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Yemeni army carries out ‘warning’ operation against Greek tanker

The Cradle | October 22, 2022

Yemen’s Armed Forces announced on 21 October they carried out a “warning” drone strike on Al-Dabba port of Hadhramaut in order to prevent a Greek tanker, the Nissos Kea, from looting oil from the facility.

This was the first attack carried out by Yemen’s forces since the expiration of the UN-brokered truce agreement on 2 October.

The country’s official military spokesman, Brigadier General Yahya Saree, said in a statement that “the oil ship violated the decision issued by the competent authorities to ban the transportation and export of Yemen’s sovereign oil derivatives.”

“The warning message came after addressing the authorities of that ship, and informing them of the decision based on Yemeni laws … The ship was dealt with through cautionary measures, through which we were keen to preserve the safety of its crew and the security of Yemen’s infrastructure,” Saree added.

According to Hadhramaut’s governor in the Saudi-backed Presidential Council, Mabkhout ibn Madi, the ship was meant to arrive at Al-Dabba port a week ago, but remained stationed outside of Yemeni waters due to threats issued against the Greek Ministry of Transport.

“Greece transmitted these threats to us, and to the Ministry of Oil,” Ibn Madi said. Following the ship’s entry into Al-Dabba port, however, its crew ignored the warning issued earlier this month by Yemen’s Supreme Economic Committee and proceeded to attempt an oil looting operation.

According to exclusive sources, the drone strike targeted the area between the Greek ship and the port buoy, sending a “clear military message,” but not compromising the safety of the tanker’s crew, as planned. This is not the first time a Greek vessel is involved in the looting of Yemen’s natural resources.

“The American envoy has been communicating for two weeks with mediators in Sanaa to allow the tanker to ship oil from Al-Dabba port,” the sources added.

As Washington and its allies face a severe energy crisis of their own making, the US is in desperate need of immediate sources of energy, a likely reason that its envoy pressured Sanaa to allow the Greek tanker to make off with the oil. As a result of this energy crisis, US forces have stepped up their oil looting operations in Syria.

The Yemeni operation comes as a renewal of the several warnings issued by the Armed Forces and the Ansarallah resistance movement against the international oil companies operating in the country, and against the Saudi-led coalition, who have consistently plundered Yemen’s oil.

The Saudi-backed government, however, has claimed to have intercepted the operation.

October 22, 2022 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | , | Leave a comment

Saudi-led coalition seizes new emergency fuel ship headed for Yemen

The Cradle | October 21, 2022

On 21 October, the Saudi-led coalition seized the oil tanker ‘Lady Sarah,’ preventing it from reaching Yemen’s port of Hodeidah despite its previous inspection in Djibouti and having permits from the UN Verification and Inspection Mechanism (UNIVM).

Yemeni officials revealed that three ships are currently detained by the coalition. Since the beginning of 2021, the Saudi-led coalition has impounded at least 13 ships near the Yemeni coast.

The official spokesperson for the Yemeni Petroleum Company (YPC), Issam Al-Mutawakel, said that Sanaa holds the UN partially responsible for the humanitarian and economic consequences of the coalition’s actions.

Just one week ago, delegations from Yemen and Saudi Arabia visited each other’s capitals to discuss a prisoner exchange deal, marking the first time a Saudi delegation arrived in Sanaa since the Ansarallah resistance group took control of the city in 2014 and ended the reign of the Saudi-backed president.

A delegation representing Ansarallah also visited Riyadh and toured the prisons that are holding Yemeni fighters.

“Our technical team was tasked with validating the names and condition of our prisoners ahead of a possible exchange deal,” said Abdul Qadir al-Murtada, head of the prisoners’ committee in Yemen’s National Salvation Government.

Murtada added that the Saudi delegation visited for a similar purpose and toured Sanaa’s prisons, meeting the Saudi army’s prisoners of war.

“We do not accept a situation where Yemeni people are caught between war and peace,” Yemeni Foreign Minister, Hisham Sharaf, said during a meeting with a UN representative on 11 October.

Oman has reportedly been making progress in mediating the dispute between Yemen and Saudi-led coalition to restart the UN-sponsored truce that expired earlier this month.

Citing well-informed sources in Sanaa, Arabic media reports say Omani officials have made inroads in settling several issues, particularly relating to the opening of Sanaa airport and the lifting of restrictions imposed on the port of Hodeidah. 

However, issues remain over Sanaa’s demand that the country’s oil revenues be used to pay the salaries of state workers and the army. In this regard, the Saudi-appointed government in Aden has reportedly agreed to pay the pensions of military retirees exclusively, along with the salaries of all civil servants.

October 21, 2022 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Americans criticize US Middle Eastern policies

By Viktor Mikhin – New Eastern Outlook – 18.10.2022

The USA never misses an opportunity to present itself as an open and democratic society and a state in which the government authorities respect the will of the majority of the people and tailor their policies accordingly. That may have been the case in the past, but the facts no longer support this view – the President and his team are pushing through policies which favor their own interests and which are quite different from what they promised in their election campaigns.

There is a great deal of evidence to support this claim, but one particularly striking example is a new wide-ranging survey of Americans’ views on Washington’s foreign policy in the Middle East. The survey revealed that the majority of young Americans oppose their country’s policy in relation to Israel and, specifically against its sale of arms to the Israeli regime. The survey also shows that there is a great deal of support in American society for the Iran nuclear deal.

The survey, conducted by the Eurasia Group Foundation (EGF), shows that young Americans are more politically aware than older generations in relation to Israel’s aggressive policies against the Palestinians and its Arab neighbors. Most respondents aged between 18 and 29 were not in favor of continuing to supply arms to Israel. Older Americans (over sixty years old), on the other hand, tend to be in favor of the US providing military support to Israel.

