Yemeni forces have warned of more retaliatory attacks as the Saudi war continues to claim civilian lives. Yemen’s Ansarullah also rejected Saudi allegations about the movement’s plan to attack holy sites as big lies, and part of new plots.

Reports that three prominent and moderate Saudi Arabian Sunni scholars held on multiple charges of “terrorism” will be executed shortly after Ramadan are startling, not because the charges are false, but more so because of US complacency towards egregious human rights abuses, along with Washington’s continued support for regimes responsible for such things. Since President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, the relationship between America’s Jared Kushner, the UAE’s Mohammed Bin Zayed, and Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed Bin Salman has solidified, establishing an even stronger alliance between the three countries.

Saudi Arabia launched a deadly campaign against Yemen in 2015. Since then it’s killed thousands civilians. And yet Riyadh describes retaliatory attacks by Yemeni forces as “act of terrorism”.

Saudi Arabia does not want war but will not hesitate to defend itself against Iran, a top Saudi diplomat said Sunday after the kingdom’s energy sector was targeted this past week amid heightened tensions in the Persian Gulf.

U.S. President Donald Trump, meanwhile, warned Iran that it will face destruction if it seeks a fight, while Iranian officials said their country isn’t looking for war. Trump spoke after a rocket hit near the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi minister of state for foreign affairs, spoke a week after four oil tankers— two of them Saudi — were targeted in an alleged act of sabotage off the coast of the United Arab Emirates and days after Iran-allied Yemeni rebels claimed a drone attack on a Saudi oil pipeline.

Italian unions have refused to load cargo onto a Saudi ship carrying weapons, in protest against Riyadh’s war on Yemen. The dock workers have gone on strike, refusing to work until the ship leaves port in Genoa.

While the Saudi Arabian ship, the Bahri-Yanbu, was expected to leave for Jeddah by the end end of the day, it seems the delivery might end up being rather late. After unsuccessful attempts to have the ship barred from docking in Italy altogether, it was greeted by banners and a protests as it arrived in port Monday.

The Saudi-led coalition has resumed airstrikes on the rebel-held Yemeni capital Sanaa on Thursday in apparent retaliation for a drone attack on an oil pipeline. Russian nationals have reportedly been hurt in the bombings.
A senior health official of the Houthi rebels, who control Sanaa, said Saudi strikes left six civilians dead, including four children, and injured 52 others, two of whom were Russian women working in the healthcare sector.

One of the strikes wiped out an entire family after a building they lived in collapsed on them, killing both spouses and a child, AP reported. The incident happened in the densely populated al-Raqas neighborhood of the Yemeni capital.

SOURCE: THE INTERCEPT

JOURNALISTS IN FRANCE are facing potential jail sentences in an unprecedented case over their handling of secret documents detailing the country’s involvement in the Yemen conflict.

Earlier this week, a reporter from Radio France and the co-founders of Paris-based investigative news organization Disclose were called in for questioning at the offices of the General Directorate for Internal Security, known as the DGSI, an organization that is tasked with fighting terrorism, espionage, and other domestic threats, similar in function to the FBI in the United States.

The two news organizations published stories in April – together with The Intercept, Mediapart, ARTE Info, and Konbini News – that revealed the vast amount of French, British, and American military equipment sold to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and subsequently used by those nations to wage war in Yemen.

Once again deadly bombardment of civilian areas in Yemen. Saudi fighter jets targeted the capital Sana’a. At least seven civilians, most of them women and children, have lost their lives in the strikes. The air raids also left more than 50 others wounded.

Saudi Arabia on Thursday blamed Iran for ordering an attack early this week on two Aramco pipeline booster stations, a strike that was intended as part of a broader sabotage campaign to disrupt world oil supplies, according to Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih.

The drone attacks came one day after a string of attacks on two Saudi oil tankers and two other vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, and caused the temporary closure of a vital east-west pipeline traversing the kingdom, since reopened.

Prince Khalid Bin Salman, the vice minister for defense and brother of the crown prince MbS, described Yemen's Houthis - which were believed to have launched the drone attack - of being used as an "Iranian" tool advancing Tehran's aggression and hegemony in the region.

In a tweet, he said the Houthi militias “are merely a tool that Iran’s regime uses to implement its expansionist agenda in the region, and not to protect the people of Yemen as the Houthis falsely claim”.

