Tag: saudia arabia

Report: Saudi Arabia Blocked ‘Project Freedom’ by Denying U.S. Access to Bases

Two unnamed U.S. officials told NBC News on Wednesday that President Donald Trump’s “Project Freedom” — the plan for American military forces to safely escort commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz — was “paused” after less than 48 hours because Saudi Arabia denied the use of its airbases to protect ships from attacks by Iran.

According to NBC’s sources, the Saudi government was “surprised” and “angered” when Trump announced Project Freedom with a Truth Social post on Sunday afternoon.

Trump said he was acting in response to requests from “countries from all over the world” who were “neutral and innocent bystanders” to the conflict between the U.S. and Iran.

“For the good of Iran, the Middle East, and the United States, we have told these countries that we will guide their ships safely out of these restricted waterways, so that they can freel and ably get on with their business,” the president wrote.

Trump dubbed the initiative “Project Freedom” and said it would begin on Monday, only a few hours after he wrote his Truth Social post. U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said it was ready to support the effort immediately, as part of America’s commitment to freedom of navigation.

“Our support for this defensive mission is essential to regional security and the global economy as we also maintain the naval blockade,” CENTCOM commander Adm. Bradley Cooper said on Sunday.

CENTCOM’s statement suggested Project Freedom was an extension of an initiative announced by the Department of War the previous week to “enhance coordination and information-sharing among international partners in support of maritime security in the strait.”

“Project Freedom is defensive in nature, focused in scope, temporary in duration [and] with one mission: protecting innocent commercial shipping from Iranian aggression,” Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said on Monday, announcing that two ships had already passed through the Strait of Hormuz under the protection of U.S. destroyers.

Hegseth said Iran “cannot be allowed to block innocent countries and their goods from an international waterway.”

“Iran is the clear aggressor, harassing civilian vessels, threatening mariners from every nation indiscriminately, and weaponizing a critical choke point for its own financial benefit,” he said.

On Tuesday, Hegseth praised the success of Project Freedom at a Pentagon press conference, and said “hundreds more ships from nations around the world are lining up to transit.”

“As a direct gift from the United States to the world, we have established a powerful red, white and blue dome over the strait,” he said.

“American destroyers are on station, supported by hundreds of fighter jets, helicopters, drones and surveillance aircraft providing 24/7 overwatch for peaceful commercial vessels — except Iran’s, of course,” he said.

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Saudi Arabia’s ‘middle finger to Biden’: Kingdom increases US citizen’s sentence by three YEARS to 19 after White House condemned punishment over Khashoggi tweets

The son of a US citizen jailed in Saudi Arabia has slammed the Biden administration’s attempts to free his father after his prison sentence was lengthened by an extra three years.  

Saad Almadi has seen his time behind bars extended from 16 years to 19 years after he was imprisoned for a series of tweets criticizing the Saudi government. 

The political prisoner’s son Ibrahim slammed the handling of his father’s case after the US State Department told him his father would spend even longer in prison.

He told The Post: ‘It’s not a slap in the face, it’s a middle finger.

‘When the US asked for an appeal, they said: “Here you go, 19 years!”

Ibrahim noted that his father has lost ‘more than 80 pounds’ behind bars, after an arrest which was triggered when he targeted the Saudi regime in a series of tweets. 

The social media posts that led to his arrest included condemnations over Saudi government’s inability to protect its borders from rockets fired by Houthi rebels in Yemen, a group allied with Iran. 

He also posted support for naming a street after murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post reporter whose death was allegedly orchestrated by the Saudi government. 

Almadi, a 72-year-old retired project manager who was living in Florida, was arrested in November 2021 while visiting family in Saudi Arabia after he published the tweets.

The White House has made several remarks hitting out at Almadi’s treatment, however President Biden has not directly commented on it and has been accused of taking a soft stance with the Saudi regime.

