The Pentagon on Friday announced it will deploy additional US troops and missile defense equipment to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as Donald Trump has at least for now put off any immediate military strike on Iran in response to the attack on the Saudi oil industry.

The US defense secretary, Mark Esper, told Pentagon reporters this is a first step to beef up security and he would not rule out additional moves down the road. General Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said more details about the deployment will be determined in the coming days, but it would not involve thousands of US troops.

Other officials said the US deployment would probably be in the hundreds and the defensive equipment heading to the Middle East would probably include Patriot missile batteries and possibly enhanced radars.

Much of the attention concerning the crippling damage to Saudi Aramco facilities struck in last week's aerial attack ultimately blamed on "Iranian sponsorship" by US and Saudi officials has focused on Abqaiq processing plant, but on Friday the first on the ground images from the kingdom's giant Khurais oil field — the country's second largest — have been revealed, showing scorched infrastructure, ruptured pipelines, and "a mess of oil melted to asphalt, twisted and charred metal grates" according to an on site Bloomberg report.

And yet Aramco has remained insistent that the field will return to pre-attack output levels this month, after the company reported losing half its daily output in the aftermath of the early Saturday attacks, impacting a whopping 5% of total global supply.

Per Bloomberg, Khurais has a capacity of 1.45 million barrels a day, processing all oil on site; however the attack took out four 300-foot towers essential to the production process.

Though President Trump has downplayed the idea of war with Iran over the past couple of days, the actual decision is to be made at a high-profile meeting, either Thursday or Friday depending according to reports.

Trump will be joined by a number of national security officials and other aides, and will be presented with a wide array of options by the Pentagon. Options are said to range from full-scale war to a simple cyberattack.

Gen. Joe Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was very clear about the Pentagon not pushing any specific agenda on this matter, saying the response would be purely a “political judgement.”

Among Trump’s officials, Pompeo is seen as the one pushing hardest for a military response. He’s been in Saudi Arabia meeting with officials there, and probably will come back all the more hawkish.

The Saudi-led coalition has launched a new military operation north of Hodeidah, the crucial port city where nearly all of Yemen’s scarce food and other supplies are delivered, against what it called “legitimate military targets,” state-run Ekhbariya TV reported on Friday.

The coalition put out a call to civilians to keep clear of the operation’s targets, even though it is unclear how much of the Yemeni population – 80 percent of which are in various states of humanitarian crisis after more than five years of bombardment – would watch Saudi television to know what sites to stay away from.

Authored by Tom Luongo, Zero Hedge

The attack on Saudi Arabia’s major oil processing station in Abqaiq over the weekend was a major turning point in global politics. It may be even bigger than many of us realize.

While forces within U.S. political circles, Israel and Saudi Arabia keep trying to shift the blame to Iran, the most likely scenario is that the Houthis in North Yemen were responsible for the attack as a follow up to last month’s hit which showed off the capabilities of their new drones.

That attack set the stage for the latest one in a classic case of the past being prologue. By showing the world it was capable of throwing drones anywhere in Saudi Arabia rebels in Yemen created plausibility for last weekend’s attack.

Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Saker blog,

The Yemeni Shiite group’s spectacular attack on Abqaiq raises the distinct possibility of a push to drive the House of Saud from power.

Houthi striking capability – from drone swarms to ballistic missile attacks – has been improving remarkably for the past year or so. It’s not by accident that the UAE saw which way the geopolitical and geoeconomic winds were blowing: Abu Dhabi withdrew from Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman’s vicious war against Yemen and now is engaged in what it describes as a “peace-first” strategy.

Saudi Aramco refineries were hit hard in a drone attack, claimed by Yemeni Houthis, crippling Saudi crude output for several days. In the wake of the attack, US military command for the Middle East suggested sending more air defence missile systems to Saudi Arabia after existing ones failed to foil the strike.

