Free Republic

Salvator Mundi, a $450 million painting attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, has not been seen publicly since it sold at Christie’s in 2017, the year it became the most expensive artwork ever auction. And the reason for that, according to a new BBC report, is that it may be held in storage in Geneva. The good news, per the BBC, is that its owner, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, may eventually make it publicly viewable. According to that report, the crown prince, often labeled MBS for short, plans to display it in a future museum in...

In the 2000s, former President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela bet his country’s economic future on a rising China, securing tens of billions of dollars in investments and loans-for-oil deals. It paid off at first. China voraciously consumed Venezuelan oil and financed infrastructure projects from a high-speed railway to power plants. The 2010s brought a reckoning. Oil prices fell, and growth in Chinese oil demand slowed along with its economy. Venezuela’s oil export revenues plummeted, from more than $73 billion in 2011 to $22 billion in 2016. Misrule by Mr. Chavez and his handpicked successor, Nicolás Maduro, and myriad other domestic...

The State Department announced on Saturday that it would lift a three-year ban on selling certain weapons to Saudi Arabia, allowing some $750 million worth of bombs to be sold to the Saudi kingdom within the next few months. “The deliveries will include 3,000 Small Diameter Bombs and 7,500 Paveway IV bombs, which have been on hold since President Biden halted the shipments in 2021 over Saudi Arabia’s punishing war in Yemen,” the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.

The overwhelming likelihood is still that Iran and Hezbollah will attack Israel, maybe even as these words go to print. But if they do not, and even if they do, and a hostage deal eventually comes about, they will now be able to take credit instead of the Saudis for ending the regional hostilities. For several months, the Biden administration had been offering a grand bargain: Israel pauses its war with Hamas for an indefinite period in exchange for a return of the hostages and, eventually also, normalization with the Saudis. This grand bargain might have seen Israel another half...

I’m a law professor and also a columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Late last year, I began a series on the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville’s King Fahd Center for Middle East Studies, from which this article is derived. The coverage launched when the Honors College at UA Fayetteville announced a panel on the war between Israel and Palestinian terrorists that featured as the only presenters two anti-Israel professors from the King Fahd Center. While the school canceled the one-sided discourse shortly after it was publicized, the broader question remains: How does Arkansas’s flagship public university have a subsidiary named...

An investigation into the crash of a US Marine Corps V-22 Osprey finding major flaws... The Biden Administration lifting a ban on sale of US offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia... Kamala Harris saying 'now is the time' for a ceasefire deal in Gaza... Tim Walz 'misspoke' when he spoke of handling weapons in war... Russian authorities announcing counterterrorism measures in three regions bordering Ukraine... US Central Command reporting destruction of drones over the Red Sea and... A US military base in northeastern Syria attacked... Thousands of Palestinians fleeing the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis... Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida...

Middle East update on the Third World War, currently in progress ... three upstart powers — Communist China, Nationalist Russia, and Radical Islam* — who mean to reshape the global order to suit their interests and aren't shy about using any means at their disposal (including violence) to achieve that end. ... The members of this new Axis also make fantastic allies of convenience, if not ideology. A bit like Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia allying for the brief and brutal business of carving up Poland ... China wants the western Pacific (that's everything on the other side of Hawaii)...

Several Arab sources reported Tuesday that if the conflict between Iran and Israel escalates, Pakistan plans to supply Iran with Shaheen-III medium-range ballistic missiles. An emergency meeting of the foreign ministers of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), requested by Iran and Pakistan, took place yesterday in Saudi Arabia, with Iran examining its response to the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.

Salemi) Officials in the US-led multinational coalition that is reportedly preparing to assist in repelling an expected Iranian attack have preemptively warned Israel not to respond too strongly to such an assault, according to a Tuesday report. “Don’t push it,” the unnamed officials told Jerusalem, according to Kan news. “Think carefully before you attack in return. The goal at the end of the day is not to lead to an all-out war.” In April, a massive drone and missile attack from Iran was foiled by a coalition that reportedly comprised Israel, the United States, Britain, France, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi...

Multiple reports on Tuesday indicated the governments of Jordan and Saudi Arabia communicated to rogue terror sponsor Iran it could not use their airspace to attack Israel in response to the elimination of Hamas “political” chief Ismail Haniyeh. The Middle East is anticipating a major attack on Israel by Iran in response to Haniyeh’s killing. Iran itself is repeatedly threatening to execute its “holy wrath” in an imminent attack on Israel, though it has yet to make a move at press time outside of various attacks by its affiliated terror proxies. Iran’s neighbors would not help Iran conduct missile attacks...

What’s behind the Yemeni Ansar Allah (Houthis) movement and two prominent Iraqi Shi’ite militias' latest statements, and what may they imply for the direction of events? Recent statements by the Yemeni Ansar Allah (Houthis) movement and by two prominent Iraqi Shi’ite militias reflect the close levels of cooperation and coordination between different elements of the Iranian-led Mehwar al-Muqawama (Resistance Axis) in the region. The statements consist of threats against Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. Of particular note is the focus on Saudi Arabia by these organizations. What’s behind these latest statements, and what may they imply for the...

