at least 30 Houthis were killed in Maarib, and did not provide figures on Hodeidah, beyond one civilian being killed in the crossfire. Hodeidah is meant to be in a state of ceasefire, but government forces appear keen to contest that again.

Neither of these battles is likely to be hugely impactful on the Yemen War. Maarib is the most oil-rich part of Yemen, but that’s not saying much for one of the region’s poorest nations. Hodeidah has been a target several times but it would take a lot more fighting than is ongoing to contest control over it.

Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi was brutally murdered on October 2, 2018 by agents of Saudi Arabia’s despotic government, and the CIA concluded they killed him on direct orders from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS). Eight Saudi men have been convicted of Khashoggi’s murder by a Saudi court in what the Washington Post characterized as sham trials with no transparency. The higher ups who ordered the murder, including MBS, continue to escape responsibility.

Khashoggi’s assassination and dismemberment was so horrific and cold-blooded that it sparked worldwide public outrage. President Trump, however, stood by MBS, bragging to journalist Bob Woodward that he saved the prince’s “ass” and got “Congress to leave him alone.”

Turkey's Anadolu Agency has released gruesome never-before-seen footage related to journalist Jamal Khashoggi's brutal murder. It is the second anniversary of his killing at the hands of a hit team believed sent by crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018.

No less than 15 men were sent to kill one individual who ran afoul of MbS, which included a bone saw used to dismember his body after he entered the consulate to do paperwork related to his impending marriage, never to be seen again. Now for the first time police footage has been published of Turkish forensics investigators showing up to document what they found following the murder.

Hundreds of Sudanese forces have reportedly entered Saudi Arabia en route to Yemen contrary to an earlier announcement by the North African country about a drawdown of its personnel in the bloody Saudi war on the poorest Arabian Peninsula nation.

Citing private Saudi sources, the Middle East Eye news portal (MEE) reported on Friday that 1,018 Sudanese army officers and soldiers arrived in Saudi Arabia by boat on September 22 after passing through passport control in the southwestern city of Jizan.

Two Sudanese planes also carried Sudanese military personnel from Khartoum to Saudi Arabia's Najran airport the day before, according to one of the sources, who was speaking on condition of anonymity.

The first plane held 123 passengers and the second 128, the source said, adding that both planes later departed for Khartoum.

Iran has supplied Ansar Allah (also known as the Houthis) with technical expertise and know-how, a spokesman for the Iranian Armed Forces Brigadier General Abolfazl Shekarchi said on September 22. However, the general claimed that Yemeni forces “have learned how to produce missiles, drones and weapons in Yemen on their own” and Iran has no military presence in the region. Shekarchi described what Iran is doing across the region as “spiritual and advisory presence”.

“Countries of the resistance front have armies and forces themselves. We provide them with advisory help. In order to share our experience with the people of Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen, our skilled forces go there and assist them, but this is the people and armies of these countries who stand against the enemies in practice,” the general stated.

The "distressing" situation in Yemen is a result of choices made by "powerful countries and powerful people", according to a UN official.

Sir Mark Lowcock told Sky News "choices have been made to abandon these people".

He added that deciding not to fund the relief operation has been "one of the worst choices" made this year.

The country has been devastated by a conflict between Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi's administration and the Houthi armed movement since 2014 - both claim to form the official government.

Mr Hadi's government is supported by powerful countries, headed by Saudi Arabia, but also backed by the US, Britain and the United Arab Emirates.

The crisis has worsened due to coronavirus, with the UN saying more than 20 million people require urgent humanitarian assistance because of the ongoing conflict - almost half of them children.

Trump Administration officials have been saying this for weeks, but on Friday reiterated their intentions to try to enforce a UN Security Council resolution that includes broad sanctions against Iran. Officials say they expect every nation to comply.