The US supplies Israel with military aid worth some $4 billion a year. As a result, Israel is the biggest recipient of American military support in the world. But this support is being paid for by American taxpayers, many of whom are unaware that their taxes are being used to support the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the native Palestinians. Similarly, more than 80% of Americans support the Biden administration’s policy of negotiating in order to revive the Iran nuclear deal, as they consider that this will help improve the situation in the Middle East. Both in the region and at the international level there is a great deal of debate about how ready ordinary Americans are to criticize their government’s military support for dictatorships and authoritarian regimes enforcing policies of territorial occupation and ethnic segregation. Washington, in a bid to justify its actions, frequently claims that its support is made necessary by so-called security concerns, but many are skeptical of these arguments, dismissing them as cheap populism.

Mark Hannah, senior fellow at the Eurasia Group Foundation, describes the motivation behind the survey, “We began this survey five years ago because we believed lawmakers and foreign policy leaders conducting foreign policy on behalf of the American people would benefit from a window into their opinions and priorities.” He also expressed the hope that the survey results would be used by decision makers responsible for foreign policy in relation to the Middle East would study the survey “to make the activities they pursue more sensitive to – and informed by – the opinions of their constituents, and to bridge the gap between the concerns of policymakers and those of ordinary Americans.”

Unfortunately, the above hope is very naive: officials in Washington and in the Biden administration do not take the interests of ordinary Americans into account when making foreign policy decisions. It would suffice to cite Washington’s involvement supporting neo-Nazi groups in the war in Ukraine, thus threatening the world with nuclear war.

Or one could cite its offer to supply Israel – completely free of charge – with four Boeing military refueling aircraft over the next four years. Boeing signed a contract with the US Defense Department for the supply of four Boeing KC-46 Pegasus aircraft at a cost of $927 million. In effect, this means that the purchase price of $927 million will be paid by the US taxpayer, and Boeing will make a handsome profit from the transaction. According to Israeli media reports and also official government sources, Israel is already planning to use these state-of-the art aircraft to attack Iranian territory. It is obvious that the revival of the so-called Iran nuclear deal is in the interests both of the USA and of ordinary Americans, and that it would have a very positive effect on the highly tense situation in the Middle East.

In a formal statement on the decision to supply Israel with the refueling planes, Benny Gantz, Israel’s Minister of Defense, said, “This is further proof of the alliance and the strategic relations of the Israeli and American defense establishments.” In line with their standard practice, the Minister of Defense and other Israeli officials, along with their counterparts in Washington, all falsely name Iran as the justification for their huge military aid budget. This military aid has support from both parties in Congress, and is approved each year by a majority of lawmakers, even though this support goes against the interests of ordinary Americans.

According to a study by Maryland University, less than 1% of respondents consider Israel to be one of Washington’s two main allies. Many other surveys conducted over a number of years confirm the findings of the Eurasia Group Foundation. Earlier this year a survey by Pew Research also found that Americans under 30 tended to have a negative view of Israel. 61% of respondents in that age group felt sympathy towards the Palestinians. Maryland University also found that only a small proportion were in favor of stronger links with Israel, and that Israel is able to manipulate these links to favor its own interests.

In an interview with Middle East Eye, Dr. Zuri Linetsky, a Research Fellow at the Eurasia Group Foundation, explained that many American respondents who stated that they were against arms sales to Israel explained that they saw Israel’s long-term occupation of Palestinian territory as a violation of human rights. That last survey also found that many Americans are against their government’s continuing arms sales to Saudi Arabia, with 70% of respondents critical of Washington’s policy in relation to Riyadh.

That is despite the fact that rights groups are deeply concerned about the Biden administration’s continuing approvals of new arms sales to countries such as Israel, which have a record of invading other Arab nations. In August President Biden approved a $5 billion sale of rocket technology to Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The survey also shows that respondents are in favor of reining in US military involvement abroad, and, conversely, want to see the US administration make more efforts in the field of diplomacy, especially in relation to US rivals.

One of the key findings of the survey conducted by the Eurasia Group Foundation is that respondents attach a lot of importance to the Iran nuclear deal. It revealed that, irrespective of whether they vote Democrat or Republican, most Americans are in favor of talks with Tehran. Almost 80% of them support Joe Biden’s administration engaging in talks to revive the nuclear deal. To a great extent, support for the talks cuts across party divisions, with more than 70% of Republicans believing that the USA should continue with the talks.

However, approximately 80% of respondents also feel that Congress should more strictly control the President’s powers and authority in military matters, and that such decisions should be made by Congress. The USA has invaded many countries, most notably Afghanistan and Iraq, and its military continues to be involved in combat operations in Syria. Washington is also still illegally “occupying” a number of Arab countries, and has military bases in Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. And the Pentagon does all this without consulting Congress – it prefers to take action and present the legislature with a fait accompli.

When asked about Afghanistan, almost two thirds of respondents consider that the most important lesson to be learned from the Afghan war is that the USA should not be involved in nation-building, or that it should only send troops into harm’s way if its vital national interests are threatened.

As for nuclear weapons, almost 75% of respondents said that they were concerned about this problem. Those respondents who have served or currently serve in the armed forces were less concerned than those with no military experience. “For the vast majority of the 21st century, the United States has been involved in conflicts in far-flung parts of the world. So the question is, is this what the American people want? Does this represent their interests?”, asked Zuri Linetsky, in his interview with Middle East Eye.

In conclusion, the author can confidently state that the survey is a good test to determine the areas in which respondents are dissatisfied with American policies in relation to the Middle East, and what they consider should be their leaders’ priorities, whether concerning international or domestic matters. The survey shows that in relation to many questions, the White House’s policies are inconsistent with the views of the majority of respondents. The survey sample was made up of a highly diverse group of Americans from all parts of the country, with different religions, political affiliations, drawn from every age group and representing all income levels.

What kind of democracy is that?

October 18, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Americans should know if US pressured Middle East ally – congressman

Samizdat – October 16, 2022

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi should look into whether the White House pressured Saudi Arabia to delay OPEC+’s promised oil production cut, Republican Tom Tiffany demanded in a letter to the congresswoman on Thursday.

The Saudi government had claimed earlier that day that the US government had requested a one-month delay in the 2 million barrels per day production cut announced earlier this month. Putting off the cut, it implied, would postpone the surge in energy prices expected to accompany the move until after the US midterm elections. However, “postponing the OPEC+ decision by a month… would have had negative economic consequences” for Riyadh, a statement from the Kingdom read.

