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Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the political bureau of the Hamas terrorist organization, on Wednesday night wrote a letter to the United Nations General Assembly president, Maria Fernanda Spinosa, in response to the US and Israel’s efforts against Hamas in the UN. The United States has been leading a push at the United Nations to win backing from European countries for a resolution condemning Hamas. The General Assembly is expected to vote in the coming days on the proposed resolution, which will condemn rocket firings into Israel and demand that Hamas end its use of violence. […] Israel’s Ambassador to...

Defying President Trump, senators sent a strong signal Wednesday they want to punish Saudi Arabia for its role in the slaying of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The Senate voted 63 to 37 to move forward with legislation calling for an end to U.S. involvement in the Saudi-led war in Yemen. The vote was a rebuke not only to Saudi Arabia but to the Trump administration, which has been clear it does not want to torpedo the long-standing U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia over the killing.

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Mr Erdogan, Mr Abbas, members of the clergy, foreign guests, friends, Let me congratulate you from all my heart on the opening of Moscow’s rebuilt Cathedral Mosque. This is a big event for all Muslims in Russia. One of Moscow’s oldest mosques stood on this historical site and has undergone reconstruction that now makes it the biggest in Europe. It was given a magnificent modern new look worthy of the capital of our united, multi-ethnic and multi-confessional country. This new mosque is worthy of Russia, in which, I want to stress, Islam, under our country’s...

But Democrats view it as yet another expression of the prime minister’s overzealous backing for a despised U.S. president The Mossad’s Kidon unit, which foreign media describe as Israel’s official assassination squad, must be worried sick over the fallout from the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Alongside its many successful hits, some of which are surely still unknown, Kidon’s men (and presumably women) have also known notorious failures, including the mistaken 1970 killing of Moroccan waiter Ahmed Bouchiki in Lillehammer, Norway, the failed 1997 assassination of Hamas leader Khaled Mashal in Jordan and...

• A nightmare scenario involving a potential armed showdown between Saudi Arabia and Iran would put America and President Trump in a high-stakes dilemma. • U.S. policy performs best when focused on a longer-term strategic purpose. In the Middle East, the approach must be on preventing any new conflicts, ending civil wars and unlocking the region's human potential while opposing extremism, writes Atlantic Council President and CEO Fred Kempe. • The U.S. and its Western allies should leverage the post-Khashoggi crisis to achieve some good in the Middle East, Kempe writes....

Volume 7, No. 3 - September 2003 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE COLD WAR'S LONGEST COVER-UP: HOW AND WHY THE USSR INSTIGATED THE 1967 WAR By Isabella Ginor The Soviet warning to Egypt about supposed Israeli troop concentrations on the Syrian border in May 1967 has long been considered a blunder that precipitated a war which the USSR neither desired nor expected. New evidence from Soviet and other Warsaw Pact documents, as well as memoirs of contemporary actors, contradicts this accepted theory. The author demonstrates that this warning was deliberate disinformation, part of a plan approved at the highest level of Soviet leadership...

"The country of Iran, as an example, is responsible for a bloody proxy war against Saudi Arabia in Yemen, trying to destabilize Iraq's fragile attempt at democracy, supporting the terror group Hezbollah, propping up dictator Bashar Assad in Syria (who has killed millions of his own citizens) and much more....." From the first full paragraph of President Trump's statement supporting Saudi Arabia under the heading "America First!" 11/20/2018 "Is President Trump about to replicate President Bush's folly?" Columnist Pat Buchanan It is patently obvious that President Trump has made Iran into the nasty guy just like all the nasty characters...

WASHINGTON DC (Kurdistan24) – Amb. Kenneth Ward strongly criticized Iran and Russia on Thursday for maintaining chemical weapons programs, in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention to which they are both signatories. Ward, the US Permanent Representative to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), addressing that organization, cited Iran and Russia for their own chemical weapons programs. He also criticized their support for Damascus, which, he said, is “enabling Syria’s chemical weapons use by shielding the Assad regime from consequences in international fora.” Turning to Iran, Ward explained that the US “has had longstanding concerns that [it]...

Control of the House will give them 'the power of no — the ability to block programs, cut funding, withhold agreement.' Democrats preparing to take over the House are aiming to roll back what they see as President Donald Trump's overly aggressive nuclear strategy. Their goals include eliminating money for Trump’s planned expansion of the U.S. atomic arsenal, including a new long-range ballistic missile and development of a smaller, battlefield nuclear bomb that critics say is more likely than a traditional nuke to be used in combat. They also want to stymie the administration's efforts to unravel arms control pacts...

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani called on Muslims worldwide on Saturday to unite against the United States, instead of “rolling out red carpets for criminals”. Washington in May reimposed sanctions on Tehran, after President Donald Trump pulled out of a 2015 international nuclear deal with Iran under which they had been lifted. “Submitting to the West headed by America would be treason against our religion ... and against the future generations of this region,” Rouhani told an international conference on Islamic unity in Tehran, in a speech broadcast live on state television. “We have a choice to either roll out red...