Ibrahim pointed to the recent release of WNBA star Brittney Griner as he criticized the Biden administration’s failed efforts to free his father. 

He particularly hit out at the State Department’s refusal to officially label his father as being ‘wrongfully detained’, a move that would increase pressure on the Saudi government to release him from prison.  

‘The only way for my father to get out is through ‘wrongful detention’, he said. ‘That’s how Brittney Griner got out …. that’s what works with dictators.’

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The US Is Making Billions Being Warlords in Yemen

One of Biden’s promises during his presidential campaign was to immediately move to end all support for the Saudi-led coalition’s war in Yemen. In February 2021, Biden stood at a podium at the State Department and proclaimed that the war in Yemen must end. Biden underlined the humanitarian crisis as the key reason the United States withdrew support. An investigation (PDF) by the Government Accountability Office found that the United States is training the Saudi-led coalition, and the US has troops on the ground in Yemen. Biden confirmed that the United States has troops in Yemen in a letter to Congress in June last year. Biden lied to the American people when he claimed that the United States was withdrawing US support for the war in Yemen in 2021.

On the contrary, the United States is making billions of dollars from the war in Yemen as 200k have been killed from direct violence. Between 2015 and 2021, the United States sent 54.2 billion dollars in weapons and services to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, according to data acquired from the Defense Security Cooperation Agency. In addition, the Department of Defense provided 644 million dollars for military training to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, almost entirely through the Foreign Military Sales program. The DoD uses acquisition and cross-servicing agreements to bill nations for logistical support and items ranging from flying hours, fuel, and bombs. Saudi Arabia paid the United States 157 million dollars in flying hours, and the UAE paid 104 million for flying hours since the GCC-led invention in Yemen’s civil war in 2015. The United States billed Saudi Arabia and the UAE for 319 million dollars in acquisitions and cross-servicing agreements for logistical support.

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Saudi Arabia Executes 15 People in 12 Days For Non-Violent Drug Offences

Saudi Arabia has executed 15 people for non-violent drug offences – some thought to be beheaded by sword – in the last 12 days, despite promising to end them. 

In January 2021 the country announced a moratorium on drug-related executions. It came in the wake of the gruesome murder and dismembering of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey in 2018 by a Saudi death squad, a hit the CIA said was ordered by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.  

But legal NGO Reprieve said that in the last fortnight the regime had quietly resumed secret executions for drug offences. Ten of those executed are foreign nationals, from Pakistan, Syria and Jordan. Five of them – including a man executed on Monday morning – are Saudi nationals. Because executions are carried out behind closed doors and bodies are not returned to families, methods of execution cannot be confirmed. However experts believe people are killed by a mixture of beheading by sword and by shooting.  

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Saudi Arabia, US On High Alert After Warning Of Imminent Iranian Attack; US Prepared To Respond

With oil prices set to soar after the midterms as the SPR drain ends and markets no longer have desperate democrats to help fulfill their immediate energy needs, moments ago the WSJ unveiled another potential oil price powder keg, so to speak, when it reported that according to Saudi and U.S. officials, Saudi Arabia has shared intelligence with the U.S. warning of an imminent attack from Iran on targets in the kingdom, putting the American military and others in the Middle East on an elevated alert level.

The report goes on to note that Iran is poised to carry out attacks on both the kingdom and Erbil, Iraq, in an effort to distract attention from domestic protests that have roiled the country since September.

In response to the warning, Saudi Arabia – which until recently was on the Biden admin “naughty list” after the crown prince snubbed Biden’s demands for no OPEC+ output cut – the U.S. and several other neighboring states have raised the level of alert for their military forces, the officials said. They didn’t provide more details on the Saudi intelligence.

Separately, the White House National Security Council said it was concerned about the warnings and ready to respond if Iran carried out an attack.