The administration of US President Joe Biden responded by accusing its sometime Arab ally of attempting to “spin and deflect.” The Saudis “knew [the production cut] would increase Russian revenues and blunt the effectiveness of sanctions,” White House spokesman John Kirby reminded Americans.

However, Kirby did not deny their claim outright. He suggested that “other OPEC nations” had “privately” approached the US to support its bid to postpone the reduction, implying that it could not have been solely motivated by the desire to keep control of Congress in November.

“If the Biden administration did attempt to pressure a foreign government to influence the outcome of the US election, that’s something Americans deserve to know,” Tiffany tweeted on Thursday alongside his letter to Pelosi.

If the Saudis’ claims are to be believed, he wrote, the administration’s efforts to postpone the cut amounted to an “illegal solicitation of a foreign in-kind contribution by the White House on behalf of Democrats’ midterm campaign efforts.”

In addition to investigating whether calls took place between the Biden administration and the Saudis about potentially delaying the production cut, Tiffany urged Pelosi to obtain the transcripts of those calls. He also insisted that US administration officials who may have asked Saudi officials to delay the cut be identified.

Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, confirmed on Sunday that the president would act “methodically” to re-evaluate the US relationship with Saudi Arabia. The administration has been threatening to “reassess” the partnership ever since the price cut was announced. However, while the president warned there would be “some consequences” for the Saudis, their nature has yet to be publicly revealed.

Inflation and the high cost of living are the chief issues on voters’ minds heading into the midterms next month, casting the Democrats’ ability to hold onto both the House and Senate into doubt as polls indicate few voters trust Biden to effectively manage the economy.

October 16, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Economics | , | Leave a comment

Saudi Arabia calls out US bluster

BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | OCTOBER 14, 2022 

Saudi Arabia has politely but firmly rebutted the threats and calumnies levelled by the US political elites in the past week since the OPEC decided to cut oil production by 2 million barrels per day. On Thursday, a Foreign Ministry official in Riyadh forcefully pushed back the allegation that the OPEC decision was at Saudi initiative and was politically motivated against the US, and, worse still, to help Russia. 

The Saudi official rejected the US allegations as baseless, especially the imputation that Saudi Arabia is “aligning” with Russia in the context of the Ukraine situation. The official made three substantive points: 

  • The OPEC+ decision constitutes the unanimous opinion of the member states and it is preposterous to attribute it to Saudi Arabia.
  • Purely economic considerations lie behind the decision, which takes into account the imperatives of maintaining balance of supply and demand in the oil market and limiting the volatility.
  • Saudi Arabia has taken a principled stance on the Ukraine issue, as its votes supporting two UN resolutions testify. 

The Saudi official, inter alia, made a startling disclosure that the Biden Administration had actually tried to get Riyadh to postpone the OPEC+ decision by a month. Presumably, the rage in Washington today is not so much about the oil prices as the panic that the OPEC decision casts on the US diplomacy and foreign policy in general  — and, especially, on President Biden personally — in a poor light as ineffectual and illogical, as the Republicans are highlighting. 

Conceivably, the one-month delay that was sought was intended to overlap the forthcoming midterms in the US on November 8. Unsurprisingly, the Saudis didn’t oblige the White House and it now becomes an unforgivable slight on the US’ sense of entitlement and Biden’s vanity. 

Suffice it to say, the Democrats and the Biden Administration have worked themselves into a frenzy because of their fear that the price of gas can become a combustible issue that may spell doom at the midterms. Some Democrats have gone to the absurd extent of suspecting that the Saudis are deliberately interfering in the US politics to help the Republicans’ electoral prospects. 

The Saudi statement has pointedly rejected “any dictates, actions, or efforts to distort its (Saudi) noble objectives to protect the global economy from oil market volatility.” It is a mild warning that any anti-Saudi moves will meet with resistance and will have repercussions. 

The Saudi statements came within hours of an interview by Biden with the CNN on Thursday, where he warned that “There’s going to be some consequences for what they’ve (Saudis) done, with Russia. I’m not going to get into what I’d consider and what I have in mind. But there will be — there will be consequences.”

Later, John Kirby, a White House National Security Council spokesman, said Biden believes “it’s time to take another look at this relationship and make sure that it’s serving our national security interests.”

Biden himself was speaking a day after the influential Democratic senator from New Jersey Bob Menendez threatened to block cooperation with Saudi Arabia. He excoriated Saudi Arabia, accusing it of helping “underwrite Putin’s war through the OPEC+ cartel.” Menendez ripped into the kingdom, and went on to say that the US must “immediately freeze all aspects of our cooperation with Saudi Arabia, including any arms sales and security cooperation beyond what is absolutely necessary to defend US personnel and interests.”

In good measure, Menendez added an ultimatum that he would not “green-light any cooperation with Riyadh until the Kingdom reassesses its position with respect to the war in Ukraine. Enough is enough.” 

Quite obviously, the White House’s strategy is to obfuscate the matter by making the OPEC+ decision a geopolitical challenge to the US strategies concerning Ukraine and Russia rather than as a historic rebuff to Biden’s clumsy personal diplomacy — which it is — to try to get Saudi Arabia on board his fanciful project to bring down the oil prices so that Russia’s income from oil exports will be severely curtailed. 

The fact of the matter is that the OPEC decision virtually derails the Biden Administration’s pet project to impose a price cap on Russia’s oil exports. Simply put, that hare-brained project, conceived by the US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, flounders if oil prices remain high. 

Interestingly, the G7 statement last week on Ukraine and Russia did not make any references to the price cap project. On the other hand, high oil prices will further aggravate the economic crisis in Europe even as the EU is moving towards terminating all oil imports from Russia by December 5. Meanwhile, the Biden Administration is acutely conscious that the Europeans — Germany and France included —are increasingly murmuring their discontent that the Americans played them and are selling gas at vastly higher prices in the European energy market. 