The glaring problem with this is that the resolution doesn’t exist, at least not as an active resolution the US wants. The P5+1 nuclear deal gave the US the authority to reimpose sanctions on Iran, but the US had withdrawn from that pact years ago. Though the Trump Administration argued that didn’t matter, the UN has virtually unanimously rejected their interpretation, and rejected the UN Security Council resolution. The US believes the resolution becomes active Sunday, but the reality is it just doesn’t exist legally.

The Democrats are not serious to put down the US sales of weapons to the Saudis and to Israel and other countries, says J. Michael Springmann, a former US diplomat in Saudi Arabia.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s top aides have been questioned by Congress over President Donald Trump’s dismissal of a top administration official while he was investigating billions of dollars of arms sales to Saudi Arabia.

Top aides to Pompeo went before a congressional panel on Wednesday to defend Trump's decision to fire former Department of State Inspector General Steve Linick.

Springmann said, “There are two points to keep in mind when considering the House of Representatives' investigation of the firing of Steve Linick, the former State Department Inspector General, back in May of this year.”

State Department has come under fire for facilitating arms sales to the Saudis and suppressing evidence of legal issues raised by Yemen war.

A report from The New York Times revealed that some US officials are concerned that their role in facilitating arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, while ignoring the harm to civilians each country has caused in Yemen, could lead to their arrest overseas for war crimes. A Congressional hearing over these arms sales is set to take place on Wednesday.

The report said that officials from both the Obama administration and the Trump administration have considered hiring lawyers to discuss the possibility of being arrested while vacationing overseas.

The Times report reads: “No episode in recent American history compares to Yemen, legal scholars say, where the United States has provided material support over five years for actions that have caused the continuous killing of civilians.”

Saudi warplanes carried out at least 11 airstrikes against the Yemeni capital city of Sanaa, according to the Shi’ite Houthi movement. Strikes hit across the city, but the main target appeared to be the Sanaa airport.

There is as of yet no word on how much damage was caused, and no reports from either side mentioned casualties. It would be unusual for there not to be casualties in such a large city, but the airport has been closed by a fuel shortage for weeks anyhow.

The Saudis did not announce any specific goals for the attacks, but media reports attributed them to a recent increase in Houthi strikes on Saudi targets. The Houthis have claimed such strikes, though reports have not backed up many of them, and there seems to have been little hit in Saudi Arabia recently.

America’s post-9/11 wars have had disastrous consequences. They have been a geopolitical bust, fragmenting rather than eliminating terrorist groups, enhancing Iran’s influence, and destabilizing the Middle East. The humanitarian consequences have been even worse: thousands of Americans killed, tens of thousands wounded, hundreds of thousands of civilians killed, millions of people displaced, al-Qaeda in Iraq and the Islamic State loosed, and entire nations ravaged.

Saudi fighter pilots have carried out air strikes on target ranges in the UK as part of training exercises with the Royal Air Force, the Ministry of Defence has revealed.

Details about the training programme were revealed on Friday by Declassified UK which submitted a freedom of information request to the ministry asking it to release video footage of the air strikes.

However, the ministry refused the request on the grounds that “releasing of the recordings of air-to-ground training sorties could prejudice the effectiveness and capability of RAF and RSAF [Royal Saudi Air Force] tactics”.

Late on September 10, the Saudi capital of Riyadh came under a missile and drone attack from the Ansar Allah movement (more widely known as the Houthis).

The Yemeni missile and air forces, loyal to the Houthi government, announced that they struck a “high-value target” in Riyadh with a Zulfiqar ballistic missile and three Samad-3 suicide drones.

“The attacks are a response to the enemy’s permanent escalation and its continuing blockade against our country,” Brig. Gen. Yahya Sari, a spokesman for the Armed Forces of the Houthi government, said in a statement promising more attacks on Saudi Arabia if the Kingdom “continues its aggression and siege” on Yemen.

It was evident to anyone with even half a brain that the last Saudi-instigated oil price war would end in abject failure for the Saudis, just as the previous 2014-2016 effort did and for the very same reasons.

For Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS), one of the masterminds behind the oil war – the economic and political problems that his country now face appear to come a very distant second to preserving whatever he thinks is left of his own reputation, with the most obvious public manifestation of this being the aftermath of the internationally-shunned omni-shambolic initial public offering (IPO) for hydrocarbons giant, Saudi Aramco (Aramco). Consequently, in order to stand by one of the inducements required to inveigle anyone to buy the shares – in the triple-locked guaranteed dividend payout – swingeing cuts to key projects for Saudi Arabia are now being announced.

Nearly 3,500 children have been killed in Yemen since 2015, when a Saudi-led military coalition started a devastating war against the impoverished country, a human rights group says.

In a report, carried by Yemen’s Arabic-language al-Masirah television network, Yemen’s Human Rights Center said on Monday that some 7,200 Yemeni children were either killed or wounded in the imposed war.

Of these ill-fated children, 3,468 were killed, further said the report, which was titled “Childhood with the Color of Blood and the Smell of Death.”

Citing reports by Yemen’s Health Ministry and the country’s media, the center added that 91 percent of the dead were those who had lost their lives in ceaseless aerial attacks by the invaders.

Iran has identified the perpetrators of an act of sabotage at Natanz nuclear facility in the central part of the country in July, according to a spokesperson for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran. Behrouz Kamalvandi said that while the details of the act of sabotage are still being investigated, the security forces “have detected the agents [who committed the act of sabotage] as well as the motive, methods and manner of the sabotage.”

The AEOI for the first time described the July 2 incident at the Natanz nuclear facility as a sabotage attack on July 23, and since then pro-Iranian sources have repeatedly vowed to take revenge for the attack.

Meanwhile, Iran’s Defence Minister Amir Hatami announced that the country is working to expand its missile capabilities even further. In particular, the military is working on air-launched cruise missiles that would be able to hit targets in the range of up to 1,400km.

A clandestine Saudi nuclear programme, revealed by whistle-blowers, has been confirmed by satellite images showing a large compound, in a suspicious location in the middle of the desert, a checkpoint, towering security fences, a big building about 150 feet on a side and pools for the collection of uranium waste; a typical blueprint for yellow-cake mills.

In one of its latest reports, The Wall Street Journal, has uncovered a facility constructed in a remote area in Saudi Arabia for extracting uranium yellow-cake from uranium ore. Ironically, the facility is located near a solar-panel production area.

Such undeclared nuclear capabilities in the hands of the KSA are extremely worrying, in light of the abysmal Saudi human rights record, the last thing anyone would wish for is a nuclear armed KSA.

More than three years since the blockade of Qatar by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt. With no end in sight, the recent revelation of a Saudi-led, UAE-funded plot to invade neighboring Qatar in the early days of the blockade is indicative of high tensions among Washington's key Arab allies.

The Revelation

In early August, the American news publication Foreign Policy revealed in detail that King Salman of Saudi Arabia had called Donald Trump to get permission for invading Qatar on June 6, 2017, that is just one day after the blockade imposition.

Although the U.S. President had offered his full-throated support to the Saudi-led campaign, the military invasion was a flagrant violation of international law.

But it was, according to The Intercept, the efforts of Rex Tillerson, then U.S. Secretary of State that dissuaded the Saudis and their ilk from attacking Qatar; and it was exactly the same efforts that cost Tillerson his career.

Reports originating in the Turkish state media are claiming that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia are allowing Israel’s intelligence agencies growing access into Yemen, with the UAE in particular giving Israeli agents access to the strategic island of Socotra.

There is still not a lot of evidence of how far-reaching this is. One Socotra tribal elder was quoting in the media saying this is the case. Socotra’s tribes have been trying to build up opposition to the UAE’s assertion of control over the island during the ongoing Yemen War.