A leaked Saudi diplomatic memo obtained by Lebanese outlet Alahed News claims that the government of Saudi Arabia had foreknowledge of the Easter bombings that occurred last month in three cities on the island nation of Sri Lanka, killing nearly 300 and wounding over 500 more. The contents of the memo, which additionally suggests Saudi complicity in the attacks, are supported by the connections recently uncovered by Sri Lankan authorities, that the alleged ringleader of the bombings, Zahran Hashim, had to Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia submitted on Wednesday a letter to the United Nations Security Council, in which it held Iran and the Yemeni Houthi group responsible for targeting their oil facilities on Tuesday.

The letter was handed over by the Permanent Representative of Saudi Arabia to the United Nations, Abdallah Al-Mouallimi, according to Saudi TV channel Al Arabiya.

The letter included “Saudi Arabia’s holding of Iran and the Houthi militias it supports fully responsible for Tuesday’s attack on the kingdom’s oil facilities.”

South Korea plans to set up a joint nuclear energy research centre in Saudi Arabia, the South Korean Ministry of Science and Technology said.

The project aims to boost cooperation between the two countries in the field of nuclear energy research and development, Yonhap news agency reported on Tuesday.

The agency noted that the two countries are expected to sign an agreement to establish the centre after administrative procedures have been completed.

Saudi Arabia submitted on Wednesday a letter to the United Nations Security Council, in which it held Iran and the Yemeni Houthi group responsible for targeting their oil facilities on Tuesday.

The letter was handed over by the Permanent Representative of Saudi Arabia to the United Nations, Abdallah Al-Mouallimi, according to Saudi TV channel Al Arabiya.

The letter included “Saudi Arabia’s holding of Iran and the Houthi militias it supports fully responsible for Tuesday’s attack on the kingdom’s oil facilities.”

According to the same source, a joint message was sent from Saudi Arabia and the UAE to the UN Security Council and UN Secretary-General António Guterres, on the attack and sabotage operation that occurred last Sunday against four ships in the international sea off the UAE’s territorial sea and coasts.

Tensions in the Middle East appear to be pushing up the price of oil, with a barrel of Brent crude now costing $71.75, an increase of 1.9 per cent. The cost of a barrel of US crude, meanwhile, is now $62.48, up 2.6 per cent.

The increases came after Saudi Arabia’s Energy Minister, Khaled Al-Falih, announced that a terrorist attack targeted two installations on Tuesday morning which pump oil through a pipeline from oil fields in the Kingdom’s Eastern Province to Yanbu Port on the west coast. The official added that Saudi Aramco will assess the damage and repair the plants. He stressed that Saudi oil production and exports will continue without interruption.

A high-ranking Houthi military official speaking on condition of anonymity has confirmed to MintPress that Houthi forces successfully launched a major operation against a strategic economic target in Saudi Arabia. The operation, which saw seven unmanned drones carry out an attack on two oil pumping stations, came in retaliation for Saudi attacks on civilians as well as renewed Saudi-led Coalition attacks on Hodeida following a recent Houthi withdrawal.

This week at least 13 civilians, including women and children, were killed and more than 10 others sustained injuries after Saudi-led warplanes carried out airstrikes on a truck loaded with fruit in Sada`a and a separate spate of airstrikes hit heavily populated areas in Dhale.

On May 14, Saudi Arabia halted pumping on its 1,200km-long East-West pipeline after it had been targeted by suicide unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

The kingdom’s Minister of Energy, Industry and Mineral Resources Khalid al-Falih confirmed the attack on the pipeline, which carries crude oil from the country’s main eastern oil fields to the Red Sea port city of Yanbu in the western part of the country. He described the attack as “an act of terrorism” and said that it “proves the importance of confronting all terrorist organizations.”

The targeted facilities were located in the towns of al-Duwadimi and Afif. No casualties were reported.

The energy minister stressed that Saudi oil production and exports will still continue uninterrupted. Despite this, global oil prices rose after the incident.

Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels carried out drone attacks on two Aramco pipeline booster stations, a strike that was intended to disrupt world oil supplies, according to Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih.

Al-Falih told Saudi-funded news agency Al-Arabiya that the attacks targeted two pipeline booster stations between the Eastern province and the city of Yanbu.

Saudi Arabia’s claim that two of its oil tankers have been sabotaged off the coast of the UAE is vague in detail – but could create a crisis that spins out of control and into military action.

Any attack on shipping in or close to the Strait of Hormuz, the 30-mile wide channel at the entrance to the Gulf, is always serious because it is the most important choke point for the international oil trade.

A significant armed action by the US or its allies against Iran would likely provoke Iranian retaliation in the Gulf and elsewhere in the region. Although the US is militarily superior to Iran by a wide margin, the Iranians as a last resort could fire rockets or otherwise attack Saudi and UAE oil facilities. Such apocalyptic events are unlikely – but powerful figures in Washington, such as the national security adviser John Bolton and secretary of state Mike Pompeo, appear prepared to take the risk of a war breaking out.