Some 88 Patriot systems deployed in Saudi Arabia failed to repel attack on Saudi Aramco oil facilities, letting dozens of drones and guided missiles get through defences, a high-ranking source in the Russian Defence Ministry said. The source dismissed the excuse that the US Secretary of State gave to explain the Patriot fiasco, noting that in fact the American air defence system simply has low efficiency

Last week, it was revealed that the Trump administration has taken extraordinary steps to continue the 18-year cover-up of Saudi government involvement in the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.

On Thursday, September 12, one day after the 18th anniversary of the attacks on New York and Washington that killed nearly 3,000 people, a federal court filing revealed that Attorney General William Barr has asserted the "state secrets" privilege to block the release of an FBI report detailing extensive relations between some of the 19 hijackers and Saudi government officials. Victims of the attacks and their families are pushing for access to the 2007 report as part of a lawsuit against the Saudi government launched in 2003 charging the despotic monarchy with coordinating the mass killings.

Barr declared there was a “reasonable danger” that releasing the report would “risk significant harm to national security.”

In theory, a dispute between Saudi Arabia and Iran over an awful civil war in Yemen should have nothing to do with Israel.

In fact, Tel Aviv is a major factor stoking a growing crisis that threatens to explode into an even wider war, and trigger a global economic slowdown.

Mainstream U.S. media accounts have bogged down in futile efforts to definitively assess responsibility for the audacious drone attacks that damaged Saudi oil facilities on September 14, sending plumes of smoke up into space. The U.S. press is less rigorous about looking into the Israeli connection to the crisis. Today’s lead article in the New York Times about the risk of “war with Iran” did not mention Israel or Benjamin Netanyahu a single time. Neither did a major report in the Washington Post.

On Saturday, September 14th, two oil refineries and other oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia were hit and set ablaze by 18 drones and 7 cruise missiles, dramatically slashing Saudi Arabia’s oil production by half, from about ten million to five million barrels per day. On September 18, the Trump administration, blaming Iran, announced it was imposing more sanctions on Iran and voices close to Donald Trump are calling for military action. But this attack should lead to just the opposite response: urgent calls for an immediate end to the war in Yemen and an end to US economic warfare against Iran.

Saudi Arabia has joined a US-led naval mission purportedly aimed at protecting shipping lanes in Middle Eastern waterways as Washington and Riyadh engage in another blame game against Iran following massive Yemeni drone attacks on key Saudi oil facilities.

Quoting an official source in the Defense Ministry, the state-run Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported on Wednesday that Riyadh had decided to be a member of the so-called International Maritime Security Construct, which operates in the Strait of Hormuz, Bab el-Mandab, the Sea of Oman and the Persian Gulf.

It also claimed that the US-led coalition is meant to “protect merchant ships through providing safe navigation” and safeguard the interests of the alliance’s member countries.

Earlier in the day, Saudi ambassador to London Prince Khalid bin Bander bin Sultan Al Saud said that the recent attack on the kingdom's oil facilities was "almost certainly" backed by Iran.

On Wednesday, the Saudi Defence Ministry organised a news conference to show journalists what it describes as an Iranian cruise missile and Delta Wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV).

"The investigation has shown that the drone’s type is Delta Wing, and the information obtained by the ministry indicates the drone’s technology is Iranian," the department's spokesman Col. Turki al-Maliki said.

What's the end game here? Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has just arrived in Jeddah for talks with Saudi leaders over a response to the weekend attacks on two of the kingdom's major oil facilities.

After a prior press conference by the Saudi Defense Ministry where it for the first time assigned public blame on Iran for the attacks which initially knocked out half of the kingdom's daily oil output, saying the air attacks "unquestionably" had Iranian state sponsorship, Pompeo has announced the Aramco attacks constitute an "act of war" by Iran.

Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree has warned foreigners to not enter the Saudi Aramco facilities that were attacked by Houthi group on Saturday, saying that they may target them again.

Saree said, Monday, that the attacks on Aramco were carried out by aircraft operating with different engines. He called on Saudi Arabia to reconsider its policies and stop its aggression and siege on Yemen.

