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Jeddah (Saudi Arabia) (AFP) - King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has warned that the West will be the next target of the jihadists sweeping through Syria and Iraq, unless there is "rapid" action. "If we ignore them, I am sure they will reach Europe in a month and America in another month," he said in remarks quoted on Saturday by Asharq al-Awsat daily and Saudi-backed Al-Arabiya television station. "Terrorism knows no border and its danger could affect several countries outside the Middle East," said the king who was speaking at a welcoming ceremony on Friday for new ambassadors, including a...

WASHINGTON — The United States is said to have disclosed that Saudi King Abdullah was dying. (Snip) The sources said the photograph was taken by White House personnel during Obama’s meeting with the Saudi king outside Riyad on March 28.“The Saudis specifically did not want any photograph that showed Abdullah with the tube,” a source said. “But there was a White House photographer that took the picture for what he said was history.” The photograph was said to have been relayed to members of the White House press corps. Within a day, an image of the Saudi king with the...

BEIRUT: A state of panic gripped Israeli northern towns Wednesday as the Jewish state braced itself for a possible Hezbollah reprisal over last week’s airstrike that killed six party fighters and a senior Iranian general in Syria’s Golan Heights. Israeli forces were placed on high security alert following reports, which later proved to be false, about an infiltration attempt by gunmen from Lebanon into Israel’s border. Rumors spread that gunmen were spotted sneaking into Israel from Lebanon, prompting Israeli authorities to ask residents in towns near the border to stay indoors. TV footage showed Israeli police and security forces deployed...

Syrian government airstrikes Tuesday killed at least 39 people, mostly civilians, in two main battlegrounds in the north of the country, a monitor said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based anti-regime monitoring group, said at least 27 people were killed in airstrikes that targeted a livestock market in the village of Khansaa, south of the city of Qamishli. Speaking to AFP, Observatory director Rami Abdel-Rahman said nine of those killed in the village of Khansaa near the town of Tal Hamis had been identified by his group as civilians. “More of the dead may be civilians too, but...

Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) on Monday introduced a bill that would provide arms to vetted rebel groups. Menendez’s legislation would give arms and military training to opposition groups that had been vetted, as well as provide $250 million for basic services and security in a post-Assad Syria. The bill also includes new sanctions against those providing arms or oil to Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime. Menendez’s bill comes as the Obama administration is reconsidering its opposition to providing arms to the Syrian rebels.

After ISIS, what’s next and who will finally contain it? Will the U.S. succeed in crushing ISIS or will it simply be encompassed by a much bigger dog? And where will this Caliphate story end, or better yet, mushroom into an uncontrollable phenomenon. We have maintained, that ISIS will never produce the ultimate Caliphate. Two decades ago we trumpeted that the Islamists of Turkey will revive the Ottoman Empire and today we remind, that you have seen this happening right before your very eyes and the evidence is mounting by the day. And we warn that the next 4 years,...

Last week, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pledged $200 million in non-military assistance to support countries affected by the campaign against ISIS during an ongoing six-day Middle East tour. Today ISIS released a video threatening to kill two Japanese hostages unless they receive a $200 million ransom in the next 72 hours. What the media is not telling you is the true scoop: one of these two Japanese is a Muslim jihadi who converted to Islam and that Tokyo is unlikely to pay a $200 million ransom to free the two hostages and if they are beheaded (which most likely they...

Tehran threatens to punish Jewish state following funeral procession of a top commander killed in Syria strike TEHRAN, Iran — Senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard commanders said Israel will be punished for killing one of its generals in a January 18 airstrike in Syria that also killed six Lebanese Hezbollah fighters. Nasser Soltani said “Israel will certainly pay for what it did.” He spoke during a funeral ceremony Wednesday for Brig. Gen. Mohammad Ali Allahdadi, who will be buried in his hometown of Sirjan in southeastern Iran on Thursday. Soltani was quoted by the state TV as saying that Allahdadi was...

An Iranian general killed in an Israeli air strike in Syria was not its intended target and Israel believed it was attacking only low-ranking guerrillas, a senior Israeli security source told Reuters on Tuesday. The source declined to be identified because Israel will not confirm or deny whether it carried out the strike. Iranian Revolutionary Guard General Mohammed Allahdadi was killed along with a Hezbollah commander and the son of the group's late military leader, Imad Muughniyeh, in Sunday's attack on a Hezbollah convoy near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Ali Saleh Kahlah al Marri, an admitted former al Qaeda operative, has been released from a American jail and permitted to return home to Qatar. No formal statement has been released yet by either government, but it is being reported that al Marri's release was the result of a bilateral agreement between the Qatari and American governments. According to the US Bureau of Prisons, a prisoner with the same name and estimated age (ID number 12194-026) was freed on Friday. Additionally, a source from al Marri's family told the Qatari press he was recently released and arrived in Doha Saturday....

