Free Republic

Commanders and advisors from Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are on the ground in Yemen and playing a direct role in Houthi rebel attacks on commercial traffic in the Red Sea. The IRGC has stationed missile and drone trainers and operators in Yemen, as well as personnel providing tactical intelligence support to the Houthis, U.S. and Middle East officials told Semafor. The IRGC, through its overseas Qods Force, has also overseen the transfer to the Houthis of the attack drones, cruise missiles, and medium-range ballistic missiles used in a string of strikes on Red Sea and Israeli targets in...

How perfect is this! The image reminds me of the beginning of the Charles Bukowski novel 'Post Office' - "It began as a mistake..." How I would've so loved to seen the confused expression on MBS' face as his Saudi political advisors explained the concept of the 'fist bump' greeting he was to perform with this biden fellow. How do you say WTF in Arabic?

US President Joe Biden sought to use his first Middle East tour in office to reassert Washington's influence but emerged without a single diplomatic breakthrough, an outcome analysts said was no surprise. On issues ranging from energy prices to human rights and Israel's role in the region, Biden could point only to small -- if any -- gains after four whirlwind days of meetings and speeches. Driving the point home, as Air Force One flew back to Washington Saturday evening, Biden's Saudi hosts downplayed one of the trip's few concrete announcements: their lifting of airspace restrictions on flights to and...

JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia—For Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, his high-profile meeting with President Biden was an immediate victory, signaling that his isolation on the world stage is over. But the American president will have to wait weeks, perhaps months, before the world knows if his sojourn to the Middle East paid off for the U.S. On Saturday, Mr. Biden left Saudi Arabia, the second and final stop on a four-day Middle East tour that also took him to Israel. His aim was to reaffirm U.S. ties with an oil-rich region, following a rift with Saudi leaders after Mr. Biden...

JEDDAH — Leaders who participated in the Jeddah Security and Development Summit released the final statement of Summit, stressing their keenness to confront challenges in the region and preserve security in the Middle East. The summit, hosted by Saudi Arabia, kicked off on Saturday with the participation of all GCC countries and Egypt, Jordan and Iraq – also known as GCC+3. US President Joe Biden and other US officials who arrived in the Kingdom on Friday also took part in the regional summit. In the communique, the leaders renewed their call on Iran to fully cooperate with the International Atomic...

Tehran is technically capable of making a nuclear bomb but has yet to decide whether to build it, a senior adviser to Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei told Al Jazeera's Arabic service on Sunday. Tehran will also directly respond against Israel should its security be targeted, the report says citing the advisor. "In a few days we were able to enrich uranium up to 60% and we can easily produce 90% enriched uranium ... Iran has the technical means to produce a nuclear bomb but there has been no decision by Iran to build one," Kamal Kharrazi said.

Excerpt: "Biden yesterday reaffirmed his commitment to returning to the 2015 JCPOA nuclear deal with Iran– a deal which saw the Obama government send $100 billion to Iran, including a C-130 Hercules carrying $400 million in cash on January 16, 2016, as CNN reported. The Islamist regime then used that money to wage war in Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq, Gaza and around the world, massively destablizing the world. Now, Biden’s offer to the Ayatollahs threatens to dwarf even that gargantuan act of treason. “Under the deal, Iran gets a financial package worth up to $275 billion in the first year and...

Russian President Vladimir Putin will be meeting with Iran's leader, Sayad Ali Khamenei, during his visit to Teheran which will begin on the 19th of July.

President Biden accused Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister of lying when he contradicted the president’s claim that had raised the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi with Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman and bristled when asked about the fist bump with the royal. Returning early Sunday morning to the White House after his four-day trip to Israel and Saudi Arabia, Biden was asked whether A​del al-Jubier was telling the truth when he said he didn’t hear the president bring up Khashoggi with the prince, commonly referred to as MBS. “No,” Biden responded bluntly, according to a White House pool report. The president,...

CNN's Wolf Blitzer presses Saudi diplomat Adel al-Jubeir, who was in the room during President Joe Biden's meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, about the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Video at source.