When an influential senator like Menendez throws down the gauntlet to Riyadh, it can be taken as signalling that some retaliatory action against Saudi Arabia is in the cards. Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Rep. Ro Khanna of California have introduced legislation that would immediately pause all US arms sales to Saudi Arabia for one year as well as halt sales of spare and repair parts, support services and logistical support. 

But appearances can be deceptive. The vehemence of the rage and rave have a contrived look, a touch of bluster. Significantly, in his CNN interview, Biden stopped short of endorsing the Democratic lawmakers’ call to halt weapons. Biden merely said he would look to consult with Congress on the way forward. 

Whereas, Menendez has promised to use his position as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to block any future arms sales to the Saudis. Quite obviously, the anger with Saudi Arabia has become far more palpable on Capitol Hill, but will it translate into action?  

The big question is how much of this bluster is with an eye on the mid-terms in November. The White House national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, told reporters that Biden was also looking at a possible halt in arms sales as part of a broader re-evaluation of the US relationship with Saudi Arabia, but that no move was imminent. 

Indeed, any attempt to rebalance relations with Saudi Arabia will have ripple effects at a time when the contours of an emerging alliance between Saudi Arabia and Russia are becoming apparent, the Iran question remains unresolved and high oil prices upset the US consumer and deepen the crisis in Europe — and, of course, so long as the petrodollar remains a key pillar of the western banking system. Besides, as things stand, US influence in the West Asia is today a pale shadow of what it used to be, and alienating Saudi Arabia to a point of no return will be an exceedingly foolish thing to do. 

Above all, will the military-industrial complex in the US countenance a US-Saudi break-up? Saudi Arabia is the proverbial goose that lays golden eggs. It is a terrific paymaster for the American arms industry. Geopolitical analysts often call it the US’ ATM. Equally, the bottom line is that the Democrats wouldn’t even be able to garner enough Republican support to pass legislation once Congress is back in session next month. 

The Saudi statement concludes with a word of advice for American diplomacy in these extraordinary times of multipolarity: “Resolving economic challenges requires the establishment of a non-politicised constructive dialogue, and to wisely and rationally consider what serves the interests of all countries.” (Emphasis added.) It ended recalling that “the solid pillars upon which the Saudi-US relationship had stood over the past eight decades” include mutual respect and common interests, amongst other things.     

October 14, 2022 Posted by | Corruption, Economics, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

Saudi minister blames Washington for soaring fuel prices in the US

The Cradle | October 8, 2022

Saudi Arabia’s Minister of State, Adel al-Jubeir, rejected claims that the kingdom is behind soaring gas prices in the US, citing instead insufficient refinery production and asserting that the Gulf country does not politicize oil.

“With due respect, the reason you have high prices in the United States is because you have a refining shortage that has been in existence for more than 20 years… You haven’t built refineries in decades,” Jubeir said during an interview on Fox News on 7 October.

“Oil is not a weapon… It’s not a fighter plane. It’s not a tank. You can’t shoot it. You can’t do anything with it. We look at oil as a commodity and we look at oil as important to the global economy in which we have a huge stake. The idea that Saudi Arabia would do this to harm the U.S. or to be in any way politically involved is absolutely not correct at all,” the Saudi official added.

The minister made the claim that the issue on oil production has “been taken out of context by perhaps commentators and analysts,” while assuring that Riyadh is “committed to ensuring stability in the oil markets to the benefit of consumers and producers.”

Following the decision by OPEC+ to cut production output levels by two million barrels per day (bpd), Washington fired back strongly at it’s Gulf partners, with White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre accusing them on 5 October of “aligning with Russia.”

For weeks before the cut, the US had been lobbying OPEC+ and pressuring it against making the decision, sources told media, as US officials “tried to position the situation as ‘us versus Russia.’”

Saudi officials reportedly told their US counterparts that Washington should boost its own production if it wanted more oil on the market.

Tensions have escalated further between Saudi Arabia and the US in the wake of the production cut, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying on 6 October that Washington is reviewing various options regarding its relationship with the kingdom.

October 8, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

The geopolitical consequences of the OPEC+ agreement

By Hazem Ayyad | MEMO | October 7, 2022

Amir Hossein Zamani Nia, Iran’s OPEC governor, announced when he left a meeting with representatives of the 13 member states of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and their ten allies – known as OPEC+ – the decision to reduce oil production by two million barrels per day for November.

The initial reactions to the large production cut were hysteria. One American journalist asked the Saudi Minister of Energy, Prince Abdulaziz Bin Salman, if he was worried about the American reaction to the production cut. He sarcastically told her to enjoy the sun in Vienna; a clear indication of the difficulties that Europeans will face next winter.

The American reactions to the decision of the OPEC+ countries were quick and distinct. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre commented on the decision by saying it was clear that the OPEC+ alliance was “aligning with Russia” and was making a “short-sighted decision” to reduce oil production at the height of the conflict in Ukraine.

White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan noted that US President Joe Biden was feeling “disappointed” with the decision of the OPEC+ alliance to reduce its oil production.

The reactions confirm President Biden’s failure to manage the sanctions against Russia and the dismantling of the OPEC+ alliance, whose decisions ruined the ambitions of the US administration, the US Treasury, and the Federal Reserve to fight inflation and reduce interest rates.

The OPEC+ alliance has once again proven its strength and the unity of its countries, which include Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Russia. Despite the disparity, competition and conflict between its countries, the OPEC+ agreement exceeded the limits of technical performance confirmed by UAE Energy Minister, Suhail Al Mazrouei, when his country announced it was joining the efforts to reduce production. Its geopolitical reach extended from the Gulf and Yemen to the Red Sea and the Mediterranean.

The agreement that included regional opponents such as Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and international sponsors such as Russia, stressed the geopolitical dimensions as it coincided with a meeting held by the Russian President’s Special Envoy to the Middle East and Africa, Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, on Wednesday evening with the Emirati Ambassador to Moscow, Mohammed Ahmed Al-Jaber, to discuss the situation in Yemen and the Gulf region after the expiry of the deadline for the truce agreement in Yemen on 2 October.

This meeting came at the request of the Emirati ambassador and coincided with threats made by a member of the Political Bureau of the Houthi movement, Muhammad Al-Bakhiti. He said: “We have the ability and the courage to strike the Saudi and Emirati oil facilities if our demands are not met.”