Socotra has regional strategic value, which is why the UAE wants a presence there, and presumably why Israel would also want a presence there. Couple this with the Israel-UAE peace, and the allegation practically writes itself.

Thousands of Africans have been trapped for months in horrifying detention centers in Saudi Arabia, driving many to commit suicide while others have died of heatstroke, according to a report. The Sunday Telegraph published cellphone images of shirtless, emaciated African men lying in tight rows on the floor in a bare room with barred windows.

One image showed a man who hanged himself from a window grate, while another showed what appeared to be a blanket-wrapped corpse in the middle of the room – a man the migrants say died of heatstroke.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has defended Washington’s arms sales to Saudi Arabia after a watchdog report said the State Department failed to “fully assess” the risk of civilian deaths in war-torn Yemen.

Pompeo said on Wednesday that his department “did everything by the book” in regards to arms sales to Riyadh in May 2019.

“I am proud of the work that my team did. We got a really good outcome. We prevented the loss of lives,” he claimed.

News / Foreign Policy
US Secretary of State Pompeo defends Saudi arms sales after damning watchdog report on Yemen
Thursday, 13 August 2020 9:24 AM [ Last Update: Thursday, 13 August 2020 11:05 AM ]
US Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) (L) talks with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) during a rally with fellow Democrats before voting on H.R. 1, or the People Act, on the East Steps of the US Capitol on March 08, 2019 in Washington, DC. (AFP photo)

Saudi Arabia has reportedly deployed nearly two dozen combat troops to a US-run military base in Syria’s oil-rich northeastern province of Hasakah as the Riyadh regime and some of its regional allies are vying with the United States to loot the natural resources of the war-ravaged country.

Lebanon’s Arabic-language al-Mayadeen television news network, citing an informed source, reported that 20 Saudi soldiers, led by an officer called Saud al-Joghaifi, arrived at the US base in the city of Shaddadi on Wednesday.

The source added that the Saudi troops were accompanied by a convoy of US-led forces from the coalition purportedly formed to fight the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group, which withdrew from Camp Taji, situated 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, earlier this week.

Saudi Arabia has reportedly deployed nearly two dozen combat troops to a US-run military base in Syria’s oil-rich northeastern province of Hasakah as the Riyadh regime and some of its regional allies are vying with the United States to loot the natural resources of the war-ravaged country.

Lebanon’s Arabic-language al-Mayadeen television news network, citing an informed source, reported that 20 Saudi soldiers, led by an officer called Saud al-Joghaifi, arrived at the US base in the city of Shaddadi on Wednesday.

The source added that the Saudi troops were accompanied by a convoy of US-led forces from the coalition purportedly formed to fight the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group, which withdrew from Camp Taji, situated 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, earlier this week.

A former Saudi intelligence official living in Toronto says his son-in-law has been detained overseas in retaliation for a lawsuit the official filed accusing the crown prince of sending a “hit squad” to kill him.

A statement issued on behalf of Saad Aljabri on Tuesday said Salem Almuzaini, Aljabri’s son-in-law, had been summoned Monday to Saudi state security offices, where he was arrested.

“His whereabouts are unknown,” the release states.

The development follows the alleged detainment by Saudi officials of two of Aljabri’s children, earlier this year.

Officials with the Saudi embassy in Washington, D.C., did not immediately respond to the Star’s request for comment.

Something wasn’t right about Captain Saud. Sitting on a fine-grained leather couch in the custom wood-paneled cabin of his Boeing 737-800 in Paris, he had the outward appearance of a pilot. His uniform was crisp, his demeanor confident and friendly. He cracked jokes and showed pictures of his children to staffers of the VIP he was supposed to fly to Cairo, a Saudi prince named Sultan bin Turki II.

But little things seemed off. One member of the prince’s entourage was a recreational pilot, and Saud couldn’t keep up with his small talk about 737 pilot training. The captain’s plane had a crew of 19, more than double the usual number of staffers. And the crew was all men, some a little burlier than you’d expect. Where were the leggy European blondes who were fixtures on Saudi Royal Court flights?

