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The gangster state of North Korea became a nuclear power in 2006-2007, despite lots of foreign aid aimed at precluding just such proliferation -- help usually not otherwise accorded such a loony dictatorship. Apparently the civilized world rightly suspected that if nuclear, Pyongyang would either export nuclear material and expertise to other unstable countries, or bully its successful but non-nuclear neighbors -- or both. The United States has given billions of dollars in foreign aid to Pakistan, whose Islamist gangs have spearheaded radical anti-American terrorism. Since a corrupt Pakistan went nuclear in 1998, it has been able to extort...

Since terrorists attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, victims’ loved ones, injured survivors, and members of the media have all tried without much success to discover the true nature of the relationship between the 19 hijackers – 15 of them Saudi nationals – and the Saudi Arabian government. Many news organizations reported that some of the terrorists were linked to the Saudi royals and that they even may have received financial support from them as well as from several mysterious, moneyed Saudi men living in San Diego. Saudi Arabia has repeatedly denied any connection, and neither President George...

EILAT, Israel – Saudi Arabia is proposing a sweeping deal to Russia that solidifies Moscow’s position in the Middle East and Persian Gulf largely at the expense of the United States, according to informed Egyptian security officials. The deal incorporates increased Russian involvement in Egypt, Syria and the Persian Gulf, and even involves a Saudi guarantee to aid against terror plots targeting the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. The Egyptian officials said the deal seeks to replace the U.S. with Russia as the major weapons dealer to Egypt. However, the weapons sales to Cairo are only the tip of...

America’s “schizophrenic” approach to the Middle East could result in many key Arab states deciding to align themselves more closely with Russia, the rulers of Bahrain warned on Sunday. In an exclusive interview with The Telegraph, Sheikh Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa, the Crown Prince of Bahrain, warned that Barack Obama's administration would lose influence in the region if it persisted with what a “transient and reactive” foreign policy. There has been a sharp rise in tensions between Washington and several major Arab states in the wake of last month’s controversial interim agreement with Iran over its nuclear programme. Citing President...

The Iranian Fars news agency claimed in a report on Sunday that the head of the Saudi intelligence service recently met with several senior Israeli security officials, including the head of the Israeli Mossad. According to the report, the meeting took place in Geneva on November 27. Fars based its claims on a whistleblower with access to Saudi classified information

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Saudi King Abdullah and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu were not won over by President Barack Obama's pledges in personal phone calls to the two Middle East leaders last week not to allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon. Their skepticism only grew. This development in the Iranian nuclear controversy finds two of the three leaders trapped in a credibility gap between their public pronouncements and the Iranian reality which has long overtaken them both. Obama’s oft-repeated pledge is canceled out by most Western nuclear experts, who are convinced that Iran managed to advance to a capacity for producing four...

FORT WORTH – The chaplain at a Christian university in Texas on Tuesday defended the university’s decision to set aside a room on campus for Muslim students to pray, saying it was the Biblical thing do to. The Rev. Dr. Robert Kenji Flowers, chaplain at Texas Wesleyan University and also an adjunct world religion professor there, said in an interview with The College Fix that recent controversy over the room – which is a little over 1-years-old - came as a surprise to him. Debate over the room flared after a campus news report about the room was published last...

The gunning down of Hajj Hassan Hollo al-Laqqis, a high-ranking Hizballah commander and close crony of Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, raised the stakes of the clandestine war running between Saudi Arabia and Iran, two weeks after two suicide bombers blew themselves up outside the Iranian embassy in Beirut. The Hizballah officer was killed by five shots to the head and throat in the underground parking lot of his home in the Hadath neighborhood southwest of Beirut, when he returned home from work after midnight Tuesday, Dec. 3. The Hizballah statement, which said: “Israel is automatically held responsible for the crime,” described...

Muslim males learn to abuse and assault women from childhood on. It’s necessary to understand the situation of these human slaves that work in Arab households to know that they are often sex-slaves. There is nothing they can do to avert this kind of rape behind closed doors. They can’t file a police complaint, they can’t leave as their passports are in possession of their employer, they can’t complain to the head of the family in risk of being beaten and abused. And like in this case, the blame will always be put on the slave – not the abuser....

Sorry for the corny title of this article — I was going to call it “It’s the Centrifuges, Stupid!” — but as a Hollywood movie executive famously said in a script meeting, “Obviousness is your friend.” He was right about screenplays and he’s right here. No one believes Barack Obama about anything anymore. Why should they? The new Iran deal is Obamacare II, only worse, a thousand megatons worse. So many things are wrong with the agreement coming out of Geneva, it’s hard to know where to begin (for an excellent overall go to The Israel Project’s Tower website or...