BERLIN — Denmark became the second European country to halt future arms exports to Saudi Arabia on Thursday, following a similar decision by neighboring Germany earlier this month. The Danish announcement comes the same week President Trump backed Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, despite the CIA assessing that he ordered the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Denmark’s ban includes goods that can be used both for military and civilian purposes but is still less expansive than the German measures, which also included sales that had already been approved. While the Nordic country is a tiny arms equipment exporter in...

At the height of the media storm over the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last month, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, otherwise known as MBS, met with a visiting delegation of evangelical Christians from the U.S. for two hours. One of the Saudi attendees was the General Secretary of the Saudi-based Muslim World League (MWL), Dr. Mohammad Al-‘Issa. The MWL was a major engine for the propagation and spread of Wahabist jihad throughout the Western world since it was formed by the Saudi regime in the 1960s. The MWL founded the...

I am already sick of Turkey.I suspect that many Americans feel this way, about the bird and the country. Yet a small group of Washington foreign policy hands — at State Department, at Pentagon and in congressional offices — continue to make the case for Turkey as a “strategically important” partner to the US. On paper, the country looks good: It sits at the center of many of Americas most pressing foreign policy concerns, it is a member of NATO, it's stable, and it can offer foreign partners access to its airbases and intelligence cooperation. I used to think of...

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — OPEC and allied oil-producing countries will likely need to cut crude supplies, perhaps as much as 1 million barrels of oil a day, to rebalance the market after proposed U.S. sanctions on Iran failed to cut Tehran's output, Saudi Arabia's energy minister said Monday.

President Donald Trump has reportedly shelved his ‘deal of the century’ peace plan, at least for now, Palestinian Authority media outlets reported on Thursday. The decision was taken after Ron Dermer, the Israeli ambassador to the United States, reportedly recommended that the White House postpone the publication of the initiative because of the political and security crisis in Israel, according to the Palestinian Authority paper Al-Quds. An unnamed Israeli diplomatic source said Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu "prefers no ‎announcement of the plan whatsoever, especially now, amid the ‎recent developments in the region and the political ‎crisis in Israel." The Trump...

The 633-word statement of President Donald Trump on the Saudi royals' role in the grisly murder of Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi is a remarkable document, not only for its ice-cold candor. The president re-raises a question that has roiled the nation since Jimmy Carter: To what degree should we allow idealistic values trump vital interests in determining foreign policy? On the matter of who ordered the killing of Khashoggi, Trump does not rule out the crown prince as prime suspect: "King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman vigorously deny any knowledge of the planning or execution of the...

Mr. Trump’s sidestepping of reports that the C.I.A. believes that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing as “Maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!” was jarring. But every president since Harry Truman has aligned with unsavory Middle Eastern rulers in the service of national interests. The difference here is that Mr. Trump seemed unapologetic about this state of affairs with only a passing nod to the affront to our values that Mr. Khashoggi’s murder represents. That’s nothing to cheer. But it is vitally important to evaluate the policy on its merits more than its mode of expression. And...

Following the sinking of one of the world’s largest dry docks on October 29 in a shipyard in the far northwest part of Russia, officials have finally admitted that they are unable to continue work on Russia’s sole aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, for the time being. While Russia’s shipbuilding industry is reportedly looking into alternatives, no timely and viable solution to continue retrofitting work on the Russian Navy’s flagship has emerged to date. “We have alternatives actually for all the ships except for [the aircraft carrier] Admiral Kuznetsov. Our enterprises are in operation, [including] the Nerpa [Ship Repair Factory],”...

Fighting erupted on Sunday between rival factions of the Turkish-backed Syrian opposition in Syria’s Afrin, leaving 11 dead and 27 wounded, according to a war monitor.  The Kurdish enclave of Afrin in northwestern Syria was taken over by Turkish forces and their Syrian opposition proxies in March this year.  The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said pro-Ankara Syrian opposition groups launched an assault on Sunday morning against the al-Sharqiya Martyrs, which had helped Turkey in the Afrin offensive.  The group, which is part of Ahrar Sharqiya brigade, is led by Abu Khula and consists of around 200 fighters. It...

The Trump administration is considering plans to designate Nicolás Maduro’s socialist regime in Venezuela a state sponsor of terrorism over its support for Hezbollah and Marxist guerrillas, according to a report from the Spanish newspaper ABC on Tuesday. According to U.S. officials who spoke with the Spanish newspaper, administration officials are currently deliberating whether to add Venezuela to the list of state sponsors of terrorism over its support for groups including the Basque separatist movement ETA, Iran’s Lebanese terror proxy Hezbollah, and Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Officials have so far refused to officially confirm whether they plan to...