Saudi Arabia said it would produce evidence on Wednesday linking regional rival Tehran to an unprecedented attack on its oil industry that Washington believes originated from Iran in a dangerous escalation of Middle East frictions.

But Tehran again denied involvement in the Sept. 14 attacks on oil plants, including the world’s biggest crude processing facility, that initially knocked out half of Saudi production.

“They want to impose maximum … pressure on Iran through slander,” Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said according to state media. “We don’t want conflict in the region … Who started the conflict?” he said, blaming Washington and its Gulf allies for war in Yemen.

Since the recent long past sell-by date demise of John Bolton, Donald Trump’s current attack Chihuahua, Mike Pompeo, promptly insisted Iran was behind the attack.

But how does Iran benefit by starting World War III? Are they so fucking stupid that they would wave a red flag in front of the nuclear armed US, nuclear armed Israel and Saudi Arabia run by a snow flake who thinks cold blooded murder is just about right when his feelings are hurt.

Israel has been threatening Iran with destruction since at least 1982 with the publication of the Yinon Plan. The document is remarkable in its candor for the Zionist plan for the destruction of the Middle East. “Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation would prove to be advantageous to Israel at least in the short term,” Yinon suggested.

The recent attacks on Saudi oil facilities by Yemeni Houthi forces demonstrate once again that an aggressive foreign policy often brings unintended consequences and can result in blowback. In 2015 Saudi Arabia attacked its neighbor, Yemen, because a coup in that country ousted the Saudi-backed dictator. Four years later Yemen is in ruins, with nearly 100,000 Yemenis killed and millions more facing death by starvation. It has been rightly called the worst humanitarian catastrophe on the planet.

But rich and powerful Saudi Arabia did not defeat Yemen. In fact, the Saudis last month asked the Trump Administration to help facilitate talks with the Houthis in hopes that the war, which has cost Saudi Arabia tens of billions of dollars, could finally end without Saudi crown prince Mohammad bin Salman losing too much face. Washington admitted earlier this month that those talks had begun.

As usual, we’re expected to believe officialdom on responsibility for the attack on Saudi Arabia’s oil production. Mike Pompeo, Trump’s former CIA boss and tank commander, reflexively blamed Iran minus any evidence whatsoever.

Saudi Arabia revealed yesterday that, contrary to its initial estimates, Aramco should be able to restore oil production to 100% capacity by the end of the month. And on Wednesday morning, the kingdom's Defense Ministry said it was planning a press conference to present "material evidence" purportedly linking Tehran to the unprecedented attack on the Kingdom's oil infrastructure.

The country's defense ministry will hold a news conference later in the day laying out new evidence. This follows reports from the US claiming that the roughly 20 missiles and drones used in the attack had been traced back to a 'launch site' in southern Iran.

Tehran has denied involvement in the Sept. 14 attacks, while the Houthi rebels in nearby Yemen have claimed credit. But Washington and Riyadh have adamantly blamed Iran, whom they have blamed for several 'attacks' in the region since the start of the year.

If we consult a map, we discover Israel is situated to the northwest of Saudi Arabia. Iran is in the east and Iraq to the north. Because cruise missiles and drones have the capability of changing direction, we do not have a good idea where the missiles came from and the party responsible for launching them.

For the US, this is not a problem. It is now habituated to telling lies, releasing misinformation, and disseminating propaganda associated with false flag attacks. Much of what it reports is believed without question by millions of Americans. The state describes this mass credulity and inability to question authority as “patriotism.”

On Saturday, a large-scale drone attack struck a key Saudi oil facility, disrupting about half the kingdom’s oil capacity.

The strike resulted in the suspension of millions of dollars’ worth of oil and gas output, and caused a spike in global energy prices. U.S. officials are pointing the finger at Iran. While the strike was more sophisticated and damaging than previous attacks, open military conflict with Iran is still probably—though by no means certainly—off the table. The question is, how many more of these incidents can the region’s uneasy status quo withstand?