Why is Iran working on Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles? There is no possible peaceful purpose for ballistic missiles. Iran may claim that their nuclear program is peaceful, but they cannot possibly make that claim when it comes to ballistic missiles. The only reason to have ballistic missiles is to target enemies with high explosives and WMD. Iran’s Shehab-3 Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles have sufficient range to hit Israel, Saudi Arabia and US bases in Afghanistan, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait and Turkey. Why are the Iranians working with the North Koreans on multi-stage Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs)? Who might the Iranians be...

Saudi Arabia's highest religious council, the Majlis al-Ifta’ al-A’ala, has threatened a "religious war" over any attempts to implement equal prayer rights for Jews on Jerusalem's Temple Mount. The Temple Mount is Judaism's holiest site, the site of two Jewish Temples and where some Jewish traditions state the world began. It is also the site of the large "Al Aqsa" Islamic complex, which is built on top of the ruins of the Jewish Temples. The site itself is administered by the Waqf Islamic trust. In measures Jewish activists decry as discriminatory, only Muslims may pray or carry out any other...

Britain attempted to limit Jewish immigration as a means of appeasing the Arabs. As a result of the Holocaust in Europe, many Jews illegally entered Palestine during World War II...At the end of World War II, in 1945, the United States took up the Zionist cause. Britain, unable to find a practical solution, referred the problem to the United Nations, which on November 29, 1947, voted to partition Palestine. The Jews were to possess more than half of Palestine, though they made up less than half of Palestine's population. The Palestinian Arabs, aided by volunteers from other countries, fought the...

President Obama will formally present a new national security strategy early next year, identifying his foreign policy priorities for the remainder of his time in office, the White House said Friday. The new policy document will be the second of Obama's administration and will likely update the previous one, released in May 2010, in several important areas. Those include policies for fighting the next phase of the war against al-Qaeda, the shift of national security resources to Asia and a plan to manage declining defense budgets amid fiscal strain.

Ethiopian workers face hostility amid 'Saudisation' campaign to control foreign labour and get more Saudi citizens into work . . . Saudi Arabia's addiction to cheap foreign labour goes back to the oil boom and religious awakening of the mid-1970s. In recent years it has come to be seen as an enormous problem that distorts the economy and keeps young people out of the labour market. But the government turned a blind eye and little happened until March. And it remains to be seen whether the notorious kafala (sponsorship) system – responsible for many abuses – can be reformed or...

Saudi Arabia has sent dozens of tanks to Bahrain, where anti-government protests continue for about two weeks, Egypt's Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper said on Tuesday. Eyewitnesses reported seeing "15 tank carriers carrying two tanks each heading towards Bahrain" along the 25-km King Fahd causeway, which links the small island nation of Bahrain to Saudi Arabia. Protestors are mainly Shiites account for about 70% of the Bahraini population, but have long complained of discrimination and other abuses by the Sunni Khalifa dynasty that has ruled the tiny Gulf nation for more than two centuries. In the worst unrest in the kingdom since...

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the billionaire Saudi Arabian investor, has warned that his country’s oil-dependent economy is increasingly vulnerable to competition from the US shale revolution, setting him at odds with his country’s oil ministry and Opec officials.In an open letter addressed to Ali Naimi, the Saudi oil minister, the prince called on the government to accelerate plans to diversify the economy.

Much to the distress of Indian leaders, on January 19 the Bangladesh army announced it had thwarted a coup attempt against the government, conceived and nearly executed by some mid-ranking officers. Five army officers, including a lieutenant colonel and two Majors have already been arrested, while a top army officer is under investigation. The attempted coup was instigated by Islamic radical military personnel, including some Bangladeshis living abroad and retired and serving officers. Ever since the India-friendly government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina came into office in December 2008, her arch-rival Begum Khaleda Zia and elements of Pakistan’s military establishment...

Complete Headline: Iran's Rouhani: "We Are Not Dismantling Our Nuclear Facilities; Iran Will Maintain Its Uranium Enrichment Programme" In case there was any confusion just how "historic" last week's agreement with Iran, loudly trumpeted by the Obama administration as the most "historic" since Syria in a, well, long time, truly was in terms of curbing Iran's nuclear ambitions, here is the explanation straight from the horse's mouth i.e., Iran president Hassan Rouhani who spoke today in an interview with the FT. "Mr Rouhani struck a tough line on Iran’s expectations over a comprehensive nuclear deal to be negotiated following...

