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Good indications for continued progress toward peace in the middle-east. President Trump has called for a 2:00pm press conference (not previously scheduled) following an oval office meeting with Amir Sheikh Nasser Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah of the State of Kuwait. This could be yet another partner announcement in the normalization of relations with Israel. CTH predicted Kuwait would be next. It would make sense for Kuwait, Oman and Sudan to come next in the process before the heavy -and more complex- nations (Qatar & Saudi). Protocols and pageantry are culturally very important to the Arab nations and they have a...

Around 120,000 years ago in what is now northern Saudi Arabia, a small band of Homo sapiens stopped to drink and forage at a shallow lake that was also frequented by camels, buffalo, and elephants bigger than any species seen today The people may have hunted the large mammals but they did not stay long, using the watering hole as a waypoint on a longer journey. This detailed scene was reconstructed by researchers in a new study published in Science Advances on Thursday, following the discovery of ancient human and animal footprints in the Nefud Desert that shed new light...

For decades, foreign policy experts—the blob—assumed much about the Middle East that has turned out to be completely wrong. It’s been remarkable to watch the mainstream press and official Washington try to downplay the significance of the peace deal the Trump administration brokered between Israel and two Arab states this week.The signing of the Abraham Accords on Tuesday between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain at the White House, which for the first time normalized relations between Israel and the two Persian Gulf states, is by any measure historic. It’s been 26 years since any Arab state recognized Israel,...

After deals with UAE and Bahrain, there are signs Saudi Arabia is preparing its people to warm to Israel. When one of Saudi Arabia's leading Muslim leaders called this month for Muslims to avoid "passionate emotions and fiery enthusiasm" towards Jews, it was a marked change in tone for someone who has shed tears preaching about Palestine in the past. The sermon by Abdulrahman al-Sudais, imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, broadcast on Saudi state television on September 5, came three weeks after the United Arab Emirates agreed upon a historic deal to normalise relations with Israel and days...

President Donald Trump expects “seven or eight or nine” additional Arab states to sign peace agreements with Israel in the near future, including Saudi Arabia, he announced Tuesday during a White House ceremony. Trump made the comments after formally signing peace agreements between Israel, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain. Known as the Abraham Accords, Trump and its other signatories hope it heralds “a new dawn for peace in the Middle East.” Trump also said that he spoke with the King of Saudi Arabia and expects the country to join the agreement “at the right time,” according Agence France...

The imam of Mecca’s Grand Mosque appeared to hint at normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia in a sermon delivered on Friday. Following the Israeli accord with the United Arab Emirates last month, speculation has been rampant on whether Saudi Arabia would follow suit. The New Arab, a London-based, Qatari-funded private media outlet, reported over the weekend that Abdul Rahman al-Sudais used his sermon to emphasize tolerance and cooperation between Muslims and non-Muslims. In particular, he cited instances in which the prophet Muhammad had friendly relationships with Jews. “The prophet had mortgaged his shield to a Jew when he died;...

On the eve of the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, a federal judge directed the Saudi Arabian government to make as many as 24 current and former officials available for depositions about their possible knowledge of events leading up to the airplane attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, which killed almost 3,000 Americans. Those officials include Prince Bandar, the former ambassador to the United States, and his longtime chief of staff. The order was immediately hailed by families of the 9/11 victims as a milestone in their years-long effort to prove that some Saudi officials were either complicit in the attacks...

Hardline conservative Chairman of Assembly of Experts Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati asserted that Kurdistan’s bid for independence from Iraq is an attempt to “disintegrate” and “create another Israel” in the region, speaking at a session of the Assembly of Experts of Leadership in Tehran, Tuesday. Jannati stressed that “today’s important issue about Kurdistan is the climate that they want to disintegrate there and create another Israel in this region.” He went on to call on the Assembly of Experts to “strongly stand up against them because this situation is the demand of the US, Saudi Arabia and Israel,” which he said...

Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, special aide to the president of the Islamic Parliament of Iran, said on Sunday that the United Arab Emirates had made a “big mistake” in normalizing relations with Israel. In an interview with Iran’s Arabic-language Al-Alam TV, Amir-Abdollahian, formerly Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab and African Affairs, said that establishing relations with “the cancer of the region, the Zionist entity,” was not in the UAE’s interest. The UAE may very well have upset its own security and stability with this move because Israel upsets the stability everywhere it is present, said the Iranian official, who added that...

The Middle East is not necessarily known for good news. But look a little deeper over the last several weeks, and a region normally stereotyped as hopeless, confusing, and blood-soaked is actually making some significant and potentially historic progress. And just as importantly, this progress is being constructed in conference rooms rather than on battlefields.   For the United States, which has invested so much blood and treasure in the Middle East over the last two decades ($2 trillion and tens of thousands of casualties in Iraq alone), there is a lesson in these latest accomplishments: Washington can achieve far...