How were low-tech drones able to pierce Saudi Arabian security? Defence system called into question despite country spending $65bn on arms last year including US radar and Patriot missiles - as mocking Putin says they should have bought Russian.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has suggested Saudi Arabia should buy Russian air defense systems to protect its oil facilities from drone attacks, pointing to Iran and Turkey, who operate S-300 and S-400 missiles, respectively.

“Saudi Arabia needs to make a smart decision, as Iran did by buying our S-300, and as Mr. Erdogan did by deciding to buy the most advanced S-400 Triumph air defense systems from Russia,” Putin told reporters in Ankara on Monday. “These kinds of systems are capable of defending any kind of infrastructure in Saudi Arabia from any kind of attack.”

Putin was answering a question about the recent drone attack on Saudi Arabian oil facilities, which Washington has blamed on Iran, though Yemen’s Houthi rebels have claimed responsibility. A coalition led by Saudi Arabia invaded Yemen in 2015 and has fought the Houthis there since.

Deliberately missing from the BBC's history lesson are several key facts, leaving readers to draw conclusions that conveniently propel the West's agenda versus Iran forward.

The US and Saudi Arabia vs. MENA

The war in Yemen was a result of US-backed regime change operations aimed at Yemen - along with Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Syria, and Egypt - starting in 2011.

Major hostilities began when the client regime installed by the US was ousted from power in 2015. Since then, the US and its Saudi allies have brutalized and ravaged Yemen triggering one of the worst humanitarian crises of the 21st century.

The UN's own news service in an article titled, "Humanitarian crisis in Yemen remains the worst in the world, warns UN," would admit:

SOURCE: SUMMIT.NEWS
China has warned President Trump that he is being manipulated by warhawks into believing “conspiracy theories” that Tehran was behind the attack on Saudi oil facilities and that any “revenge attack” on Iran could cause the Middle East to “spiral out of control.”

The warning was contained in an editorial posted by the Global Times, which is widely recognized as a Communist Party mouthpiece.

A drone strike against two Saudi oil facilities by Houthi rebels on Saturday took out 5% of the world’s oil supply, but U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo immediately blamed Tehran for the attack.

In the Global Times piece, Beijing asserts that there is no evidence Iran was responsible and that, “US military revenge against Iran will lead the Middle East to spiral out of control.”

The strikes which paralysed the Saudi oil industry on Saturday morning, forcing it to halve its output of crude oil, were made by Iranian drones launched from Hashd al-Shaabi bases in southern Iraq, a senior Iraqi intelligence official has told Middle East Eye.

The attacks on Abqaiq and Khurais, two key Aramco facilities in eastern Saudi Arabia, were in retaliation for Israeli drone strikes on Hashd al-Shaabi bases and convoys in August, which were co-ordinated and funded by the Saudis, the official said.

“The latest attack comes for two reasons: another message from Iran to USA and its allies that as long as its siege on Iran continues no one will have stability in the region. However, the second more direct reason is a strong Iranian revenge for the recent Israeli attacks by drones launched from SDF-controlled areas in Syria against pro-Iranian Hashd bases,” he said.

Iraq categorically denied any involvement after an anonymous Iraqi intelligence official told Middle East Eye that the strikes were launched from Iraqi territory and were in retaliation for Saudi-funded Israeli drone strikes in August on Iranian-trained forces in Syria.

Saudi Arabia's crown prince has told US President Donald Trump the kingdom was "willing and able" to respond to the latest attacks claimed by Yemen's Houthi rebels on its oil facilities, state media reported.

"The kingdom is willing and able to confront and deal with this terrorist aggression," Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ( MBS) told Trump during a phone call on Saturday, according to the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA).

MBS was referring to drone attacks earlier in the day on two state-owned Saudi Aramco oil facilities, which triggered enormous fires and disrupted global energy supplies.

Trump supporters should let Trump hear from them as he is about to commit the United States to a war of Israel’s choosing. A mutual defense treaty between the US and Israel would give Israel the ability to commit the US to a war in Israel’s behalf.

