Author: Steven Sahiounie

BY ALI SHAMSABADI Crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), 34-year old, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, has ascended to the throne in 2015, after the death of King Abdullah. The Crown Prince’s reckless policy has resulted in an unprecedented series of economic and political failures to his country, which has rarely happened in such a scale before. MBS, who was the Defense Minister between 2015 and 2017, refused to be less powerful than his father and the former Crown Prince Muhammad bin Nayef. Following MBS’s meteoric rise to power and under his guidance, the kingdom has witnessed the most dramatic events…

Following the 14 September attacks on Saudi Aramco’s oil facilities, the US together with Saudi Arabia and several European countries accused Iran of being behind the attacks. Russian President Vladimir Putin said after talks with his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani that there was no evidence to blame Iran for the recent attacks on Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities. “We condemn this [attack], but we are against shifting the blame on Iran, as there is no evidence for that,” Putin said when asked how he views the attack on Saudi oil facilities. The Russian president noted that those who orchestrated it did…

By Stephen Lendman According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Saudi Arabia ranks third in global military spending after the US and China — allocating an estimated $65.5 billion in 2018. The US, Britain and France are its main weapons, munitions, and related military equipment suppliers. Despite enormous Saudi wealth devoted to militarism and warmaking, Houthi fighters are winning in Yemen, clearly spending a tiny fraction of what Riyadh budgets to partner with endless US war in Yemen — draining its resources, going into debt, achieving nothing. Last May, the IMF estimated that the Saudi budget deficit will be…

While inaugurating the first Military Medicine Conference for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in New Delhi in September, Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said, “Bio-terrorism is the real threat… the armed forces and their medical services will have to be at the forefront to tackle the menace.” Singh had asked the AFMS to have a clear, effective and rehearsed protocol with respect to casualty management strategies. Three weeks after Singh raised concerns over bio-terrorism, an Indian delegation is set to visit France for training in bio-terrorism threat management from 1 to 4 October. The move is part of an Indo-French…

By Morgan Artyukhina After a seven-month hiatus, negotiations between the United States and Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to rid the Korean Peninsula of nuclear weapons and achieve peace are set to resume this weekend. Officials in both Washington and Pyongyang have confirmed the meetings are set to resume at the end of the week, signaling a return to diplomacy after seven tense months of posturing. “The DPRK and the US agreed to have preliminary contact on Oct. 4 and hold working-level negotiations on Oct. 5,” North Korean First Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs Choe Son Hui said in a Tuesday statement,…

Earlier in September, Iran reported an explosion in its space center before a satellite launch, the third failure involving a rocket in a year. Iran plans to send three satellites into orbit in the next three months, Iran’s state TV reported. According to state television, quoting the head of Iran’s space agency, Morteza Barari, the satellites will transmit data for civilian purposes such as navigation, agriculture and the environment. Iran attempted to launch satellites into orbit in January and February of this year, but those launches all failed. The January launch involved the Simorgh rocket, and sought to take a domestically-developed environmental data-gathering satellite…

While the US banned Huawei for alleged espionage and asked its allies to do the same, Moscow has rolled out the red carpet for the Chinese tech company, letting it develop 5G networks in Russia. Analysts say the move is as much a show of solidarity with Beijing against the US as it is a drive to bring ultra high-speed internet to Russian tech users. . This month, Huawei opened its first 5G test zone in Moscow in partnership Russian operator MTS, with a view to rolling out the service to the rest of the capital. Moscow authorities say the…

At least two people have been killed and 200 others sustained wounds in a protest rally against alleged corruption in Iraq’s capital city of Baghdad. More than 3,000 people took to the streets in central Baghdad on Tuesday to protest alleged corruption, unemployment, poor public services, and other grievances. Security forces resorted to tear gas, water cannon, and live fire to disperse the crowds. Iraq’s Ministry of Health said in a statement that 160 civilians and 40 security forces were injured in the clashes. The Iraqi government in a statement blamed “groups of riot inciters” for the violence and said…

The spokesman for Yemeni Armed Forces says three Saudi military bases and more than 150 square kilometers of land have been taken during the second phase of a recent large-scale military offensive carried out by Yemeni Army troops and allied fighters from Popular Committees in the kingdom’s southern border region of Najran. Speaking at a press conference in the capital Sana’a on Tuesday evening, Brigadier General Yahya Saree said video footage recorded by Yemeni forces on the second phase of Victory from God Almighty Operation attests to their full control over the Saudi military sites and seizure of considerable amounts of…

BY DAVID MACILWAIN As a continuing series of dramas and crises distract our attention from the unresolved questions around the Yemeni attacks on Saudi Aramco, it’s vital to state certain points that are beyond contention. Already there are new developments in Yemen and Iran which cannot be properly assessed against a background of false information. The first and obvious point about the drone/missile attacks on the Saudi refinery and oilfield is that they were indisputably the work of Yemen’s Houthi militia, as stated clearly by their spokesman Yahia Sarie, albeit apparently involving some local assistance. This has been well argued elsewhere, both in principle and…