Then there was the watch. Saud was fascinated by the Breitling Emergency watch the prince’s companion wore. “I’ve never seen one of these,” he said, in perfect English.

The Saudi regime has issued a desperate call for the extension of a UN arms embargo against Iran only days after the UN Security Council said a resounding ‘No’ to a US resolution seeking an illegal extension of the embargo.

The cabinet, chaired by King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud on Tuesday, demanded the extension of the arms embargo on Iran, alleging that the removal of the sanctions will lead to “more destruction” and further fuel conflicts in the Middle East region.

It also pledged the kingdom’s support for all international measures that contribute to stopping Iran’s regional clout.

Following reports that this is a specific concern of Israel, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says he believes it is a “real risk” that Saudi Arabia will get nukes, and that the US views it as a “top priority” to try to prevent the Saudis from getting such arms.

Recent reports, all centering on the Israeli narrative, claim the Saudis are processing yellowcake uranium, and that they are getting secret help from China that could lead to the acquisition of nuclear arms in the future.

This is an unusual place for the administration to be in, as they general support arming the Saudis to the teeth, and Pompeo has repeatedly gone to bat for the idea that the Saudis need more arms for their “emergency” state. Those are US-made arms, of course.

Saudi Arabia said Wednesday it will not follow the United Arab Emirates in establishing diplomatic ties with Israel until the Jewish state has signed an internationally recognised peace accord with the Palestinians.

Israel concerned Saudis might get nuclear arms with 'China's help'

Following reports that this is a specific concern of Israel, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says he believes it is a “real risk” that Saudi Arabia will get nukes, and that the US views it as a “top priority” to try to prevent the Saudis from getting such arms.

Recent reports, all centering on the Israeli narrative, claim the Saudis are processing yellowcake uranium, and that they are getting secret help from China that could lead to the acquisition of nuclear arms in the future.

This is an unusual place for the administration to be in, as they general support arming the Saudis to the teeth, and Pompeo has repeatedly gone to bat for the idea that the Saudis need more arms for their “emergency” state. Those are US-made arms, of course.

As the steward of the two Muslim holy cities (Mecca & Medina) - cities where no non-Muslims are allowed - Saudi Arabia has an image to maintain as an ally in the regional struggle to support the Palestinians in their struggle against Israel. But in another sign of just how significant Jared Kushner's accomplishment actually was, it appears the desert petro-kingdom is finally ready to make an important step toward publicly accepting Israel as a neighbor and friend.

Low oil prices exacerbated by the spread of the new coronavirus pandemic, have inflicted a huge financial loss on Saudi Arabia and its biggest revenue generator, the state-run oil company Aramco.

In a Sunday statement, Aramco CEO Amin Nasser admitted the company had suffered bitterly as a result of recent developments in the international oil markets.

Revenues declared by Aramco for the three-month period to the end of June had been reduced $18.1 billion year on year to stand at only $6.6 billion.

That reflects a massive loss of 73 percent compared to the similar period last year.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) has been issued a summons by a US court for a lawsuit by a former top Saudi intelligence agent who was reportedly targeted in a foiled assassination attempt.

The US District Court for the District of Columbia issued the summons on Friday, a day after Saad al-Jabri filed the lawsuit accusing Prince Mohammed of sending a hit squad to Canada to try and kill him.

A summons is an official notice of a lawsuit, given to the person or persons being sued.

Late on Sunday evening, the Saudi Royal Court mourned Prince Bandar bin Saad bin Muhammad Al Saud, who died after a conflict with the disease, according to what close to him reported.

The late prince belongs to one of the branches of the Al Saud family, which includes tens of thousands of princes, and his full name is Bandar bin Saad bin Muhammad bin Abdulaziz bin Saud bin Faisal Al Saud.