Remember history. It was British prime minister Chamberlain’s guarantee to Poland that started World War II. The idiot British lost control over their own policy and gave it to a crazed and irresponsible Polish military dictatorship.

The attack on the Saudi oil fields that Trump and Israel are blaming on Iran is almost certainly an attack by Israel. The attack is being used to start a war with Iran.

A drone attack this weekend shut down half of Saudi Arabian oil production.

The US blamed Iran for the attack.

And later today the United States released satellite pictures showing th surgical strike on the oil facility in Abqaiq, Saudi Arabia.

Yemen's military has warned foreigners in Saudi Arabia to leave Aramco's oil processing plants, saying they are still a target and can be attacked "at any moment."

The warning came after Houthis and their allies in the Yemeni army deployed as many as 10 drones to bomb Abqaiq and Khurais oil facilities run by the Saudi state-owned oil company before dawn Saturday.

Spokesman for the Yemeni armed forces, General Yahya Sare'a, said in a tweet Monday that the attacks in the kingdom's eastern region had been carried out by drones with normal and jet engines.

He said Saudi Arabia should stop its "aggression and blockade on Yemen," or see the Yemeni army hit the kingdom "anywhere and anytime" it chooses.

For many of the national security teams that monitor threats on the U.S., the apparent drone strike Saturday on the heart of Saudi Arabia’s oil production facilities was the realization of their worst fears.

Based on early reports, multiple relatively inexpensive drone devices were able to pierce Saudi defenses in a way that a traditional air force could not: flying long distances to drop potent bombs that apparently set vast portions of the Saudi petroleum infrastructure ablaze.

The attack, for which Houthi rebels battling Saudi Arabia in Yemen took credit, underscored the fears raised by U.S. security officials and experts in terrorism about the rapid evolution of technologies allowing expanded unmanned flight.

Just as the price of oil was settling down from its record surge, it spiked once again, following a tweet by president Trump which has made war with Iran virtually inevitable.

Just before 7pm, Trump tweeted that "Saudi Arabia oil supply was attacked. There is reason to believe that we know the culprit, are locked and loaded depending on verification, but are waiting to hear from the Kingdom as to who they believe was the cause of this attack, and under what terms we would proceed!"

Setting aside the implicit admission that US foreign policy in the middle-east is now inexplicably run by Saudi Arabia, what is far more troubling is Trump's statement that the US military is "locked and loaded", and set to attack the country which instigated the attack on Saudi facilities, which according to Mike Pompeo was not Yemen, and its Houthi rebels, but rather Iran.

Two key oil processing plants in Saudi Arabia were attacked by drones on Saturday causing the interruption of about half of the company's total daily oil output. The attacks were claimed by the Houthi movement of Yemen.

The United States is ready to tap into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve if necessary in order to rebalance the global energy supply in the wake of the drone attacks on major Saudi oil facilities, White House adviser Kellyanne Conway said in an interview with "Fox News Sunday."

Conway hinted at the possibility of a meeting between President Donald Trump and the Iranian leadership on the margins of the UN General Assembly in New York. But she added that the chances of such a meeting happening are now in doubt due to the drone attacks.

The Trump administration is prepared to tap U.S. emergency oil reserves if necessary after drone attacks shut oil output in Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest crude exporter, a Department of Energy spokeswoman said.

SOURCE: ALJAZEERA.COM
US Energy Secretary Rick Perry said on Friday he will meet the new Saudi energy minister on Monday and likely discuss plans Saudi Arabia has to build nuclear reactors.

Perry did not say where he would meet Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, who took over from Khalid al-Falih on Sunday. But a US official said the meeting would likely take place on the sidelines of an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) meeting in Vienna next week.

The kingdom has so far resisted agreeing to standards that would block its ability to enrich uranium and reprocessing of plutonium, possible pathways to making an atomic weapon. On Monday, Prince Abdulaziz said the kingdom wanted to enrich uranium for its nuclear power programme, potentially complicating talks with the Trump administration on the atomic pact and the role of US companies.