The meeting with the Emirati ambassador coincided with a press conference held by the US special envoy to Yemen, Tim Lenderking, during which he discussed his country’s position on renewing the truce in Yemen between the countries of the Arab coalition, led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and the Houthi group. The US official held the Houthis responsible for hindering the reaching of an agreement without providing practical solutions for resuming the truce or dealing with Houthi threats.

These actions and movements confirm the connection between the regional files and their connection to the international mediations led by both America and Russia in Yemeni. Saudi Arabia and the UAE view the OPEC+ agreement as a trump card and a comprehensive framework that allows activating mediations and truces in Yemen, with the positive and consensual atmosphere it provides, which the Biden administration was unable to provide. This is despite its frequent talk about security cooperation in the Red Sea and the Gulf and naval and air manoeuvres, but it quickly turned into a political and economic framework that serves Israel and its interests more than it serves the interests of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi.

OPEC+ has shifted from a technical framework to an emerging economic and geopolitical framework; fuelled by the Ukrainian war and Russian demands. The tense American reactions deepened the Arab Gulf states’ mistrust of the American partner, which repeatedly failed to deal with the Yemeni and Iranian file. It also failed to deal with the economic requirements of the Gulf states and their political and cultural specificity, which put them in conflict with the powers of the region and threatened their political and religious legitimacy.

This article first appeared in Arabic in Arabi21 on 6 October 2022.

October 7, 2022 Posted by | Economics | , , , , , | Leave a comment

As truce ends, Yemen warns oil companies to leave Saudi Arabia, UAE

Press TV – October 2, 2022

Yemen’s Armed Forces have put oil companies operating in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates on notice, warning that they could be targeted as long as Riyadh and its allies fail to commit to a proper ceasefire.

Tweeting on Sunday, the Armed Forces’ spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Saree said Yemeni troops were providing the oil companies with a window of opportunity to leave the Saudi and Emirati soils “fast.”

The Saudi kingdom and its allies, most notably the United Arab Emirates, have been waging a war against Yemen since March 2015, trying, in vain, to restore Yemen’s power to its former Riyadh-friendly officials. The military campaign, which has been enjoying unstinting arms, logistical, and political support from the United States, has killed hundreds of thousands of people, and turned the entire Yemen into the scene of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

A temporary United Nations-mediated ceasefire took effect between the warring sides in April and has been renewed twice ever since. The truce, however, expired on Sunday amid the invading coalition’s constant violations of the agreement and its refusal to properly lift a siege that it has been enforcing against Yemen simultaneously with the war.

“The warning,” Saree said, “stands as long as the countries that make up the invading American-Saudi coalition refuse to adhere to a ceasefire that allows the Yemeni people to exploit their oil wealth….”

Also on Sunday, Hans Grundberg, the United Nations’ special envoy for Yemen, confirmed failure of efforts aimed at extending the truce.

“The UN special envoy regrets that an agreement has not been reached today, as an extended and expanded truce would provide additional critical benefits to the population,” a statement said.

“I urge [the warring parties] to fulfill their obligation to the Yemeni people to pursue every avenue for peace,” the Swedish diplomat was quoted as saying.

October 3, 2022 Posted by | Economics, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Decoding the Pentagon’s online war against Iran

Photo Credit: The Cradle
By Kit Klarenberg | The Cradle | October 1, 2022

The civil unrest in Iran in response to the recent death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini while she was waiting at a Tehran police station, although rooted in legitimate grievances, also bears the hallmark of a western-sponsored covert war, covering multiple fronts.

Mere days after the protests erupted on 16 September, the Washington Post revealed that the Pentagon had initiated a wide-ranging audit of all its online psyops efforts, after a number of bot and troll accounts operated by its Central Command (CENTCOM) division – which covers all US military actions in West Asia, North Africa and South and Central Asia – were exposed, and subsequently banned by major social networks and online spaces.

The accounts were busted in a joint investigation carried out by social media research firm Graphika, and the Stanford Internet Observatory, which evaluated “five years of pro-Western covert influence operations.”

Published in late August, it attracted minimal English-language press coverage at the time, but evidently was noticed, raising concerns at the highest levels of the US government, prompting the audit.

While the Washington Post ludicrously suggested the government’s umbrage stemmed from CENTCOM’s egregious, manipulative activities which could compromise US “values” and its “moral high ground,” it is abundantly clear that the real problem was CENTCOM being exposed.

#OpIran

CENTCOM’s geographical purview includes Iran, and given the Islamic Republic’s longstanding status as a key US enemy state, it’s perhaps unsurprising that a significant proportion of the unit’s online disinformation and psychological warfare efforts were directed there.

A key strategy employed by US military psyops specialists is the creation of multiple sham media outlets publishing content in Farsi. Numerous online channels were maintained for these platforms, spanning Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and even Telegram.

In some cases too, fake journalists and pundits, with numerous “followers” on those platforms emerged, along with profile photos created via artificial intelligence.

For example, Fahim News claimed to provide “accurate news and information” on events in Iran, prominently publishing posts declaring “the regime uses all of its efforts to censor and filter the internet,” and encouraging readers to stick to online sources as a result.

Meanwhile, Dariche News claimed to be an “independent website unaffiliated with any group or organization,” committed to providing “uncensored and unbiased news” to Iranians within and without the country, in particular information on “the destructive role of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in all the affairs and issues of Iran and the region.”

Their respective YouTube channels pumped out numerous short-form videos, presumably in the hope they would be mistaken for organic content, and go viral on other social networks. The researchers identified one instance in which media outlets elsewhere had embedded Dariche News content into articles.

An army of bots and trolls

Some of the fake news organizations published original material, but much of their output was recycled content from US government-funded propaganda outfits such as Radio Farda and Voice of America Farsi.

They also repurposed and shared articles from the British-based Iran International, which appears to receive arm’s length funding from Saudi Arabia, as did several fake personas attached to these outlets.