Under the watchful eyes of Saudi policemen, little knots of Ethiopian men sit chatting on doorsteps and sprawl on threadbare grass at one of Riyadh's busiest junctions. These are tense, wary times in Manfouha, a few minutes' drive from the capital's glittering towers and swanky shopping malls. Manfouha is the bleak frontline in Saudi Arabia's campaign to get rid of its illegal foreign workers, control the legal ones and help get more of its own citizens into work. This month two or three Ethiopians were killed here after a raid erupted into full-scale rioting. Keeping their distance from the officers...

Even before any comprehensive agreement was reached on the nuclear file, Washington appears to have begun to dismantle the carefully assembled diplomatic structure seeking to contain Iranian regional ambitions. A report by respected Washington-based journalist Hussein Abdul Hussein in the Kuwaiti Al-Rai newspaper this week revealed details of an indirect US channel with Hezbollah. … News items are also surfacing suggesting a stark split between the US and Saudi Arabia over regional policy in general, and policy toward Syria in particular. Saudi officials are going on the record expressing their alarm at the direction of American policy. … So is...

Iran's six-month temporary rollback of its nuclear activities agreed to in the recent deal has not begun and the start date has not yet been set, a spokesman for world powers' chief negotiator said Wednesday. "The actual date for the beginning of the six-month period of the first step has yet to be decided," Michael Mann, spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, told AFP.

(Reuters) - Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N) expects news about a multibillion dollar program to modernize the Saudi Arabian Navy in the next several months, senior company executives told Reuters at the Dubai Airshow on Wednesday after meetings with Saudi officials. "We're hopeful in the next several months that some clarity will present itself on how they want to go forward on what hull, what design, and what mission equipment," said Patrick Dewar, executive vice president of Lockheed Martin International. Lockheed Chief Executive Marillyn Hewson discussed the naval modernization program and other issues during the air show with Prince Salman bin...

It didn't take long to escalate Iran-Saudi relations, or the lack thereof, following this weekend's nuclear (non) deal. Moments ago Iran's Fars news agency reported that Iran’s coast guards have seized two Saudi fishing vessels after they entered the Islamic Republic's territorial waters, a provincial official announced on Wednesday. “Yesterday, the coast guards deployed in the country’s Southern waters came to spot two vessels in Iran’s protected waters in the South using electronic and optic tools and equipment,” Commander of Bushehr province Coast Guards Qalandar Lashkari said. He said that the Iranian coast guards rushed to the scene and were...

The security cabinet held a special meeting Tuesday to consider the implications of the new nuclear accord with Iran, the Syrian war, Hizballah and other current threats to national security. The session was unusually long and is expected to be carried over to Wednesday. IDF and intelligence chiefs gave the ministers special briefings.

In case you had any doubts as to whether the “interim” agreement with Iran on nuclear technology that Barack Obama and John Kerry foisted on the world in the dead of night over the weekend was a terrible development, the world’s foremost Shia Jihadist terrorist organization has provided confirmation.

How shambolic of a smoking ruin is the Obama presidency? When Tina Brown surveys the wreckage, the best—the best!—thing she sees, the thing she believes will be Barack Obama's shining legacy, is his handling of Iran and Syria, which she declares to be "smart," and of course, "nuanced." The Obamacare catastrophe? Not to worry. On today's Morning Joe, Brown assured us that those problems are "transient." No, look over here, at President Obama's masterful handling of foreign policy! Yes, years from now, when the minor hiccups of the Obamacare rollout will be long forgotten, people will still be marvelling at...

The Stratfor analysis reprinted below is interesting but has at least one glaring error as well as many dubious conclusions.According to the Stratfor analysis, The logic here suggests a process leading to the elimination of all sanctions in exchange for the supervision of Iran's nuclear activities to prevent it from developing a weapon. Unless this is an Iranian trick to somehow buy time to complete a weapon and test it, I would think that the deal could be done in six months. An Iranian ploy to create cover for building a weapon would also demand a reliable missile and a launch pad...

Saudi man divorces wife over cigarette found in her bag Husband insists on parting ways after finding cigarette inside wife’s bag Manama: A husband divorced his wife just three months after their marriage after he found a cigarette inside her bag. A relative of the wife said that her husband became furious after he discovered the cigarette and decided to divorce her despite her pleas and her claims that she did not smoke and that the cigarette was not hers, Saudi daily Okaz reported on Sunday from the southern city of Jizan. The husband has insisted on the divorce and...