The attacks began around four in the morning; video showed massive fires, billowing smoke and locals reported explosions. Iranian media implied that the attacks were carried out by Houthi rebels in Yemen, who have been backed by Theran. However the facilities that were struck are in northeastern Saudi Arabia, closer to Bahrain and Qatar. A drone would have to fly 1,000 km. to reach the facilities.

But the attack was also a serious escalation. This is the third attack of this kind, a long-range strike on key oil infrastructure. It shows that ability of the drone operator to carry out precision attacks. It also shows they have improve the ordnance carried by the drones, and that the drones can fly long-distances.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman hosted a delegation of Christian evangelicals and pro-Israel American figures in Jeddah this week.

The delegation was headed by Joel C. Rosenberg, a Christian Zionist and a dual citizen of Israel and the US.

The visit came on the eve of the 18th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, which the delegation said was no coincidence.

Authored by Whitney Webb via MintPressNews.com,

Today the event that defined the United States’ foreign policy in the 21st century, and heralded the destruction of whole countries, turns 18. The events of September 11, 2001 remains etched into the memories of Americans and many others, as a collective tragedy that brought Americans together and brought as well a general resolve among them that those responsible be brought to justice.

While the events of that day did unite Americans in these ways for a time, the different trajectories of the official relative to the independent investigations into the September 11 attacks have often led to division in the years since 2001, with vicious attacks or outright dismissal being levied against the latter.

The US has once again surpassed Saudi Arabia and Russia to reclaim the No. 1 spot as the world's largest oil exporter, according to data from the International Energy Agency.

Record shale production helped the US ship nearly 9 million barrels of crude and other oil products a day in June, surpassing Saudi Arabia, Bloomberg reports. And as more companies build the infrastructure necessary to transport oil from fields in Texas and New Mexico to the coast, the amount of oil exported by the US is expected to climb.

The increase in US crude exports in June was helped by a surge in crude-oil shipments to more than 3 million barrels a day, according to the IEA report. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia was cutting exports in line with the OPEC+ agreement on production cuts, while Russia's output was hampered by the Druzhba pipeline crisis.

SOURCE: ZEROHEDGE
Among the most underreported but explosive stories of the past six months has been growing signs of Saudi Arabia's nuclear ambitions. But now there are new questions over whether the kingdom's future planned two nuclear power reactors will be limited to purely energy-related and peaceful purposes.

On Monday the kingdom's nuclear energy minister said Saudi Arabia wants to enrich uranium for its nuclear power program, Reuters reports — an announcement likely to hinder talks with Washington over American companies' potential help in establishing its atomic energy program.

"The world’s top oil exporter says it wants to use nuclear power to diversify its energy mix, but enrichment also opens up the possibility of military uses of uranium," Reuters noted.

Dozens of Palestinians have forcibly disappeared in Saudi Arabia and their fates remain unknown, according to testimonies by their families given to a Swiss-based rights group.

The Euro-Mediterranean for Human Rights Monitor, an independent, nonprofit rights organization, announced the information in a statement on Saturday.

It said it was unable to give the exact number of the Palestinians who have forcibly disappeared in Saudi Arabia, but said it had the names of some 60 Palestinians who had met that fate.

The Palestinian community in Saudi Arabia believes that the real number of the abductees is far higher.

Saudi Arabia has suffered loss of military personnel and mercenaries in a retaliatory missile strike carried out by Yemen's army soldiers and fighters from allied Popular Committees targeting positions in the southern region of Jizan.

The media bureau of Yemen's Houthi Ansarullah movement announced in a statement that six domestically-developed Zelzal-1 (Earthquake-1) missiles were fired at Saudi strongholds that were also populated by militiamen loyal to former Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi east of the mountainous district of Jabal al-Doud on Sunday afternoon.

Saudi Arabia's new energy minister has said he favours cutting oil production in order to shore up prices amid a global over-supply, according to reports.

Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, who was appointed by father King Salman Sunday, is said to have made the remark at the World Energy Congress in Abu Dhabi Monday.