These personas frequently posted non-political content, including Iranian poetry and photos of Persian food, in order to increase their authenticity. They also engaged with real Iranians on Twitter, often joking with them about internet memes.

Pentagon bots and trolls used different narrative techniques and approaches in an attempt to influence perceptions and engender engagement. A handful promoted “hardliner” views, criticizing the Iranian government for insufficiently hawkish foreign policy while being excessively reformist and liberal domestically.

One such bogus user, a purported “political science expert,” accrued thousands of followers on Twitter and Telegram by posting content praising Shia Islam’s growing power in West Asia, while other “hardliner” accounts praised the late General Qassem Soleimani of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), slain in an illegal US drone strike in January 2020, as a martyr, and encouraged the wearing of hijabs.

The researchers state the purpose of these efforts was unclear, although an obvious explanation is the Pentagon sought to foster anti-government discontent among conservative Iranians, while creating lists of local “extremists” to monitor online.

Orchestrated opposition

Overwhelmingly though, Pentagon-linked accounts were viciously critical of the Iranian government, and the IRGC. Numerous Pentagon bots and trolls sought to blame food and medicine shortages on the latter, which was likened to ISIS, and posting videos of Iranians protesting and looting supermarkets captioned in Pashto, English, and Urdu.

More sober posts criticized Tehran for redistributing much-needed food to give to Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement, while others highlighted embarrassing incidents, such as a reported power outage that caused the country’s chess team to lose an international online tournament.

Furthermore, multiple fake users claimed to seek “justice for the victims of #Flight752”, referring to the Ukraine International Airlines flight accidentally shot down by the IRGC in January 2020.

Using hashtags such as #PS752 and #PS752justice hundreds of times, they blamed Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei personally for the incident.

Following the outbreak of war in Ukraine in February, these accounts used Persian versions of widely-trending hashtags #No_To_Putin and #No_To_War – themselves overwhelmingly disseminated on Twitter by pro-Ukraine bot and troll accounts, according to separate research.

The users condemned Khamenei’s verbal support of Putin and accused Iran of supplying drones to Moscow, which it was claimed were used to kill civilians.

They also pushed the narrative that Iran’s collusion with Russia would result in adverse political and economic repercussions for Tehran, while making unflattering comparisons between Khamenei and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“One has sold Iran to Russia and ordered their peoples’ murder,” one account tweeted. “The other is wearing a combat uniform alongside his people and has stopped the colonization of Ukraine by Russia with all his might.”

Scattershot fury

There were also cloak-and-dagger initiatives intended to damage Iran’s standing in neighboring countries, and undermine its regional influence. Much of this work seems to have been concerned with spreading panic and alarm, and creating a hostile environment for Iranians abroad.

For instance, accounts targeting audiences in Afghanistan claimed that Quds Force personnel were infiltrating Kabul posing as journalists in order to crush opposition to the Taliban. They also published articles from a US military-linked website that claimed on the basis of zero evidence that the bodies of dead refugees who’d fled to Iran were being returned to their families back home with missing organs.

Yet another damaging false narrative perpetuated by this cluster in late 2021 and early 2022 was that the IRGC was forcing Afghan refugees to join militias fighting in Syria and Yemen, and that those who refused were being deported.

Iraq was a country of particular interest to the Pentagon’s cyber warriors, with memes widely shared throughout Baghdad and beyond depicting IRGC influence in the country as a destructive disease, and content claiming Iraqi militias, and elements of the government, were effective tools of Tehran, fighting to further Iran’s imperial designs over the wider West Asia.

Militias were also accused of killing Iraqis in rocket strikes, engineering droughts by damaging water supply infrastructure, smuggling weapons and fuel out of Iraq and into Syria, and fuelling the country’s crystal meth epidemic.

Another cluster of Pentagon accounts focused on Iran’s involvement in Yemen, publishing content on major social networks critical of the Ansarallah-led de-facto government in Sanaa, accusing it of deliberately blocking humanitarian aid deliveries, acting as an unquestioning proxy of Tehran and Hezbollah, and closing bookstores, radio stations, and other cultural institutions.

Several of their posts blamed Iran for the deaths of civilians via landmine, on the basis Tehran may have supplied them.

Laying the ground

Other CENTCOM psychological warfare (psywar) narratives have direct relevance to the protests that have engulfed Iran.

There was a particular focus among one group of bots and trolls on women’s rights. Dozens of posts compared Iranian women’s opportunities abroad with those in Iran – one meme on this theme contrasted photos of an astronaut with a victim of violent spousal abuse – while others promoted protests against the hijab.

Alleged government corruption and rising living costs were also recurrently emphasized, particularly in respect of food and medicine – production of which in Iran is controlled by the IRGC, a fact CENTCOM’s online operatives repeatedly drew attention to.

Women’s rights, corruption, and the cost of living – the latter of which directly results from suffocating US sanctions – are all key stated motivating factors for the protesters.

Despite the rioters’ widespread acts of violence and vandalism, targeted at civilians and authorities alike, such as the destruction of an ambulance ferrying police officers away from the scene of a riot, they also claim to be motivated by human rights concerns.

Establishment and fringe journalists and pundits have dismissed as conspiracy theories, any suggestions that protests in Iran and beyond are anything other than organic and grassroots in nature.

Yet, clear proof of foreign direction and sponsorship abounds, not least in the very public face of the anti-hijab movement, Masih Alinejad, who for many years has encouraged Iranian women to ceremonially burn their headscarves from the confines of an FBI safehouse in New York City, then publicizes the images online, which travel round the world and back via social media and mainstream news outlets.

A regime-change war by other means

Alinejad’s activities have generated a vast amount of fawning and credulous media coverage, without a single journalist or outlet questioning whether her prominent role in the supposedly grassroots, locally-initiated protest movement is affiliated with foreign hostile interference.

This is despite Alinejad posing for photos with former CIA director Mike Pompeo, and receiving a staggering $628,000 in US federal government contracts since 2015.

Much of these funds flowed from the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the US government agency that oversees propaganda platforms such as Radio Free Europe, and Voice of America, the latter of which has produced a Farsi-language show fronted by Alinejad for seven years.