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NYC Mayor Breathes Life into Saudi-9/11 Connection

You could be forgiven for missing it, but in the depths of the dog days of August, with most everyone’s attention on the long Labor Day weekend, New York City Mayor Eric Adams dropped what can be interpreted as tacit acknowledgement that the government of Saudi Arabia — or at least, agents of the government — may have participated in the planning and execution of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

On Thursday, August 30, Adams met at New York City Hall with members of three advocacy groups representing 9/11 survivors and victims’ families. Alarmed by an October stop of the Saudi-backed LIV Golf tour at the Trump Organization-owned Golf Links at Ferry Point in the Bronx — and convinced by recently declassified information that Saudi Arabian intelligence officials assisted al-Qaeda — the groups asked Adams to block the tournament. 

Adams, who was a NYPD lieutenant in 2001 and worked a security detail at the World Trade Center wreckage that night, said he legally could not do anything. The Trump golf course is Trump’s; Trump can welcome anyone there he likes. 

But then, instead of dismissing the 9/11 families’ specific concerns, Adams platformed them.

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Saudis Use Orwellian App to Identify Dissidents, Imprisoning Some for Decades

Saudi Arabians are using a mobile app sold by both Apple and Google to snitch on their fellow citizens for dissenting against government authorities. As a result, activists and others are going to prison for more than 30 years in some cases, Business Insider reported on Friday.

On August 16, Saudi national Salma el-Shabab, a PhD student at Leeds University, was sentenced to 34 years in prison for tweets “in support of activists and members of the kingdom’s political opposition in exile,” the report said. Though the posts were made while she was in the UK, el-Shabab was nonetheless reported through the “Kollona Amn” app and immediately arrested upon returning home. 

“Every day we wake up to hear news, somebody has been arrested, or somebody has been taken,” Real, a Saudi women’s-rights activist using an alias, told Insider.

Kollona Amn – which roughly translates to “We Are All Security” in Arabic – was launched by the Saudi Interior Ministry in 2017, but the last few years have seen a “dramatic” surge in court cases referencing the app, according to legal-rights activists.

The app “encourages everyday citizens to play the role of police and become active participants in their own repression. Putting the state’s eyes everywhere also creates a pervasive sense of uncertainty – there is always a potential informant in the room or following your social media accounts,” said Noura Aljizawi, a researcher at Citizen Lab, which focuses on threats to free speech online.

The Orwellian nature of the app is such that users often report on people “defensively,” fearing they could face punishment themselves for merely overhearing speech deemed offensive to the regime. In some cases, the app has also been used for “blackmail” and to “settle scores,” Insider noted.

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War With Iran

The United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia are plotting a war with Iran. The 2015 Iranian nuclear arms accord, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which Donald Trump sabotaged, does not look like it will be revived.  U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) is reviewing options to attack if Teheran looks poised to obtain a nuclear weapon and Israel, which opposes U.S.-Iran nuclear negotiations, carries out military strikes.

During his visit to Israel, Biden assured Prime Minister Yair Lapid that the U.S. is “prepared to use all elements of its national power,” including military force, to stop Iran from building a nuclear weapon. 

Saudi Arabia, Israel and the U.S. function as a troika in the Middle East. The Israeli government has built a close alliance with Saudi Arabia, which produced 15 of the 19 hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks and has been a prolific sponsor of international terrorism, supporting Salafi jihadism, the basis of al-Qaeda, and such groups as the Afghanistan Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and the Al-Nusra Front.  

The three countries worked in tandem to back the 2013 military coup in Egypt, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who overthrew its first democratically elected government. He has imprisoned tens of thousands of government critics, including journalists and human rights defenders, on politically motivated charges. The Sisi regime collaborates with Israel by keeping its common border with Gaza closed to Palestinians, trapping them in the Gaza strip, one of the most densely populated and impoverished places on earth. 