Oil prices have been falling as America ramps up supply using fracking techniques, while fears of a global recession amid its trade war with China has caused a slump in demand.

Because both of these factors are outside of OPEC's direct control, analysts have voiced doubts over how effective cutting production would be in bottoming-out the market.

However, Prince Abdulaziz appeared to swing his support behind further output reductions at the summit.

'Cutting output will benefit all members of OPEC,' he reportedly said.

Robert Mueller - pitched as an incorruptible beacon of justice when he was tasked with (unsuccessfully) hunting down ties between Donald Trump and Russia - was nothing more than a hatchet man for the deep state, who participated in a coverup of Saudi Arabia's role in 9/11 according to a new report by the New York Post's Paul Sperry - citing former FBI investigators and a new lawsuit by 9/11 victims.

According to Sperry, Mueller stonewalled after FBI agents discovered evidence of "multiple, systemic efforts by the Saudi government to assist the hijackers in the lead-up to the 9/11 attacks," while the former FBI director allegedly "covered up evidence pointing back to the Saudi Embassy and Riyadh — and may have even misled Congress about what he knew."

While the Saudi-led coalition imposes restrictions on Sanaa airport, forces in the south prevent those seeking treatment abroad from leaving through Aden.

Hussein Saeed, 45, has been suffering from liver cancer for the past year and has tried to receive proper treatment in Sanaa, the Yemeni capital currently held by Houthi rebels, without success.

The Saudi-led coalition battling the Houthis imposed restrictions on Sanaa airport on 9 August 2016, and with no commercial flights able to leave or enter, medicines cannot arrive in the city.

Over the past year, Saeed’s health has declined, and although he has been moved between several hospitals in the capital he has failed to receive proper healthcare.

Having heard of dozens of cancer patients dying in Sanaa, Saeed decided his best option would be to leave the country to receive medical treatment in India, where many other patients have received treatment for the disease.

However, it has subsequently transpired that Jeremy Hunt’s recent campaign for the leadership of the British Conservative Party was largely financed by a close associate of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman. The South African banker and philanthropist Ken Costa has been described in some quarters as Bin Salman’s “point-man” in the UK.

Or bagman, if you prefer.

It is unsurprising, then, that Hunt publicly bats for Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) at every available opportunity, for example in deflecting criticism regarding the Saudi role in the precipitation of the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, and also in consistently demonstrating hostility toward Iran.

It has been reported that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman originally came up with the idea for the city when he “pulled up a map of his country on Google Earth and saw its northwest quadrant was a blank slate.” He ultimately decided that it would be an ideal location for “the city of the future”, and he enlisted an army of U.S. consultants to help him fulfill his dream.

But will his dream ultimately become a nightmare? There are some extremely alarming things that I want to tell you about, but first let’s talk about some of the cool stuff that is planned for the city…

The in-development Saudi Arabian city-state will have robot maids, flying taxis, and glow-in-the-dark sand, according to confidential planning documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. An artificial moon will light up the sky every night, and a Jurassic Park-style island will let visitors mingle with robot dinosaurs.

Sounds like a fun place to live, right?

The United States Senate on Monday failed to override President Donald Trump's vetoes of legislation passed by Congress that would have blocked the sale of certain weapons to Saudi Arabia.

In the first of three separate efforts to overturn the Republican president's vetoes, supporters failed by a vote of 45-40, well short of the two-thirds needed. Five of the chamber's 53 Republicans joined Democrats in voting to override Trump.

It was big news. U.S. military forces streamed into Saudi Arabia in response to a supposedly serious threat to the kingdom’s eastern region. The American troops were invited by nervous Saudi royals; it wasn’t an American invasion per se. Everything unfolded smoothly at first; still, the consequences would be severe for the United States. Pick up the latest Military Times, or any other news source, and the story will seem recent, if not worthy of any special attention or alarm. Indeed, US troops are headed into Saudi Arabia right now, but that’s not the situation described above.