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has downgraded its growth forecast for the Saudi economy due to ongoing oil production cuts by OPEC+. The IMF now sees 2024 growth clocking in at just 1.7%, nearly a percentage point lower than its earlier projection of 2.6%. The effects of the cuts are expected to spill over into the coming year, with the IMF projecting GDP growth of 4.7% in 2025, a downward revision of 1.3 percentage points from April...Last year, the Kingdom's private-sector investments expanded by a brisk 57 percent, reaching a record high of 959 billion Saudi Riyals (254 billion dollars),...

Kingdom affirmed its rejection of all forms of violence RIYADH: Saudi Arabia expressed on Sunday its condemnation and denunciation of the attempt on the life of the former President of the US Donald Trump, Saudi Press Agency reported. The Kingdom affirmed its complete solidarity with the US, the former President and his family. Trump was hit in the ear in an assassination attempt by a gunman at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday. The 78-year-old former president was rushed off stage with blood streaked across his face after the shooting, while the shooter and a bystander were killed and...

UK studio Foster + Partners is reportedly designing a two-kilometre-high skyscraper in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, which if completed would be the world's tallest building.According to a report in UK architecture magazine Architects' Journal (AJ), the UK studio is designing the megatall skyscraper for a site to the north of the Saudi capital.The AJ reports that the skyscraper will be located near the city's international airport, which is currently being redeveloped by Foster + Partners.Skyscraper would be world's tallest buildingIf built, the skyscraper would become the world's tallest building, being over twice the height of the current record holder, the 828-metre-high...

NEOM in Saudi Arabia will be home to the Kingdom's first Yotel hotel, it has been announced.Yotel will open the doors on the NEOM property in 2025 at the Oxagon development in Saudi Arabia.It will be the first hotel in Oxagon, which will be the home of advanced and clean industries in NEOM...The hotel's location is at the heart of the integrated live-work-play Research and Innovation (R&I) district of Oxagon with a dedicated R&I campus.Strategically located on NEOM's Red Sea coast, Oxagon is reimagining the traditional industrial city by developing multiple thriving residential and business communities.Additional to the R&I district,...

The Saudi capital Riyadh on Tuesday won the right to host the 2030 World Expo, defeating rival bids from Italy and South Korea as well as overcoming objections from rights activists to take hold of another global mega-event. With a pledge for an Expo "built by the world for the world", Saudi's bid smashed the opposition after a years-long lobbying campaign whose intensity caused some gnashing of teeth among its Italian rivals. The World Expo -- which traces its history back to the 1851 Great Exhibition in London and the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris that saw the construction of...

Newly-released drone footage shows excavators starting work on digging the foundations for the £440 billion megacity The Line in Saudi Arabia. The project was launched by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and will be part of the vast desert complex of Neom, which will also feature an artificial ski resort, an octagonal floating port city, flying elevators, a swimming lane for commuters and robots and AI to serve its future residents. the skyscraper will run from the Gulf of Aqaba, through a mountain range, and then extend along the coast into a desert 'aerotropolis,' the Wall Street Journal reported. The...

FBI declassified a 1999 video of Saudi intelligence agent Omar al-Bayoumi casing the Capitol and other Washington D.C. sites for the 9/11 attack. How, then, did the CIA-FBI 9/11 report conclude in 2005 that Saudi Arabia was not involved in the attack? And why did the FBI maintain — for 20 years, before its recent retraction — that al-Bayoumi wasn’t a Saudi agent? Such willful deception, practiced increasingly by American intelligence, is the subject of former CIA agent J. Michael Waller’s new book Big Intel: How the CIA and FBI Went from Cold War Heroes to Deep State Villains ......

The creator of Masameer County was charged with promoting homosexuality and terrorism for his South Park-style satirical cartoon.Masameer County was supposed to be Saudi Arabia's big break in the comedy world. The online cartoon, similar in tone to South Park and Family Guy, had been growing in popularity as the kingdom was undergoing social reforms. When Netflix picked up Masameer County in 2021, it quickly topped the viewership charts in Saudi Arabia. And you didn't have to be Saudi to enjoy it. The citizens of Masameer, a fictional Saudi metropolis, suffer from the same everyday problems as the rest of...

Chris Cuomo played video on Friday night that shows a Saudi official plotting the 9-11 attacks that killed 3,000 Americans. The video aired on News Nation and shows a Saudi official plotting the attack in Washington DC. This is the first time The Gateway Pundit has seen this video. Chris Cuomo: There’s a story that’s out right now that you have not been smothered with today. The more I think about it, it has been eating at me all day about how blanked up this is. We all remember 9/11. I guess we remember. Maybe we don’t? Maybe we don’t....