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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday it is “not fair” to either Turkey or the United States that Washington cannot sell Ankara billions of dollars worth of F-35 fighter jets after it bought a Russian air defense system. Turkey started taking delivery of Russia’s S-400 air defense system last week in defiance of U.S. warnings that the Pentagon would kick it out of the F-35 stealth fighter program Washington’s concern is that deploying the S-400 with the F-35 would allow Russia to gain too much inside information of the stealth system. Thomas Karako, an analyst at...

Drone attacks on two critical production facilities in Saudi Arabia wiped out over 5% of the world’s oil supply in one go, eliminating the spare capacity of the entire globe. The attacks, which targeted an oil processing facility at Abqaiq and the nearby Khurais oil field knocked out 5.7 million barrels of daily crude production, a whopping 50% of Saudi Arabia’s entire oil output. “This incident effectively eliminates the world’s spare capacity,” said Sarah Cottle, global head of market insight at S&P Global Platts. The attacks led at one point to oil prices spiking by 19%, the biggest leap since...

US President Donald Trump on Sunday issued a veiled warning to Iran following the attack on Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities. While Trump did not mention Iran, he wrote on Twitter, “Saudi Arabia oil supply was attacked. There is reason to believe that we know the culprit, are locked and loaded depending on verification, but are waiting to hear from the Kingdom as to who they believe was the cause of this attack, and under what terms we would proceed!” Saudi Arabia said that the drone strikes on its key oil facilities disrupted about half of the kingdom's oil capacity, or...

ANKENY, Iowa -- As many presidential candidates call for the impeachment of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanuagh, Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard focused on other issues during her campaign stop in Ankeny. Gabbard opened up the town hall by referencing a CNN article and criticizing President Donald Trump for “bending the knee to the wishes of Saudi Arabia” and for using American military to “carry out that country’s wishes.” “People like Mike Pompeo and the Trump administration, they’ve been trying to go to war with Iran for a really long time and they are really taking action and laying down the...

The Houthi rebels of Yemen have launched numerous attacks using drones and even missiles on Saudi Arabia in the months leading up to Saturday morning's attack on two Saudi oil installations. The attacks coming from a southerly direction where the Iranian backed rebels have been fighting a Saudi military coalition backed by the United States and United Kingdom in a brutal war widely condemned with the United Nations recently saying that all sides in the conflict and those nations behind them may be guilty of war crimes. Now the United States says that based on: "data" and "satellite images" Iran...

Because we have done so well with Energy over the last few years (thank you, Mr. President!), we are a net Energy Exporter, & now the Number One Energy Producer in the World. We don’t need Middle Eastern Oil & Gas, & in fact have very few tankers there, but will help our Allies!

A wise man once wrote that 'wisdom is vindicated by her children.' (Matthew 11:19) Or, to put it another way, that we can judge who is truly wise by how their actions work out. If we accept that axiom, then the wisdom of electing our president should be becoming increasingly obvious. Undeniable, really. A case in point: Back in the 1970s, the economy of the Western world was held up for ransom by a few relatively unstable Middle Eastern nations. This, because they, by an act of nature, owned much of the energy upon which the modern world depends. Since...

A weekend drone attack on Saudi Arabia that cut into global energy supplies and halved the kingdom’s oil production threatened Sunday to fuel a regional crisis, as the U.S. released new evidence to back up its allegation that Iran was responsible for the assault amid heightened tensions over Tehran’s collapsing nuclear deal. President Donald Trump said the U.S. had reason to believe it knew who was behind the attack — his secretary of state had blamed Iran the previous day — and assured his Twitter followers that “we are ... locked and loaded” depending on verification and were waiting to...

Iran launched nearly a dozen cruise missiles and over 20 drones from its territory in the attack on a key Saudi oil facility Saturday, a senior Trump administration official told ABC News Sunday.It is an extraordinary charge to make, that Iran used missiles and drones to attack its neighbor and rival Saudi Arabia, as the region teeters on the edge of high tensions.President Donald Trump warned the U.S. was "locked and loaded" to respond to the attack on Sunday, waiting for verification of who was responsible and for word from Saudi Arabia on how to proceed.https://abcnews.go.com/International/iran-fired-cruise-missiles-attack-saudi-oil-facility/story?id=65632653  

The Israeli Broadcasting Corporation is reporting another ship has been seized in the gulf. Correspondent Amochai Stein said on Twitter: “Iran has seized another oil vessel in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran's Revolutionary Guard arrests a vessel and 11 crew on 'diesel smuggling charges'."