These clusters of social media posts may appear innocuous and authentic in an age of click-bait and viral fake news, yet when aggregated and analysed, they form a potent and potentially dangerous weapon which it turns out is one of many in the Pentagon’s regime-change arsenal.

October 1, 2022 Posted by | Deception | , , , | Leave a comment

108 civilians killed by mines and cluster bombs in Yemen since April: Report

The Cradle | September 18, 2022

The Executive Center for Mine Action (YEMAC) in Sanaa has confirmed that 324 civilians have been killed and injured since the truce took effect on 2 April as a result of mines and cluster bombs used by the Saudi-led coalition.

In a statement, the Center said that since the beginning of the UN-brokered truce, 108 civilians had been killed and 216 injured through landmines, cluster bomb explosions, and other remnants of the 8-year-long war.

The YEMAC renewed the call to provide field supplies and equipment to demine the battlefields in Yemen from cluster bombs, unexploded shells, and mines. Despite the agreement to do so, efforts remain constrained by the Saudi-led coalition.

According to the reports, cluster bombs used by the Saudi-led coalition have caused the most damage, killing 18 civilians and wounding 57 others.

Another report published by the Entesaf Organization, which focuses on the rights of women and children, Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen has killed and injured over 13,000 Yemeni civilians since 2015.

On 29 August, Abdul Karim al-Safiani, deputy director of Yemen’s Water Resource Organization, stated that he discovered high radioactive substances and toxic metals in freshwater resources in Hodeidah province.

According to Yemeni sources, Saudi Arabia and its partners are also responsible for the looting of vast quantities of oil from detained tankers.

Earlier this month, the spokesman for the Yemeni Petroleum Company (YPC) in Sanaa, Issam al-Mutawakel, said the total number of fuel ships seized by the coalition reached 12 ships.

Sanaa accused the Saudi-led coalition on 28 August of destroying 2,995 water facilities since the beginning of the war in 2015, including dams, barriers, pumps, tanks, irrigation channels, and irrigation networks, fueling the humanitarian crisis in the country.

According to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), more than 23.4 are in desperate need of humanitarian assistance in Yemen, the worst human-made humanitarian crisis in the world.

Meanwhile, the Saudi-led coalition is blocking the country’s access to assistance and necessary resources by controlling access via sea, air, and land. Half of the country’s health facilities are also out of service and lack energy and supplies for the adequate treatment of its patients.

September 18, 2022 Posted by | War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

The West is poised to throw Yemen under the bus again to fuel its economic war on Russia

By Robert Inlakesh | Samizdat | September 11, 2022

Strained by the consequences of the ongoing conflict between NATO and Russia over Ukraine, France may be destroying all prospects for peace in Yemen, in a bid to secure energy resource from the United Arab Emirates.

Considered to be home to the worst humanitarian crisis in modern history, according to the United Nations, earlier this year, its people saw glimmers of hope towards ending its seven-year long war. A ceasefire truce, which has largely held since April, has been viewed as the first step towards reaching a UN-mediated solution for peace between the Ansarallah government in Sanaa and the Saudi-led coalition forces which claim to represent the internationally backed Yemeni government in exile.

According to UN estimates, the total number of people killed in Yemen’s war already reached 377,000 by the beginning of 2022. The civilian death rate is said to have doubled, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), since the controversial withdrawal of UN human rights monitors last October.

Although Saudi coalition forces and Ansarallah, popularly referred to in Western media as the “Iran-backed Houthi rebels,” have managed to keep fighting to a minimum during the past months, another major player in the south of Yemen has recently decided to go on the offensive. The Southern Transitional Council (STC), often called Yemen’s southern separatists, are backed by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and declared the start of a new military operation in the Abyan province “to cleanse it of terrorist organisations.” This follows territorial gains by the STC, in neighboring Shawba province, against the Muslim Brotherhood aligned Islah Party and others. The offensives launched by the UAE-backed STC have been regarded as a major challenge to UN efforts to end the conflict in Yemen, as well as having imperiled the Saudi initiative, which it calls the ‘Yemen Presidential Council,’ aimed at solidifying the legitimacy of the alternative Yemeni leadership in exile.

Where France Comes In

Although its role is little known to the Western public, Paris is the third largest arms supplier to the UAE and Saudi Arabia for their war efforts in Yemen, ranking just behind the US and UK. In fact, Germany, Spain and Italy have also sold weapons that have been used in the devastating war. Despite criticism, from human rights groups, of French weapons being used by Abu Dhabi and Riyadh to commit war crimes, the sale of weapons has continued from France.

April 15, 2019, French investigative magazine, Disclose, published an expose on Paris’s role in Yemen’s war. The information presented was based on a leaked French Military Intelligence (DRM) report dating back to September, 2018, clearly proving that the country had sold offensive weapons that were used in civilian areas, a charge that the French government has denied. As far back as June, 2018, credible reports began to emerge that French special forces units were operating on the ground in Yemen, alongside forces belonging to the UAE. Last December, Paris decided to further tighten its relationship with Abu Dhabi, signing its largest ever weapons sale to the UAE, worth 19.23 billion US dollars according to a report from Reuters.

France first turned to the US

France is now desperately in need of alternative energy suppliers to Russia, in order to meet its required needs, fearing that as the winter hits, Moscow may strategically cut off its natural gas completely. As part of NATO, Paris is backing a US-led initiative which seeks to make Russia pay an economic and military price for its offensive in Ukraine, however, this strategy has majorly backfired economically.

US President Joe Biden made two major foreign policy pledges when running for office in 2020, which are relevant to the current French predicament. The first being to revive the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal and the second being to find a diplomatic solution to the war in Yemen. Due to the ongoing NATO-Russia conflict, seeking a revival of the Iran nuclear deal has re-emerged on the political agenda of his administration in a major way. Iran, free from sanctions, could become an alternative source to fill the energy needs of Europe in the future, yet it could take some time for this to actually happen.