TWO Saudi oil tankers were hit by a "sabotage attack" off the United Arab Emirates, it was announced this morning - as tensions flare between the US and Iran.

The ships were struck off the coast of the port of Fujairah - with one of the tankers due to be loaded with Saudi crude oil bound for the United States.

In the capital Riyadh, public executions take place in the central Deera square, usually at 9am. The wide ochre square has been grimly dubbed "chop chop square" has seen dozens of condemned men and women put to death in recent years.

"When they [death row prisoners] get to the execution square, their strength drains away. Then I read the execution order, and at a signal I cut the prisoner's head off," al-Beshi said.

According to Human Rights Watch, from January to September 2012, at least 69 people were executed in Saudi Arabia. Another 10 beheadings have been reported in just the first six weeks of 2013.

Beheadings are imposed mainly for murder or drug offences, but cases of apostasy (renunciation of one's faith), sorcery and witchcraft can also end up in Chop Chop square. Indeed a man named Muri' al-'Asiri was executed last year in the southern town of Najran, as punishment for being a sorcerer.

A Saudi vessel that had been due to load weapons at a northern French port on Friday set sail without them and headed for Spain, a day after a rights group tried to block the cargo on humanitarian grounds.

A number of powerful explosions have been heard in Saudi Arabia’s port city of Yanbu', local sources said Monday, with reports falling short of giving any reason for the blasts or possible casualties.

No further details have been made available up to this moment and no group or individual has assumed responsibility for the blasts.

Yanbu' is an important petroleum shipping terminal for Saudi Arabia and home to three oil refineries, a plastics facility and several other petrochemical plants.

President Donald Trump’s veto of a resolution aimed at ending US support for Saudi Arabia’s brutal war in Yemen means that, in Washington, business interests outweigh humanitarian concerns, political analyst Colin Cavell told RT.

It was not while ago when the glorious if a tad too long name of the Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman was almost everywhere across mainstream media with favorable western commentators? reviews about his bold so-called cultural and anti-corruption revolution.

He was there to change Saudi Arabia. And he changed it indeed. Saudi Arabia is changed in a way that it is quite hard to spot the differences between the Saudi regime?s ruling methods and ISIL?s reign.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has offered Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas $10 billion if he accepts US President Donald Trump’s plan for peace in the Middle East, also known as the “deal of the century,” the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar reported on Tuesday.

A senior Palestinian official in Ramallah refused to comment on the report.

With the Senate planning this week to “process” President Trump’s veto of the War Powers Act challenge to the Yemen War, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took the reins to try to defend US involvement in Yemen as in America’s best interest.

Pompeo’s argument centered on the idea that the US was obliged to help Saudi Arabia defend itself from retaliatory fights, now that the Saudis had launched a war and provoked that retaliation.

On top of that poor argument for an obligation, Pompeo relied on what the administration seems to believe is the most compelling argument, even if it is wholly based on a lie. He argued that the whole war was Iran’s fault, and not intervening would make Iran happy.

One of two Emirati men detained in Turkey on suspicion of both spying and having possible ties to the Jamal Khashoggi embassy murder case has reportedly taken his own life in prison, according to government and media sources.
The man was arrested by Turkish authorities 10 days ago and was later formally charged with “military and political” and “international espionage.” He was found dead having apparently hanged himself in his cell in Silivri prison on the outskirts of Istanbul on Sunday.

Turkish authorities are now launching an investigation into the suspicious circumstances of the man’s death as he was being detained in solitary confinement.

The two men claimed they were Palestinian nationals but admitted to working on behalf of UAE intelligence, reports Al Jazeera. One of the two alleged UAE spies reportedly arrived in Turkey just two days after Khashoggi’s murder.

The controversy over Saudi Crown Prince MbS's alleged orchestration of the murder of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi has largely subsided since the government insider-turned-critic walked into the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul in early October and never walked out. But a new controversy is brewing over one of the kingdom's most controversial practices: Its mass-beheadings of men convicted of 'terrorism' charges, typically members of the Shiite minority living in the eastern part of the kingdom.

Saudi Arabia has long practiced execution by beheading. But this year, the mass extermination of 37 of mostly Shiite men this week provoked condemnation from the UN and other human rights organizations, as several teenage boys were executed for crimes as seemingly petty a sending Whatsapp messages about government demonstrations.

Now we know who runs the country.

Rule by Defense Contractors and the Saudis.

For the first time in history, the moral cowards of the US Congress – both parties – voted to stop an illegal war.

And Trump vetoed it.