Crude prices surged Sunday evening following an attack on Saudi Arabia’s oil infrastructure and announcement from President Trump that he has authorized the release of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. U.S. oil futures advanced about 12% to $61.60 a barrel shortly after trading opened at 6 p.m. ET. Brent crude, the global gauge of oil prices, soared 13% to nearly $69 a barrel. If those moves held, they would mark some of the biggest intraday for crude in years. ...

Saudi and American officials are investigating the possibility that attacks on Saudi oil facilities Saturday involved cruise missiles launched from Iraq or Iran, questioning Yemeni rebel claims of responsibility, people familiar with the matter said. Leaders of the Houthis, the Yemeni rebels whom Saudi Arabia is trying to dislodge from the country’s capital, claimed they sent a squad of drones hundreds of miles into the heart of Saudi Arabia to carry out coordinated attacks on two of the country’s vital energy sites. If true, the attacks marked the most effective and far-reaching drone strikes carried out by outgunned Houthi forces...

With the U.S, Russia, and China all jostling for position in Iraq’s oil and gas industry both north and south, Iraq’s oil ministry last week reiterated its desire to have one or more foreign partners in the Mansuriya gas field. Situated in Diyala province, close to the Iran border, Mansuriya is estimated to hold around 4.6 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, with plateau production projected at about 325 million standard cubic feet per day. For the U.S., encouraging Iraq to optimise its gas flows so that it reduces its dependency for power from Iran is the key consideration. For...

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is blaming Iran for drone attacks Saturday against Saudi Arabia's oil infrastructure. The attacks, attributed to Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, sparked huge fires at a vulnerable chokepoint for global energy supplies. But in Saturday tweets, Pompeo says "there is no evidence the attacks came from Yemen" and points the finger at Tehran. He adds, "Iran has now launched an unprecedented attack on the world's energy supply."

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called on the international community to join him Saturday in condemning Iran for drone attacks on two Saudi oil facilities, which he described as "an unprecedented attack on the world’s energy supply."

(Moderator, if I can't excerpt the BBC, please note) Drone attacks have set alight two major oil facilities run by the state-owned company Aramco in Saudi Arabia, state media say. Footage showed a huge blaze at Abqaiq, site of Aramco's largest oil processing plant, while a second drone attack started fires in the Khurais oilfield. The fires are now under control at both facilities, state media said. A spokesman for the Iran-aligned Houthi group in Yemen said it had deployed 10 drones in the attacks. The military spokesman, Yahya Sarea, told al-Masirah TV, which is owned by the Houthi movement...

EXCLUSIVE: Iran has established a new military base in Syria and has plans to house thousands of troops at the location, according to multiple Western intelligence sources. The classified Iranian project, called the Imam Ali compound, was approved by top leadership in Tehran and is being completed by the Iranian al-Quds Forces. Using a civilian satellite company, Fox News verified the information and obtained images that show a base being constructed on the Syria-Iraq border.

Golly, whoever leaked this to Bloomberg must have been pretty high up the food chain to know what the president was thinking on a matter as sensitive as Iran diplomacy.And they must have a pretty sizable axe to grind with him if they’re willing to make him sound this weak, particularly in comparison to Bolton.Any theories? Do any current or former disgruntled national security aides with a reputation for score-settling in the press present themselves as logical suspects?The post-Bolton era will be a golden age of natsec leaking, my friends. President Trump discussed easing sanctions on Iran to help...

The departure of National Security Adviser John Bolton from the Trump administration left everyone with a number of questions. First and foremost, did he quit or was he fired? If you’re asked to resign, that’s a little bit of both, right? We’ll probably have to wait for the next series of tell-all books to come out to have a better idea.But there’s one group of people who probably don’t care how it happened. They’re just glad to see him gone. No, I’m not talking about Tucker Carlson, who mysteriously claimed that Bolton was “fundamentally a man of the left”...

The spiritual leader of the Egyptian Islamist militant group Al-Gama’a Al-Islamiyya Omar Abdel-Rahman has died in his US prison after serving more than 20 years for seditious conspiracy to commit murder. Abdel-Rahman, also known as the “Blind Sheikh”, was serving a life sentence in the United States for his role in masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Saudi-owned Al Arabiya reported.