"I suggest the public act in accordance with common sense and not in accordance with government guidelines" Those words coming from Israeli politician Avigdor Lieberman of the Yisrael Beyteinu (Israel Our Home) Party...... "we have to start taking this very seriously again" Those words from a British health official today. The Deputy Chief Medical Officer Professor Jonathan Van Tam speaking.... A Saudi court overturning five death sentences in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi today and handing out sentences to eight unnamed individuals in the case.... Protests continued in Portland Sunday for the 102nd night in a row..... Portland Police have...

A Saudi court has issued final verdicts Monday in the 2018 killing of journalist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi, sentencing eight to prison, according to state television. The names of those convicted were not made public, but Riyadh Criminal Court reportedly ordered a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison for five. Another received a 10-year sentence, and two others were ordered to serve seven years in prison. Yet the trial has been widely criticized by rights groups and an independent U.N. investigator, who noted that no senior officials nor anyone suspected of ordering the killing were found guilty. The independence...

The normalization agreement between the UAE and Israel has effectively ended the racist BDS movement. A Palestinian man walks by a grafitti sign calling to boycott Israel seen on a street in the West Bank city of Bethlehem on February 11, 2015. (photo credit: MIRIAM ALSTER/FLASH90) With the recent developments between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, it’s become clearer than ever that there’s no future for the discriminatory and racist Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. From its inception, the movement was rooted in a desire to destroy the State of Israel as we know it. While cleverly presenting itself...

Arabs and Muslims across the world should watch the airplane flying from Israel to the United Arab Emirates on Monday as a sign of what is possible through peace, Jared Kushner, senior adviser to President Donald Trump, said just before boarding the historic flight. It was the first-ever direct flight from Israel to the United Arab Emirates by an Israeli commercial airline on Monday morning. "I prayed yesterday at the [Western] Wall that Muslims and Arabs from throughout the world will be watching this flight recognizing that we are all children of god and that the future does not have...

Speaking to Anadolu Agency, Gen. Abdulhadi Dirah, the spokesman for the army's Sirte-Jufra Joint Operations Unit, said that carrying military ammunition, Ilyushin-type planes conducted five flights to Sirte and Jufra provinces on Saturday. Carrying Bashar al-Assad regime's soldiers, two more flights were made from Syria to Benghazi, the second biggest Libyan city, which is the center of the Haftar's forces, Dirah said. Libya has been torn by civil war since the ouster of late ruler Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. The government was founded in 2015 under a UN-led agreement, but efforts for a long-term political settlement failed due to a...

The level of activity at the desert site - where trucks rumble down newly built roads and cranes swing over unfinished apartment blocks - reflects the new city's political importance... Known as the New Administrative Capital, it is the biggest of a series of mega-projects championed by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi as a source of growth and jobs. Soon after coronavirus began to spread, Sisi postponed moving the first civil servants to the new city and moved back the opening of a national museum adjoining the pyramids to next year. Productivity dipped as companies adapted to health guidelines and some...

The mustatils are giant stone monuments that are about 7,000-year- old. The Arabic name ‘mustatils,’ means rectangle. These vast structures made of stone piled into rectangles, are some of the oldest large-scale structures in the world. Mustalis were previously recognized from satellite imagery and as they were often covered by younger structures, it had been speculated that they might be ancient, perhaps extending back to the Neolithic. Recent studies reveal new, interesting information that may shed light on the purpose of these massive stone monuments. Dr. Huw Groucutt from the Max Planck Institutes for Chemical Ecology, the Science of Human...

While Israelis have been celebrating the new potential ties with the United Arab Emirates, the Turkish ruling party is angling across the Mediterranean in Istanbul to become a much larger challenge to the Jewish state in the coming years. Ankara’s current regime under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been increasingly hostile to Israel for the last decade, comparing the country to Nazi Germany and vowing to “liberate” Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. Now reports indicate that intelligence and military assessments in Israel see Ankara as a challenge and threat. A recent article in The Times noted that Mossad head Yossi Cohen...

The Israel-United Arab Emirates news is actually much bigger than the American press is reporting. President Donald Trump actually does deserve a great deal of credit, and if the deal were reported accurately, he would get that credit. But the issue is larger than even that, and the American media has totally missed the bigger story. First, to review, the United Arab Emirates and Israel have decided to publicly have diplomatic relations in something they are calling the Abraham Accords. This is groundbreaking in and of itself. Though the countries have privately been collaborating for some time, they will make...

Congressional Democrats have asked the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, to provide information about China’s alleged role in building a uranium processing facility in Saudi Arabia. US officials have told journalists and nuclear experts they suspect a mill for producing yellowcake – refined uranium ore – is being built by Chinese technicians in the desert near Al-Ula in the north-west of the kingdom. The alleged construction of a yellowcake facility was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, but experts have yet to confirm its existence through satellite imagery. If confirmed, it would strengthen suspicions that the Saudi monarchy...