On the issue of the war in Yemen, Joe Biden pledged as part of his first speech on his government’s foreign policy goals, that he would hold Saudi Arabia to account and seek to find a solution to the crisis in Yemen. However, the war in Ukraine clearly changed his approach to Riyadh, so much so that Washington signaled in the review a decision to not sell offensive weapons to the Saudi government. The US President was heavily criticized by Human Rights Watch for traveling to Saudi Arabia in July.

Despite US attempts to have Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states increase their oil production, none have yet complied in the manner that Washington had hoped for. Specifically in the cases of the UAE and Saudi Arabia, it is clear that both are seeking to fast track their journey to diversify their economies. That has meant them hanging onto their strategic reserves of oil and gas, during a global energy crisis, which has made fiscal sense for them. In the cases of Venezuela and Iran, despite the US having seemingly reached out to both, neither seem to be a real replacement to Russia in the near future.

All Bets On Yemen

France is now looking for alternatives on its own. In June, the European Union announced that it had signed an agreement with Israel and Egypt. Under the deal, Israel will send gas through pipelines to Egypt, where it will then be transported to Europe. Although this may work, Tel Aviv does not have the capacity to replace Moscow as Europe’s main supplier of gas. Israel seeks to double its gas output, but in doing so is already running into potential problems over its maritime border dispute with Lebanon and its planned extraction of gas from the ‘Karish field’ in September, considered to be located in a disputed area. Lebanese Hezbollah has even threatened to strike all of Israel’s gas facilities in the event that Beirut is not given a fair deal to access its own resources.

French President, Emmanuel Macron, has attempted to persuade resource rich Algeria to become part of the EU’s solution, also going on a three-day trip to Algiers in order to mend ties. Algeria, which maintains close relations with Moscow, withdrew its ambassador from Paris for three months last year, during a diplomatic row. Macron had accused the Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune’s government of “exploiting memory” and “rewriting history” of the colonial era and even questioned the legitimacy of Algeria as a State prior to French settler-colonial rule there. Around 1.5 million Algerians were killed in the battle for independence from France, which its resistance eventually managed to win in 1962. The tone of the French president has now dramatically changed from that of last year, with Macron remarking that both nations “have a complex, painful common past. And it has at times prevented us from looking at the future.”

The other major alternative path that France seems to be now seeking, is through its close alliance with the UAE. As mentioned above, it has been clear for some time that Paris has been involved in supplying weapons, logistical support and even boots on the ground to its allies in Abu Dhabi and Riyadh, aiding their fight in Yemen. However, it is also clear that the UAE has not been interested in cutting into its strategic oil reserves to meet the demands of Europe.

In July, as President Macron hosted the Emirati President, Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, in Paris, the French ministry of economy announced a new strategic energy agreement between the UAE and France. An aide to the French president noted that France was eager to secure diesel fuel from the UAE, hinting that the cooperation agreement involving France’s ‘Total Energies’ and the UAE’s ‘ADNOC’ may be linked. Although it is unknown as to what the specifics of the “strategic agreement” are, it has been speculated that the deal could potentially be worth billions.

Then, in August, the UAE-backed STC suddenly began new offensive operations in both the Shabwa and Abyan provinces. It just so happens that the STC forces decided to take over the energy sites in the Shabwa province too. Leading human rights NGOs had urged Paris to keep in mind Abu Dhabi’s human rights abuses in the advent of the signing of the strategic energy agreement, calls clearly not heeded. On August 21st, when UAE-backed forces seized the oil facilities in Yemen’s south, it may have been with the French deal in mind. Yemen’s former foreign minister, Dr. Abu Bakr al-Qirbi stated on Twitter that “preparations are being made to export gas from the Balhaf facility in light of increased international gas prices.” This was then followed by an announcement from the parliament of the Sana’a-based National Salvation Government, warning of suspicious movement from both US and French forces.

The key Balhaf facility, in Yemen’s Shabwa province, has reportedly been turned into a base for forces belonging to the UAE, with allegations suggesting that Paris could “provide protection for the facility through the French Foreign Legion.” There are also countless reports of the UAE looting resources from Yemen, which would seem to support the idea that they could be attempting to extract them to send to France. The latest reported looting of Yemen’s resources, from June, quotes Yemeni officials as having alleged that a Gulf Aetos tanker, carrying 400,000 barrels of Yemeni crude oil, had departed from Rudum port and was being operated by the UAE.

What these offensive moves by the STC also mean, is that the Saudi-backed forces in Yemen and Ansarallah will likely also get involved in the combat too. This could mean the dissolution of the ceasefire truce between the two sides, the renewal of the Ansarallah offensive to take the oil rich Marib province from the Saudi-backed forces and the death of any potential peace initiative to end the war.

It is unlikely that Ansarallah will stay silent, if the STC are aiding in the theft of Yemen’s resources for the sake of France. One of the major reasons behind the dramatic escalation of violence last year, was the Ansarallah offensive, launched with the aim of taking out the last northern stronghold of the Saudi-led coalition, Marib. The purpose of taking the resource rich area would be to stop the looting of Yemen’s resources, which according to reports is amounting to the theft of millions of barrels per year. Some sources claim that an unofficial agreement is in place between the US and Saudi governments, to purposefully keep the resources of Yemen away from its people and instead, divert the profits to Saudi banks.

Part of the reason why there was a Yemeni revolution in 2011, then a seizure of power in 2015 by Ansarallah in conjunction with the country’s military, was the popular belief that the past two Presidents of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh and Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, were corrupt. The people of Yemen were fed up with Saleh for a multitude of reasons, primarily that he mismanaged resources, had sold out to the United States and was corrupt. President Hadi was later to be seen as a stooge, controlled completely by the Saudis.

Perhaps the biggest problem here however, is not just that Yemen is a resource rich country, with a starving population, being torn apart by foreign powers, but also that nobody even knows what their governments are involved in. On August 25, then British prime minister, Boris Johnson, stated, about rising energy bills, that “While people are paying energy bills, people in Ukraine are paying with blood”. Yet, it may turn out that for Europe to keep the lights on, the people of Yemen will pay with their blood. Except in this case, the UK, US and France can’t blame that bloodshed on Moscow, this is their own doing.

Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the occupied Palestinian territories and currently works with Quds News.

September 11, 2022 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

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