Global finance leaders, who boycotted the Saudi investment summit last year over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, have returned to Riyadh despite the beheadings of dozens of people this week.

Big investors, particularly from Wall Street, joined panels at the two-day financial forum which began on Wednesday in Riyadh.

Larry Fink, CEO of US investment corporation BlackRock, told the conference that his company had bought some of Saudi state-owned oil giant Aramco’s bonds and was looking for other “opportunities” in the kingdom.

Two out of the 37 Saudi citizens executed by the state on Tuesday were teenagers when they were convicted for their supprot for democratic reforms in the kingdom, it has emerged.

Abdulkareem al-Hawaj was just 16 when he was sentenced to death for his political views in 2012. At the time, he was given no access to a lawyer and was held in solitary confinement for five months.

Activists say he was also beaten and authorities threatened to kill his family during interrogations. He then signed a “confession”, which many believe he did so after torture -- making it the document the only premise for his conviction.

Democratic presidential candidate for 2020 Rep. Tulsi Gabbard lashed out at Trump on Wednesday after the president vetoed the Yemen War Powers Resolution this week, which sought to end US support for the Sauid-led war in Yemen.

Tulsi Gabbard, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, has called President Donald Trump’s decision to veto a bill seeking to end US support for the Yemen war nothing less than proof he serves Saudi Arabia.
By vetoing the bill dubbed the War Powers Act, Trump again “proves he’s the servant of Saudi Arabia – the theocratic dictatorship spending billions spreading the most extreme and intolerant form of Islam around the world, supporting al-Qaeda & other jihadists, and waging genocidal war in Yemen with US help,” Gabbard said in an emotional tweet.

Three months ago, MintPress News unveiled Saudi plans to hijack Yemen’s parliament. On Saturday, Saudi Arabia successfully carried out the plan when it forced members of Yemen’s House of Representatives to hold a council session in the eastern city of Sayun in Yemen’s Hadramout governorate.

Yemeni members of parliament who have been under house arrest in Saudi Arabia since 2015 were returned to Yemen on a private Saudi plane and received by Saudi officials at the Al-Rayyan airport in eastern Yemen. Local Yemeni media was barred from covering their arrival and Saudi state-run Al-Arabiya was the sole media outlet allowed to cover the event. It was held under heavy security with Saudi troops on patrol and was attended by ousted former President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi and ambassadors from countries backing Saudi plans in Yemen.

White House staff has stonewalled for more than a week a group of lawmakers asking for a meeting with President Trump in a bid to convince him to sign legislation ending the U.S. role in Yemen's civil war.

Despite an official veto recommendation from White House staff, Trump has continued to appear open-minded, saying Wednesday that the matter was "very serious" and that he would have more to say later.

Sponsors of the legislation believe Trump is willing to sign the bill, but is being told by his staff, led by national security adviser John Bolton, that he should not.

"I feel from some of his statements that he's genuinely conflicted," said Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., who signed a bipartisan letter seeking a meeting. "I think his advisers are at odds with where he is ... advisers in the administration have their own interests and may not be giving him the full picture."

The United States will never allow Saudi Arabia to become a nuclear power and threaten its security and that of Israel, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in an interview on Friday.

"We will never write a $150 billion check to the Saudis and hand them over the capacity to threaten Israel and the United States with nuclear weapons. Never", Pompeo said in an interview with CBS News.

The $150 billion figure is a reference to the Iran nuclear agreement negotiated by the administration of President Barack Obama.

Saudi coalition planes bombed the area next to a girls’ school in Sanaa earlier today, killing at least 11 and injuring dozens more:

At least eleven schoolgirls have been killed by an explosion at a warehouse in Yemen, medical officials say.

A total of 54 people in Sanaa have been wounded with eleven children in nearby schools pronounced dead after a metal workshop exploded.

US lawmakers are infuriated over the Trump administration’s secret talks with the Saudi kingdom over a nuclear deal.

With no solid prospects in sight, the administration has shown US companies the green light for that would enable the monarchy to have nukes.

Congressmen specifically want to know whether or not the approval was issued after dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, the Hill reported Sunday.

Saudi Arabia threatened to use the “nuclear option” of undermining the petro-dollar if the U.S. moves forward with the NOPEC bill.

The U.S. Congress has been mulling legislation, known as the NOPEC bill, which would allow the Justice Department to take antitrust action against OPEC for manipulating the oil market. Specifically, the bill would remove sovereign immunity countries have from such action, allowing the U.S. government to sue. In theory, the law would prevent OPEC from coordinating production cuts.

It’s still unclear if the Congress will pass the bill, and it’s also not guaranteed that Trump will sign the bill if it reaches his desk. Moreover, even if he did sign it, it’s also not a done deal that the Justice Department would take punitive action.