A suspected terrorist stabbed at least nine people on the 40 bus line in Tel Aviv near the Maariv junction on Wednesday morning. Two of the victims were seriously injured and several others suffered moderate injuries, Magen David Adom said. Others at the scene were treated for shock. The injured were evacuated to the Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer and Ichilov Hospital at Sourasky Medical Center in Tel Aviv. The attacker fled on foot but was shot and neutralized by police and is being questioned. The assailant is a 23-year-old man from the West Bank city of Tulkarm, illegally...

Israeli police say they have shot an attacker who stabbed at least nine people on a bus in central Tel Aviv. The stabbing incident occurred on the Maariv bridge, police said, adding that the stabbings took place both in and outside the bus. At least two of the victims were in a critical condition......

Oil fell as much as 5 percent on Tuesday after the International Monetary Fund cut its 2015 global economic forecast and key producer Iran hinted prices could drop to $25 a barrel without supportive OPEC action.

Barack Obama is calling on Congress to authorise continued military action in the Middle East, following growing criticism that his existing air strikes in Iraq and Syria lacked the necessary legally underpinning. In excerpts from his sixth State of the Union speech released early by the White House, the president also suggests that the coalition fight against the Islamic State will continue for months if not years to come. “This effort will take time. It will require focus. But we will succeed,” he will say. “And tonight, I call on this Congress to show the world that we are united...

Supreme leader publishes pictures of him with slain Hezbollah commander and his father; Guards leader warns of ‘devastating lightning’ against Israel Iranian officials threatened harsh retaliation against Israel Tuesday over a reported airstrike two days earlier, as the country’s supreme leader highlighted his personal connection with Jihad Mughniyeh, a Hezbollah commander who was killed in the attack. Revolutionary Guards chief Mohammad Ali Jafari said that Israel should anticipate “devastating lightning,” according to the Iranian Tasnim news agency, and that Iran would widen its support for Muslim fighters in the Middle East “until the final collapse of the Zionist regime.” Several...

Just for a little background watch this from the end of September: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTHKGXpKQvA Fast forward to today: "CNN – Yemen’s presidential palace has been completely taken over by Shiite Houthi rebels, the country’s Minister of Information Nadia Sakkaf told CNN on Tuesday amid reports of renewed clashes. Sakkaf said the Prime Minister’s residence was also under attack from the street. She called the situation “the completion of a coup,” adding that “the President has no control.”" What a success story! Obama really knows how to pick’em.

The White House has released a couple of excerpts of the president's address to the nation. Here's the second: “But I want the American people to understand how this effort will be different from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It will not involve American combat troops fighting on foreign soil. This counter-terrorism campaign will be waged through a steady, relentless effort to take out ISIL wherever they exist using our air power and our support for partner forces on the ground. This strategy of taking out terrorists who threaten us, while supporting partners on the front lines, is one...

Iran on Monday promised that Hezbollah would deliver “crushing response” to the Israeli attack over the weekend, which killed six Iranian agents, including a top-level commander, and five Hezbollah members. “The experience of the past shows that the resistance current will give a crushing response to the Zionist regime’s terrorist moves with revolutionary determination and in due time and place,” Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), was quoted as saying. The Israeli strike came just days after Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah declared that the terror group was preparing for a war in Israel’s northern Galilee...

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran and Russia signed an agreement Tuesday to expand military ties in a visit to Tehran by the Russian defense minister. Sergei Shoigu, in remarks carried by Russian news agencies, said Moscow wants to develop a "long-term and multifaceted" military relationship with Iran. He said that the new agreement includes expanded counter-terrorism cooperation, exchanges of military personnel for training purposes and an understanding for each country's navy to more frequently use the other's ports. Iran's Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan urged greater cooperation as a means of opposing American ambitions in the region. Moscow and Tehran have...

Yemen’s powerful Shiite Houthi rebels shelled the residence of the country’s embattled president Tuesday and simultaneously swept into the presidential palace in the capital, Sanaa, as a top military commander warned that a full-fledged “coup” was underway. President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi was inside the residence as it came under “heavy shelling” for half an hour but he was unharmed and protected by guards, officials said. In New York, the U.N. Security Council held an emergency meeting over the chaos in Sanaa. The shelling was a dramatic development that put the U.S.-backed Hadi into a precarious position and represented the...