This branch of the ruling family meets with the branch of King Abdulaziz, the founder of Saudi Arabia, at his grandfather, Faisal bin Turki.

The late prince is the grandson of the founding king of his daughter Madawi Bint Abdulaziz.

A rare moment where Saudi and Iranian vessels were in a direct standoff in what described as Saudi territorial waters has been revealed Saturday by Saudi state news agency SPA.

Saudi Arabia says its coast guard forced no less than three Iranian vessels out of its territorial waters after firing warning shots.

While it's unclear whether the Iranian boats had military personnel or perhaps civilian fishermen, the Saudi maritime border patrol issued repeated warnings, and then fired shots signaling it was ready to engage, SPA described.

A Saudi-brokered ceasefire between the Saudi-backed government in Yemen and the Southern Transitional Council (STC) has not lasted long, and after tensions on the island of Socotra, fighting erupted in Abyan Province.

Fighting has raged over 24 hours in Abyan Province, with at least 54 fighters killed. Both sides are blaming the other for starting the fighting and “violating” the truce. Monitors are still heading into Abyan, but it’s not clear there is a ceasefire left to monitor.

A coastal province, Abyan has often been contested by the STC, and the same territory was under dispute during the Arab Spring, when Islamist groups tied to al-Qaeda seized several towns in the area, including the provincial capital of Zinjibar.

With an already shattered medical infrastructure due to the five-year US-Saudi siege, Covid-19 has rapidly spread through Yemen. The Arab country lacks the basic necessities for preventative measures like clean water, and a population facing malnourishment is especially vulnerable to the disease. A recent uptick in Saudi bombing might put a country already on the brink of collapse over the edge.

Last week, Saudi warplanes pounded Yemen’s capital Sanaa, in what residents called the worst airstrikes they have seen since the first years of the war. Seventy-seven airstrikes hit several provinces in north Yemen within 24 hours. According to the Houthi’s health ministry and NGOs on the ground, one of the strikes hit a car traveling in the Sadaa province and killed 13 civilians, including four children.

A member of Yemen’s Supreme Political Council has held Saudi Arabia and its regional allies, which are involved in an atrocious military campaign against the impoverished Arab country, fully responsible for a potential oil leakage from a decaying tanker in the Red Sea, and the impending environmental disaster it could cause.

“We do not assume any responsibility for any leakage from the Safer tanker afloat at the sea,” Arabic-language al-Masirah television network quoted Mohammed Ali al-Houthi as saying on Thursday.

He called for immediate actions over the matter, holding the United States, Saudi Arabia and their allies fully liable for any disastrous consequences as they have not allowed Yemen to sell the crude loaded at the tanker.

An airstrike from the US-backed Saudi-led coalition hit a vehicle carrying civilians in north Yemen on Monday. The airstrike killed 13 people, including four children. The same day, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres removed the Saudi coalition from a global list of parties who have harmed children in conflicts.

The international humanitarian group Save the Children said the victims were on their way home from a local market when the vehicle was suddenly bombed. The Houthi’s Health Ministry identified 11 of the victims, which included one woman and four children, ages 12-14.

The coalition often targets civilian infrastructure, which is why Guterres’s move to remove them from the “blacklist” drew sharp condemnation from human rights groups. Saudi warplanes have hit schools, hospitals, water treatment plants, markets, weddings, and other civilian targets.

SOURCE: MINT PRESS
ADEN, YEMEN — As focus begins to turn to developments in Libya and the foreign interference that plagues the Arab country, it seems that Turkey already has its eye elsewhere, preparing for military involvement in Yemen in a move that has sparked concern among Yemenis already struggling against an intervention led by Saudi Arabia, famine and most recently, COVID-19.

Informed sources in Aden and Taiz revealed to MintPress that a militia belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated El-Eslah Party, the ideological and political ally of Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, is already engaged in the latest round of fighting in Yemen’s southern provinces, particularly in Abyan and Shabwa.