Iran has strongly condemned the latest deadly airstrikes by Saudi warplanes in Yemen that killed more than a dozen civilians, most of them schoolchildren, saying countries that are arming the aggressors are complicit in the crimes.

"Countries that have caused the humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen by providing arms to the aggressors are accomplices in these crimes and must be held accountable for their support," Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi said on Monday.

He criticized the international community for remaining silent and indifferent to the atrocities committed by the Saudi-led coalition in its military campaign against Yemen and expressed sympathy with the families of victims.

The Iranian spokesperson called on the United Nations and countries involved in the Yemeni crisis to ramp up their efforts in order to put an immediate end to the attacks and adopt necessary measures to protect civilians, particularly women and children.

Saudi Arabia has allegedly planned to switch its oil trade from using the US dollar if Washington passes the NOPEC Bill. The accord would extend American anti-trust laws to foreign entities such as OPEC.

Sputnik has discussed this with Dr Cyril Widdershoven, a veteran global energy market expert who holds several advisory positions with international think tanks in the Middle East and energy sectors in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Sputnik: Washington is threatening to pass a bill exposing OPEC members to US anti-trust lawsuits — NOPEC. It has never made it into law, but there is a chance that President Trump could back it. What implications could the law have for the US if passed and what consequences could this have on the shale segment of the market?

The report from Zerohedge via Reuters that Saudi Arabia is angry with the U.S. for considering a bill exposing OPEC to U.S. antitrust law is a trial balloon.

The chances of the U.S. bill known as NOPEC coming into force are slim and Saudi Arabia would be unlikely to follow through, but the fact Riyadh is considering such a drastic step is a sign of the kingdom’s annoyance about potential U.S. legal challenges to OPEC.

If these things are so unlikely then why make the threat public? There are a number of reasons.

First, one must remember that the Saudis are hemorrhaging money. Their primary budget deficit in 2018 was around 7% of GDP. Since the 2014 crash in oil prices it has gone from almost zero sovereign debt to $180 billion in debt to finance its spending, or around 22% of GDP.

Letter says Trump has opportunity to restore cooperation with Congress.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers from both the Senate and the House have issued a letter to President Trump urging him not to veto the SJ Res 7 War Powers Act challenge to the Yemen War. The resolution passed the Senate last month, and the House on Thursday.

The War Powers Act requires the president to get the approval of Congress for any overseas military conflicts, and allows Congress to demand a withdrawal form those nations if the operation is unauthorized. The Yemen War was never authorized by Congress.

President Trump has threatened to veto the resolution, and the letter urges him not to, arguing that he has an historic opportunity to set a precedent for cooperation with Congress by complying with the law and ending an unconstitutional war that was launched under President Obama.

Saudi Arabia has opened a consulate in Baghdad for the first time in nearly 30 years in a sign of improving ties, Iraq said. The new consulate, which will issue visas to Iraqis, was opened during a two-day visit by a delegation headed by the Saudi minister of commerce and investment, AP reported. Riyadh seeks closer ties to Baghdad in an effort to counter Iran’s growing regional influence.

Saudi Arabia is reportedly threatening to sell its oil in other currencies if the US passes a bill permitting antitrust lawsuits to be filed against OPEC members in US courts, a move which would decimate the tottering petrodollar.

If the US infringes on OPEC states' sovereign immunity and greenlights lawsuits for antitrust violations, energy officials in Riyadh are prepared to sell their oil in other currencies, according to multiple sources familiar with Saudi energy policy, one of whom told Reuters the threat has already been communicated to high-ranking US energy officials.

Saudi Arabia has nearly completed its first nuclear reactor according to satellite photos of the facility published by GoogleEarth, which reveal a "columnar vessel that will contain atomic fuel," according to Bloomberg.

Located in the southwest corner of the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology in Riyadh, the new facility has raised concerns in the West - as the Saudis have yet to sign up to the international framework of rules adhered to by other nuclear powers in order to prevent civilian atomic programs aren't used to develop weapons. Nuclear fuel providers, meanwhile, cannot legally supply the new reactor until modern surveillance arrangements have been reached with the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.

Pop quiz: name the two largest (by far) recipients of U.S. foreign military aid and one other country which recently negotiated the biggest American arms sale deal in world history. Let’s call them the Big three (beneficiaries of largesse, that is).

