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DUBAI (Reuters) - Four commercial vessels were targeted by “sabotage operations” near the territorial waters of the United Arab Emirates without causing casualties, the foreign ministry said on Sunday, without giving details of the nature of the sabotage.

Saudis Are Hoping Mohammed bin Salman Will Drain the Swamp A road trip among ordinary Saudis revealed high hopes, and hardly any worries, about the country's new political era. BY STEVEN A. COOK | NOVEMBER 21, 2017, 12:46 PM We must be doing 80 miles per hour on a rutted road outside the northwestern Saudi town of Ula. It is late and I am tired, but I’ve got one eye on the road and one eye on the dashboard indicator light signaling that the Chevy Tahoe in which I am traveling has low tire pressure. What would happen if this...

Is it Utopia or Reality? By Wallace Bruschweiler and William Palumbo The purpose of this article is to examine the current and rapidly developing trends in the Middle East, and attempt to project likely scenarios in the near to middle-term future. Only time will tell if what we are projecting as possible is a utopia, or will in fact become reality. Background In June 2009, then U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama went to Cairo and delivered a speech at Cairo University. It was co-hosted by Al-Azhar University, the preeminent theological seminary in the Islamic world. Observing this speech from the...

It’s a looming heavyweight prizefight that nobody wants to see come off. But should escalating tensions between bitter regional rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia break out into open conflict, Riyadh’s formidable military arsenal would quickly overwhelm Iranian forces in a conventional war, while Tehran would hold the advantage against any Saudi forces in a proxy guerrilla war, analysts say. The animosity between the two main pillars of power in the Middle East has escalated over the past week, when Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry ordered all Saudi nationals to immediately evacuate Lebanon. The move was presumably targeted at the growing power...

While turbulent during the best of times, gigantic waves of change are now sweeping across the Middle East. The magnitude is such that the impact on the global price of oil, as well as world markets, is likely to be enormous. A dramatic geo-political realignment by Saudi Arabia is in full swing this month. It’s upending many decades of established strategic relationships among the world's superpowers and, in particular, is throwing the Middle East into turmoil. So much is currently in flux, especially in Saudi Arabia, that nearly anything can happen next. Which is precisely why this volatile situation should...

Tehran, Nov 8, IRNA – During the past few months, the triple lobby of Riyadh, Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi have been whispering in the ears of Washington to cut off first what they claimed to be the tale of snake in the Middle East (the Hezbollah of Lebanon), and then behead the snake itself (Iran). Killing of the Iran Nuclear Deal as well as intensifying the sanctions against Iran and Hezbollah in the US Congress; commemorating the death of 241 US [Marines] in Beirut and accusing Iran and Hezbollah for that; inviting Iraq's [Prime Minister] Heidar al-Abadi to Saudi...

While the world tries to interpret Saudi Arabia's moves to clamp down on corruption and watches the kingdom accuse Iran of an "act of war," a former Reagan administration Pentagon official says Saudi Arabia is gearing up for the very real possibility of a "very, very bloody" war with Iran. Within the past several days, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is next in line to the Saudi throne, has ordered the arrests of many government officials, including 11 princes, on allegations of corruption. More recently, the crown prince accused Iran of an “act of war” after Iranian-backed Houthi...

Bannon said a driving force behind the transformation of Saudi Arabia and other major events in the Middle East is the recognition by many regional powers that “President Trump and the United States of America have had enough of it and are just not going to tolerate anymore this financing, the exporting of radical Islamic terror into Western Europe and the United States.” He recalled Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s giving a landmark speech several years ago about “how Islam had to reform itself internally to Islam, just like Christianity went through a huge reformation.” *snip* “One the things that...

The Middle East and North Africa region is in turmoil from Iraq to Yemen and from Syria to Libya, but French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius warned Sunday of an “explosion” unless the deadlock in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations is broken. Speaking in Ramallah, he said both Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Jordan’s King Abdullah had expressed that view to him during talks with them over the weekend. Fabius was speaking after meeting with Palestinian Authority (P.A.) chairman Mahmoud Abbas during an intensive regional trip designed to push a French initiative to secure a U.N. Security Council resolution laying out the basis...

This is probably the most important ongoing revolt in the Middle East right now. If Assad were to fall, it would reverberate all over the region, and greatly weaken the Iranian regime. Typically, it is getting far less coverage than the other “crises,” but we’ll follow it here. Latest updates: Dara’a. According to eyewitnesses, the whole city (Population: ~100,000) is up in arms. Tens of thousands are on the street demanding freedom and liberty. Many are aware that the French Foreign Ministry, the US State Department, and the world is watching what they’re doing. This video shows Syrian security men...