Attacks by the Shi’ite Houthi movement against pro-Saudi and pro-UAE targets in southern Yemen have killed at least 51 people, most of them military forces loyal to the UAE, and a high-ranking UAE official.

The largest incident was a missile fired by the Houthis, which hit a military parade in the southern capital of Aden. The casualties included a number of military commanders, and parading fighters.

Despite drone and missile attacks being launched by the Houthis, and the Houthis being very clear about that fact, Saudi Arabia wasn’t going to miss a chance to use anything bad happening to blame Iran.

Saudi Arabia is at the centre of a new scandal involving the use of Facebook to spread misinformation through fake campaigns promoted on the pages of the social media giant. Details uncovered by the Guardian show that the kingdom paid millions of pounds to a firm owned by Sir Lynton Crosby – a prominent right-wing political strategist – to improve the image of Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman.

If anyone knows where the skeletons are buried contradicting the official 9/11 narrative then it's none other than alleged terror mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The Wall Street Journal and others report that he's ready to spill the beans on Saudi Arabia's involvement in the worst terror attack to ever take place on American soil as part of a victims' lawsuit seeking damages from the kingdom as a state sponsor.

A letter filed in the US District Court in Manhattan disclosed an offer to spare Mohammed the death penalty in exchange for his willingness to be deposed by the victims, who are seeking billions of dollars in damage from the kingdom, making it extremely politically sensitive regarding both embarrassing secrets of Riyadh's role in 9/11 and the potential to severely damage US-Saudi economic ties.

SOURCE: ZEROHEDGE

If anyone knows where the skeletons are buried contradicting the official 9/11 narrative then it's none other than alleged terror mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The Wall Street Journal and others report that he's ready to spill the beans on Saudi Arabia's involvement in the worst terror attack to ever take place on American soil as part of a victims' lawsuit seeking damages from the kingdom as a state sponsor.

A letter filed in the US District Court in Manhattan disclosed an offer to spare Mohammed the death penalty in exchange for his willingness to be deposed by the victims, who are seeking billions of dollars in damage from the kingdom, making it extremely politically sensitive regarding both embarrassing secrets of Riyadh's role in 9/11 and the potential to severely damage US-Saudi economic ties.

The only member of the delegation identified by local media was Saudi student and activist Mohammed Saud, who regularly tweets in support of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Saud was chased out by Palestinians and worshippers from the al-Aqsa mosque compound in the Old City of Jerusalem on 22 July when they realized he was a member of the delegation.

Local media circulated videos showing Palestinians calling him “cheap,” telling him to “go pray in the Knesset,” spitting on him and throwing chairs and objects at him:

SOURCE: MIDDLE EAST MONITOR
A UAE-backed commander was amongst those killed when an explosion struck a military parade in Yemen’s southern city of Aden today.

Scores were injured and killed in the blast which rocked the seat of Yemen’s Saudi-backed internationally recognised government.

The Houthi movement said it was behind the attack. Their official channel Al Masirah TV said it had launched a medium-range ballistic missile and an armed drone at the military parade.

“The blast occurred behind the stand where the ceremony was taking place at Al Jalaa military camp in Buraiqa district in Aden,” Reuters reported a witness saying.

The Yemeni army says it has launched several drones against an airbase in southwestern Saudi Arabia after the kingdom and its allies slew more than a dozen people in northern Yemen.

On Monday, army spokesman Yahya Sare'e was quoted by the al-Masirah television network as saying that the aircraft had stricken the King Khalid Airbase in the kingdom’s Asir region. The counter-raid used unmanned aerial vehicles of the Qasef 2K make, he added.

“The attack targeted warplane hangers and important military sites accurately,” Sare’e was cited by the network as saying.

Using ample Western support, the kingdom and its most important regional allies have been hitting Yemen in an indiscriminate invasion since March 2015. The military aggression has been seeking to restore the impoverished country’s former Saudi-allied government, whose officials have fled the country and refused to negotiate power.

Former US diplomat Michael Springmann says the United States continues to support Saudi Arabia in its war on Yemen despite the humanitarian catastrophe there.