Ready for the (not-so) shocking answers? So, the military dictatorship is Egypt – recipient of $1.3 billion in military aid per annum. The nation that conquered and annexed adjacent territory is Israel – the donee of some $3.1 billion in military aid each year; and, ironically, the state that US leaders regularly (if incorrectly) tout as the “only democracy in the Mideast.” And the charming, child-starving, woman-beheading regime: that’s the theocracy and absolute monarchy of Saudi Arabia – future owner (maybe) of a record $110 billion in US military equipment. Now that’s a proud lot!

n a further blow to US-Saudi ties, reports emerged this weekend on the October murder of Jamal Khashoggi by a Saudi kill team. The kill team’s leader, Maher Mutreb, and other members, had apparently been trained by the US government in the past.

It’s a familiar story, heard often enough when the US aligns itself with a country with a flimsy human rights record. The trainees were part of ongoing routine training operations meant to increase the ties of rank and file Saudi figures with the US security state.

During his training Mutreb, a colonel in the Saudi apy agency, apparently went so far as to try to befriend Khashoggi, likely gathering more intelligence on him, but likely also making his murder all the more uncomfortable.

According to US Central Command, at least six airstrikes were carried out by US forces over the past week in Yemen. The strikes were intended to targeted the local al-Qaeda affiliate in al-Bayda Province.

As usual, Centcom offered no casualty data or any details of who was hit, or who was even the intended target. Bayda is known as a major haven for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) but strikes into the province aren’t necessarily productive to that US air war.

The reason Centcom discussed the matter at all seems to have been to clarify that this was part of an anti-al-Qaeda campaign, and not in any way related to the Saudi invasion of Yemen. Despite that, Centcom says that the operation was coordinated with the Saudi-backed government.

Al Jazeera has obtained exclusive footage that proves the presence of child soldiers in the recruitment camps of the Saudi-UAE-led coalition fighting in Yemen.

The children, desperately poor, are being recruited to fight along the Saudi border to defend it from the Houthis, a rebel group that overran the capital, Sanaa, and large swaths of Yemen's northwest in 2014.

In 2015, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) formed a coalition to overthrow the Houthis - plunging Yemen into a ruinous war - supported by forces loyal to the country's internationally recognised government.

The conflict has created the world's worst humanitarian crisis, pushing Yemen to the brink of famine and leaving about 80 percent of its population - 24 million people - in need of humanitarian assistance.

A senior journalist writing for the Washington Post has revealed more details about the gruesome killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in a diplomatic mission in Turkey in October, saying those who carried out the assassination had been trained in the United States.

David Ignatius cited US and Saudi sources in his column published on Friday as saying that some members of the Saudi Rapid Intervention Group that was sent to Istanbul to deal with Khashoggi in Saudi Arabia’s consulate in the city had received training in the US on special-operations capabilities.

“The CIA has cautioned other government agencies that some of this special-operations training might have been conducted by Tier 1 Group, an Arkansas-based company, under a State Department license,” said Ignatius while citing the sources.

MintPress News was able to obtain copies of dozens of confidential documents relating to foreigners of different nationalities who have been granted Yemeni citizenship, including Europeans like 36-year-old French citizen Peter Cherif, also known as Abu Hamza, who was accused of terrorism, as well as other extremists from the ranks of Al Qaeda and ISIS, many of whom were former fighters in Iraq and Syria.

According to one of the documents, Cherif, who is accused of helping to organize the terrorist shooting at the Paris headquarters of Charlie Hebdo magazine in 2015, received an official Yemeni identity under the name of Mohammed Ba Mahzmah, from the Riyadh-allied Yemeni government in Aden. The process was facilitated by Coalition security authorities.

U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry has approved six secret authorizations by companies to sell nuclear power technology and assistance to Saudi Arabia, according to a copy of a document seen by Reuters on Wednesday.

With 43 people already executed in Saudi Arabia in the first few months of 2019, the kingdom is well on its way to setting a new record for the greatest number of executions in a year, according to reports.

Of the 43 executed so far, 21 were beheaded for drug offenses, while the remainder were put to death for crimes including treason, renouncing Islam, adultery, murder, burglary, rape, espionage and terrorism, according to the Gulf Times.

Should the Riyadh maintain its present rate, experts have projected that a whopping 172 executions will have taken place by the end of 2019 — the highest total recorded in Saudi Arabia since human rights groups first began tracking the data in the early 2000s.

?According to Business Insider, the 43 recorded executions in 2019 took place between January 1 and March 13, with the most recent beheading involving a Syrian man who was condemned to death for smuggling amphetamine pills.

According to the Saudi-backed Yemeni government, a series of Saudi-led airstrikes targeted the Maarib Province on Monday, killing at least 50 members of the Shi’ite Houthi movement.