Saudi Arabia claims they were kept in the dark by Western allies over Iran nuclear deal and says it will strike out on its own. A senior advisor to the Saudi royal family has accused its Western allies of deceiving the oil rich kingdom in striking the nuclear accord with Iran and said Riyadh would follow an independent foreign policy. Nawaf Obaid told a think tank meeting in London that Saudi Arabia was determined to pursue its own foreign and policy goals. Having in the past been reactive to events, the leading Sunni Muslim nation was determined to be pro-active...

TEL AVIV — Israeli personnel in recent days were in Saudi Arabia to inspect bases that could be used as a staging ground to launch attacks against Iran, according to informed Egyptian intelligence officials. The officials said Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan and other Arab and Persian Gulf countries have been discussing the next steps toward possible strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites. The officials said the U.S. passed strong messages to Israel and the Saudis that the Americans control radar capabilities over the skies near Iran and that no strike should be launched without permission from the Obama administration.

Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the UK said on Friday that the kingdom would not “sit idly by” if world powers fail to halt Iran’s nuclear program, calling the Obama administration’s “rush” to embrace Tehran as “incomprehensible.” “We are not going to sit idly by and receive a threat there and not think seriously how we can best defend our country and our region,” Prince Mohammed bin Nawaf bin Abdulaziz, who is the Saudi ambassador to the UK and King Abdullah’s nephew, told British newspaper The Times. “Let’s just leave it there, all options are available,” he said, referring to possible...

AFTER 40 years of hesitation and seven hard years of reform and lobbying, Turkey is basking today in the most qualified of invitations to begin the process of joining Europe - a continent whose eastern half the Ottoman empire controlled for centuries. A European Commission report released yesterday, which paves the way for a deciding vote by the 25-member European Union at its December summit, was heavily qualified, and Turkish leaders were muted in their expressions of delight at their initial success. Presenting the decision to the European parliament last night, commission president Romano Prodi said it was a "qualified...

Iran's nuclear deal with global powers was met with wary silence from Arab states on Sunday, with Iran's only two Arab friends Iraq and Syria welcoming the accord but others keeping their opinions to themselves. "I am afraid Iran will give up something on to get something else from the big powers in terms of regional politics. And I'm worrying about giving Iran more space or a freer hand in the region," said Abdullah al-Askar, chairman of the foreign affairs committee in Saudi Arabia's appointed Shoura Council, a quasi-parliament that advises the government on policy. "The government of Iran, month...

LINK ONLY PER FR POSTING RULES: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-22/iran-is-playing-obama-says-savvy-saudi-prince.html

American and European negotiators have given Iran until Saturday night, Nov. 23, the fourth day of negotiations in Geneva, to reach agreement on an interim nuclear deal, debkafile’s sources report. After that deadline, those delegations plan to cut the talks short and leave. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif retorted that his government would not bow to threats. The US-EU deadline indicated that Washington, Paris, London and Berlin had reached the limit of their concessions to Iran. UK Foreign Secretary William Hague said when he arrived in Geneva that the two difficulties encountered two weeks ago still remained. The Russian and...

...[T]his tacit Israeli-Sunni Arab cooperation is not based on any sort of reconciliation, but on the tribal tradition that my enemy’s enemy is my friend — and the enemy is Iran, which has been steadily laying the groundwork to build a nuclear weapon. Diplomats and ministers from Israel and the Israel lobby have been working Congress, while officials from Arab Gulf states have been telling the Obama administration directly the same message: how much they oppose the proposed deal that Secretary of State John Kerry and the foreign ministers of France, Britain, Russia, China and Germany have drafted to trade...

You're a self-respecting journalist. A guest on your show who is a leading member of one of the world's few absolute monarchies criticizes the lack of democracy in another country. Wouldn't you challenge him on his hypocrisy? Sorry, trick question: we're talking about Morning Joe. On today's show, Saudi Arabia's Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal mockingly referred to the Muslim Brotherhood's approach to democracy in Egypt under Morsi as "one man, one vote, one time," meaning that after the Brotherhood gained power, it didn't intend to permit future fair elections. Of course one free election would still be one more than...

A Sunday Times story headlined “Two Old Foes Unite Against Tehran” suggest, according to a diplomatic source, that Israel’s Mossad is working with the Saudis on contingency plans for an attack on Iran, should the latter not take down its nuclear weapons program in the deal to be signed in Geneva this week. The Israelis and the Saudis are convinced that the Geneva talks that seek to place limits on Tehran’s military nuclear development are nothing more than appeasement, Munich style, and will do little to slow Iran’s effort to possess a nuclear warhead, which it can then mount on...