Israel, the only nuclear power in the Middle East, has conducted an ongoing campaign of covert attacks on Iranian nuclear sites and nuclear scientists. Four Iranian nuclear scientists were assassinated, presumably by Israel, between 2010 and 2012. In July 2020, a fire, attributed to an Israeli bomb, damaged Iran’s Natanz nuclear site. In November 2020, Israel used remote control machine guns to assassinate Iran’s top nuclear scientist. 

In January 2020, the United States assassinated Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, along with nine other people including a key figure in the anti-ISIS coalition, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. It used an MQ-9 Reaper drone to fire missiles into his convoy, near Baghdad’s airport. 

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MBS Sullies Saudi Arabia’s Good Name With Plans To Meet US President

The White House has officially confirmed reports that President Biden will indeed be visiting Saudi Arabia in contradiction of his campaign vows to make the nation a “pariah” for its human rights violations, and everyone’s acting like visiting a murderous tyrant is somehow beneath the dignity of a US president.

“The President will then travel to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, which is the current chair of the GCC and the venue for this gathering of nine leaders from across the region, at the invitation of King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud,” the White House statement reads. “The President appreciates King Salman’s leadership and his invitation.  He looks forward to this important visit to Saudi Arabia, which has been a strategic partner of the United States for nearly eight decades.”

The president will meet with the nation’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, to discuss what the White House calls “means for expanding regional economic and security cooperation, including new and promising infrastructure and climate initiatives, as well as deterring threats from Iran, advancing human rights, and ensuring global energy and food security.”

But what they will primarily be discussing is oil, as the US flounders in its economic war against Russia.

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Biden’s New Press Secretary Almost Calls Saudis A ‘Regime’

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre came very close to committing the cardinal sin of referring to a US-aligned nation as a “regime” on Monday.

In the official White House transcript of Jean-Pierre’s interaction with a reporter inquiring about Biden’s upcoming meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the press secretary’s comment reads as follows:

“Of course, he will be — they will discuss energy with the Saudi government.”

However, if you watch a video clip highlighted on Twitter by Kawsachun News’ Camila Escalante, you’ll notice Jean-Pierre gets tripped up before the word “government”, with a more accurate transcribing reading something like, “Of course, he will be — they will discuss energy with the Saudi re— uhh, err, government.”

Which is hilarious, because for imperial spinmeisters the word “regime” is traditionally reserved for governments which are not aligned with the US empire, because it suggests that they are undemocratic and authoritarian. The theocratic monarchy of Saudi Arabia is most certainly authoritarian and is the exact opposite of democratic, but because it is aligned with the interests of Washington that pejorative label is typically avoided at the upper echelons of imperial narrative management.

Whether or not a government will be affixed with this label has far less to do with its level of oppressiveness than with whether or not it cooperates with imperial agendas. In a 2018 article titled “A ‘Regime’ Is a Government at Odds With the US Empire,” Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting’s Gregory Shupak explained:

The function of “regime” is to construct the ideological scaffolding for the United States and its partners to attack whatever country has a government described in this manner. According to the mainstream media, the democratically elected government of Nicaragua is a “regime” (Washington Post, 7/11/18). Cuba also has a “regime” (Washington Post, 7/25/18). Iraq and Libya used to have “regimes”—before the United States implemented “regime change.” North Korea most definitely has one (New York Times, 7/26/18), as do China (Washington Post, 8/3/18) and Russia (Wall Street Journal, 7/15/18).

 

When, for the media, does a government become a “regime”? The answer, broadly speaking: A country’s political leaders are likely to be called a “regime” when they do not follow US dictates, and are less likely to be categorized as such if they cooperate with the empire.

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Washington’s economic and military partner Saudi Arabia is described as having a “regime” far less often than is Syria, despite its rather “regime”-like qualities: Its unelected government represses dissidents, including advocates for women and its Shia minority, and carries out executions at an extraordinary clip, including of people accused of adultery, apostasy and witchcraft. Saudi Arabia crushed an uprising in neighboring Bahrain in 2011, and with its US and UK partners, is carrying out an almost apocalyptic war in Yemen.

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