The attacks centered on Serwah District, the last district in oil-rich Maarib that is under the control of the Houthis. It’s unclear who the targeted Houthis were, and there is no report of substantial fighting in Maarib recently.

This once again reflects the general Saudi military strategy in Yemen, which is to fall back heavily on an air war. Using airstrikes anywhere and everywhere has often meant a substantial increase in civilian casualties.

Saudi Arabia denounced US President Donald Trump’s recognition of Israel’s 1981 annexation of the Golan Heights, a statement released by the Saudi Press Agency said early on Tuesday, Reuters reports.

“Attempts to impose fait accompli do not change the facts,” the statement said. It said the Golan Heights was an “occupied Syrian Arab land in accordance with the relevant international resolutions”.

“It will have significant negative effects on the peace process in the Middle East and the security and stability of the region,” it said.

Four hours east of Los Angeles, in a drought-stricken area of a drought-afflicted state, is a small town called Blythe where alfalfa is king. More than half of the town’s 94,000 acres are bushy blue-green fields growing the crop.

Massive industrial storehouses line the southern end of town, packed with thousands upon thousands of stacks of alfalfa bales ready to be fed to dairy cows – but not cows in California’s Central Valley or Montana’s rangelands.

Instead, the alfalfa will be fed to cows in Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia is on track to set a new record for beheading people in 2019 if it maintains its current intensity for the rest of the year.

The kingdom executed 43 people between January 1 and March 13, which trumps the 48 people beheaded between the January and April of 2018, the previous noted record.

Rights groups began documenting execution numbers in the early 2000s. The figures have been trending upwards.

White House senior adviser Jared Kushner’s Middle East peace plan at one point included Jordan giving land to the Palestinian territories and in return getting land from Saudi Arabia, according to a new book on the Kushner family.

The book, Kushner, Inc.: Greed. Ambition. Corruption. The Extraordinary Story of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, was written by Vicky Ward and released by St. Martin’s Press on Tuesday. The book’s 300 pages detail Jared and Ivanka’s path to involvement in every aspect of White House affairs and their alleged designs to use their influence for personal gain.

Former Deputy National Security Adviser K.T. McFarland and other aides in the White House appear to have worked on a plan to “transfer sensitive U.S. nuclear technology” to Saudi Arabia…

Mohammad bin Salman (MBS) “has not attended a series of high-profile ministerial and diplomatic meetings in Saudi Arabia over the last fortnight and is alleged to have been stripped of some of his financial and economic authority,” adding:

“The move to restrict, if only temporarily…understood to have been revealed to a group of senior ministers earlier last week by his father, King Salman.”

Press TV reported that MBS was “stripped of some of his powers and has not attended…recent weekly cabinet meetings and…high-profile talks with visiting dignitaries,” including Sergey Lavrov, confirmed by Russia’s Foreign Ministry, adding:

King Salman appointed Musaed al-Aiban to oversee kingdom financial and investment decision-making.

Radio Sputnik has discussed the issue of US-Saudi Arabia nuclear deals with Joshua Landis, an American academic who specialises in the Middle East and the head of the Centre for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma.

Sputnik: Since 2009 Democratic Senator Bob Menendez and Republican [Senator] Marco Rubio have taken the initiative to study negotiations between Washington and Riyadh on the subject of agreements in the nuclear field. So, the goal [of these negotiations] is to eliminate tensions in the region. What could the investigation reveal?

All the students interviewed for the story said that the government under Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, known also as MBS, makes a point of ensuring that students studying abroad under the kingdom’s scholarship programme know that they are being watched.

As many as 60,000 Saudi students are said to be currently studying in the US and nearly 40,000 have scholarships from the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Education that provide full tuition, health insurance and a monthly stipend.

Spying on students, which is said to have increased under MBS, is said to be having a chilling effect. “Every Saudi student in the US is too scared to have an opinion, even in our own hangouts. No one can criticize the government … and there’s no second chance. If they take away your scholarship, that’s it,” said Abdulrahman Al-Mutairy, an outspoken student at the University of San Diego.

US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Joe Dunford issued a statement Monday denying weekend media reports that the US plans to leave around 1,000 troops in Syria, saying the reports are “factually incorrect.”

Dunford presented the current planned “residual force” as 200, saying that this hadn’t changed since February. The US announced 200 would stay on February 21, but on February 22 officially increased that number to 400.

It’s not clear from Dunford’s statement where the “incorrect” aspect of the new report, which came out of a Wall Street Journal, exists. That report suggested that the 1,000 figure was not yet finalized, but was being discussed. Dunford’s comments didn’t include any details on what is actually being discussed, but just that nothing was finalized.