Introduction In late January 2010, the PAK FA made its maiden flight, ushering in an end to an era of US dominance of stealth, fifth generation fighter aircraft. Military analysts of every shade and nation spent endless times speculating and awaited the first flight with sleepless nights and over bitter arguments about its final configuration, for the PAK FA was kept so secretive that none other than a very choice few knew what it would look like. Combat aircraft are the spear tip of any military power, and play a pivotal role in air warfare. And in today's day and...

<p>Washington, DC, May. 7 (UPI) -- U.S. authorities have extensively considered the possibility -- or likelihood -- that Israel will attack Iran's nuclear facilities, perhaps this year.</p> <p>U.S. analysts and government sources said the Bush administration has discussed the prospect of an Israeli air strike in terms of the diplomatic, military and security implications for the United States, particularly its military presence in Iraq and the Persian Gulf region, the Middle East Newsline reported Friday.</p>

In the past few weeks, Hezbollah at the behest of Iran and Syria has commandeered the 7,800-foot Mt. Sannine, a strategic asset capable of determining the outcome of the next war, as DEBKA-Net Weekly 356 revealed. Radar-guided missile positions and an early warning station have since been deployed on its summit, which are capable of monitoring and threatening US Sixth Fleet movements in the eastern Mediterranean and Israel Air Force flights. This development was serious enough for Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak to repeat three times in as many days that the IDF is keeping a close watch on events...

In Yom Kippur War anniversary speech, prime minister suggests that inaction on Iran is costlier than international opprobrium Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered a thinly veiled defense of a possible Israeli preemptive strike on Iran during a Knesset commemoration Tuesday of the 40th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War. In a speech to MKs about the war, in which Israel was surprised by a coordinated Arab invasion on the northern and southern fronts, Netanyahu explained that IDF soldiers who fought in the bitter battles of that war “saved us from paying the price of complacency.” “In the end we won...

Israel Hayom-New Wave Research poll finds 52.4% of the Israeli Jewish public is in favor of an independent strike on Iran's nuclear facilities • Some 52.5% support Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's position regarding tensions with the U.S. over Iran. A new survey has found that the majority of Jewish Israelis believes the government's hard-line position regarding the Iranian threat is justified and that if need be, Israel is capable of mounting a unilateral strike on the Islamic republic's nuclear facilities. The Israel Hayom-New Wave Research poll found that 52.4 percent of the Israeli Jewish public is in favor of an...

Israel is working on coordinating plans for a possible military strike with Saudi Arabia, with Riyadh prepared to provide tactical support to Jerusalem, a British newspaper reported early Sunday. The two countries have both united in worry that the West may come to terms with Iran ...

Prince Bandar bin Sultan, once famous in Washington for his cigars, parties and charm, is now Saudi Arabia’s point man, fighting Iran in Syria and denouncing the Obama administration. ...

Saudi fighter jets on Tuesday intercepted an Eritrean plane and forced it to land in King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz Airport in Jazan, said Yassine al-Qassem, deputy media spokesman in the province of Jazan. It was not clear whether the plane was civilian or military, but Qassem said it was carrying three passengers who were seeking asylum and that this was granted to them through a speedy procedure. This was not the first time Eritreans flee to Saudi Arabia. In April, a military pilot sent by Eretria to reclaim a fighter jet that was previously stolen by two officers and...

Failure to reach a deal between Iran and world powers over Tehran’s nuclear program could lead to a war in the Middle East, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah said Wednesday. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “is doing everything he can to make the Iranian nuclear negotiations [in Geneva] with the P5+1 countries fail,” Nasrallah accused Wednesday. In a rare public appearance in south Beirut on the eve of the Ashoura holiday, commemorated by Shiite Muslims as a day of mourning for the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, the terror chief said the Israeli prime minister was “furious [at the prospect of an...

That the socialist French government of François Hollande just blocked a bad deal with Tehran, emerging as the hero of the Geneva negotiations, is on one level a huge surprise. But it also follows logically from the passivity of the Obama administration. American foreign policy is in unprecedented free-fall, with a feckless and distracted White House barely paying attention to the outside world, and when it does, acting in an inconsistent, weak, and fantastical manner. If one were to discern something so grand as an Obama Doctrine, it would read: "Snub friends, coddle opponents, devalue American interests, seek consensus, and...