Lina al-Hathloul is an activist from Saudi Arabia whose sister, Loujain, was imprisoned and tortured from 2018 to 2021. She traveled to Washington this week to explain to policymakers just how devastating it is that President Joe Biden has traveled to the Middle East to meet Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, known as MBS. “The thing is, Saudi Arabia is now a police state. So whatever reforms they brag about having, concretely, it really depends on the will of MBS,” Lina al-Hathloul told me. “It’s a dictatorship and a dark era for Saudi that we’ve never experienced...

Saudi Arabia said it will continue to bolster its partnerships with both the United States and China as US President visited the kingdom for his first visit since he became president. "We build bridges with people; we don't see one as exclusive of the other," Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Adel al-Jubeir, said in an interview with CNBC network on Saturday. “China is our largest trading partner. It’s a huge market for energy and a huge market in the future. And China is a big investor in Saudi Arabia,” he added. "The United States is of course our number...

In May 2011, discussions began secretly in Mexico between a known Los Zetas associate and Quds Force operative Manssor Arbabsiar. The discussion would lead to planning a C-4 detonation at a Washington, D.C. restaurant frequented by Saudi Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir. The Quds Force operative did not know that he was being recorded in a DEA operation. Over the course of a few months, several clandestine meetings in Mexico planned strikes against the Israeli Embassy in Washington, plus and the Saudi and Israeli Embassies in Argentina. New opium trafficking lanes between the Middle East and Mexico were also charted. In July...

Speaking at a joint press conference with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Sunday, Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir commended President Donald Trump for an international trip designed to unite people of different faiths to address a threat faced by all of humanity around the globe regardless of their religion. “The President deserves a lot of credit for taking this step, making his first visit outside the U.S. to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam and land of the two holy Mosques, and then going to Israel and then going to the Vatican to deal...

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Sunday that Islamophobia in parts of the world is fueling terrorism. "One of the things that fuel terrorism is the expression in some parts of the world of Islamophobic feelings and Islamophobic policies and Islamophobic hate speeches," Guterres said at a joint news conference with Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir. "This is sometimes the best support that Daesh can have to make its own propaganda," Guterres said...

Saudi Arabia is not ruling out developing a nuclear bomb if its regional rival Iran obtains one, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told the Reuters news agency on Tuesday. Asked if Saudi Arabia had discussed seeking a nuclear bomb in the event Iran managed to obtain one, al-Jubeir replied the country would do "whatever we need to do in order to protect our people". "I don't think it would be logical to expect us to discuss any such issue in public and I don't think it would be reasonable to expect me to answer this question one way or another,"...

Russian and Saudi officials to meet over Middle East issues -- just after news surfaces of a secret meeting between Russia, Iran. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir will visit Moscow on Tuesday to discuss Syria conflict and the Islamic State group with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign ministry said Saturday. The two ministers last met in Qatar on August 3 when Lavrov, Jubeir and US Secretary of State John Kerry held a three-way meeting, with the situation in Syria topping the agenda. The ministers will continue "a discussion on ways to resolve the crisis in Syria," the...

Americans were stunned on October 11 when the Justice Department unsealed its complaint against Mansour Arbabsiar, a 56-year-old used-car dealer from Corpus Christi now in federal custody, and Ali Gholam Shakuri, a member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force. Shakuri remains inside Iran. The pair have been charged with conspiring to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington, Adel Al-Jubeir. As disclosed by the Treasury Department, the plot was coordinated by Arbabsiar’s cousin, Abdul Reza Shahlai, a top Quds Force functionary whom the Treasury designated in 2008 as one of several “individuals and entities fueling violence in Iraq.” Shahlai was...

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia urged the United States to attack Iran to destroy its nuclear programme, according to US documents leaked by WikiLeaks and published Sunday by daily newspapers. According to a leaked US cable, published by the New York Times, King Abdullah bin Abd al-Aziz made the call during an April 2008 meeting with US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker and US General David Petraeus. "He told you to 'cut off the head of the snake'," Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Washington, Adel al-Jubeir, told the US embassy in Riyadh two days after the high-level talks, according to the...

<p>You know you're in trouble when the man with the best American energy policy is a Saudi. We've had our differences with Adel al-Jubeir in the past. But the adviser to Crown Prince Abdullah had a point the other night on CNN when he noted that the pain Americans are now feeling at the gas pump is part self-inflicted.</p>