The International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) has issued red notices to locate and provisionally arrest 20 nationals of Saudi Arabia, who are believed to be linked to the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the NTV broadcaster reported on Thursday.

The red notices were issued on 1 March at the request of the Istanbul Prosecutor's Office, the Turkish media specified.

The journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, who worked as a columnist for The Washington Post newspaper and was a vocal critic of Saudi policies, went missing on 2 October after he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

This week the Senate voted to cease and desist US military cooperation with allies Saudi Arabia and UAE in waging the war in Yemen, which according to the United Nations has created one of the worst humanitarian disasters in recent history. The Wednesday vote was was 54 to 46, including seven Republicans voting with the Democrats.

The “war powers” legislation has been widely seen as a direct rebuke of Trump's foreign policy amid broader pushback over his defense of Saudi Arabia in the wake of last year's Jamal Khashoggi killing at the Saudi embassy in Istanbul. The invocation of the War Powers Act of 1973 expressly prohibits US military action not previously approved by Congress.

A House vote is expected soon, which would require President Trump to immediately withdraw American military support from the Saudi-led coalition. Trump said in December he would veto the Senate resolution if it ever reached his desk, which now appears likely.

Months of battles in Congress to challenge the US war in Yemen under the War Powers Act is coming to a key moment, a vote in the Senate on Wednesday. The SJ Res 7 resolution is a clean version of the challenge, without any amendments yet attached.

Saudi Arabia attacked Yemen in March of 2015, seeking to reinstall former President Hadi and remove the Shi’ite Houthi movement. The US backed the Saudi invasion, and has participated military, both in refueling Saudi warplanes, and in a naval blockade of Yemen.

Legal challenges in 2018 were repeatedly stalled in the House of Representatives, where the leadership changed rules to prevent a War Powers Act challenge, which would point out that the war was never authorized by Congress. The Senate did ultimately pass such a challenge in late 2018, but without a House version, they both had to start anew with the 2019 Congress.

Children as young as eight have been raped in a besieged city in war-hit Yemen, Amnesty International said on Monday, with Saudi-backed militiamen among the suspected perpetrators.

Three boys were raped and a fourth was sexually assaulted in the southwestern city of Taiz, Amnesty said, noting it had documented evidence of the sexual attacks that took place in the city controlled by pro-government forces and surrounded by Yemeni rebels.

The families of the four boys, aged eight to 16, told Amnesty their sons had been assaulted over the past eight months, including at a mosque, but authorities in the area had not been responsive.

Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi strongly condemned the Saudi-led coalition for a recent attack that killed at least 21 Yemeni women and children, describing it as a “savage” attack.

In a statement released on Monday, Qassemi deplored the continued silence of international organizations and Western-backed human rights groups on the inhumane crimes of the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen.

“The voice of innocent women and children of Yemen, who after years of suffering from famine and impacts of the human tragedy in the country are victimized each day in the most brutal manner possible with the weapons donated and sold by some Western countries to the invaders, is not heard as long as they are alive,” he said.

Most reports on international arms sales focus on the biggest sellers. That inevitably means the United States, the largest exporter by far in the growing market. You can’t have sales without buyers, however, and that side of the equation centers heavily on the Middle East.

Middle Eastern countries now buy more than a third of all global arms. The biggest customer not just in the Middle East but in the world, is Saudi Arabia,whose purchases have soared 192% over a five year period.

Iran has censured the latest Saudi airstrikes in Yemen's northwestern province of Hajjah, saying the so-called advocates of human rights are complicit in Riyadh's crimes as they sell arms to the regime.

"The so-called advocates of human rights not only remain silent in the face of daily killings of women and children in Yemen, but they are also complicit in these crimes by selling weapons to the aggressors," Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi said on Monday.

He criticized human rights organizations and circles for remaining tight-lipped in the face of inhumane war crimes committed by the aggressors against Yemen.

The Iranian spokesperson added that innocent defenseless Yemeni women and children, who have suffered from years of famine and the consequences of the human tragedy in the country, are falling victim in the most brutal manner to the arms donated and sold to the invaders by some Western countries, but their voice is not heard as long as they are alive.

It didn’t take long for Florida Senator Marco Rubio’s comments that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had “gone full gangster” to make the news rounds all the way from the U.S. to the Middle East, across the globe and back again. The Republican senator made his controversial comments during Retired Gen. John Abizaid's nomination hearing Wednesday in Washington to be the Trump administration's first ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Despite increasing tensions between the two long-time allies, the U.S. has not had an ambassador to Saudi Arabia since Trump became president in January 2017. Abizaid is a retired four-star Army general who led U.S. Central Command during the Iraq war under the Bush and Obama administrations.