President Trump said Monday that he has spoken to Saudi's King Salman about the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi and he 'firmly denied' any involvement in the journalist's disappearance.

Trump said that he would send a top U.S. official, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, to Middle East to confront Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud in person - but wouldn't say whether he believed the Saudi leader's 'flat' denial of wrongdoing in a 20-minute phone conversation.

The president had a theory of his own as to what may have happened to the Saudi-born writer who Turkey says was lured to his death earlier this month in Istanbul.

He suggested without evidence that 'rogue killers' could have been responsible for the disappearance that Trump also framed as a murder.

A team of Turkish and Saudi officials tonight entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul for a joint inspection two weeks after a Washington Post journalist apparently vanished inside.

They entered the building at 6pm local time, hours after a cleaning team swept the premises amid claims the walls have been repainted since Jamal Khashoggi was allegedly assassinated and dismembered for criticising the Saudi crown prince.

Tonight's inspection was agreed after Saudi King Salman and Turkish President Erdogan spoke yesterday - but the Turks don't trust the Saudis not to obfuscate the investigation, a senior Turkish source today told the Middle Eastern Eye.

Officials have not revealed what the inspection will involve or how long it will last.

Saudi Arabia warned Sunday it will respond to any “threats” against it as its stock market plunged following President Donald Trump’s warning of “severe punishment” over the disappearance of Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi.

Trump made a point of visiting the kingdom on his first overseas trip as president and has touted arms sales to Saudi Arabia. But both the White House and the kingdom are under mounting pressure as concern grows over the fate of the veteran journalist, who hasn’t been seen since he entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2.

Already, international business leaders are pulling out of the kingdom’s upcoming investment forum, a high-profile event known as “Davos in the Desert.”

The international Saudi-led Coalition against Yemen attacked another two buses full of internally displaced people as they fled the Coalition’s airstrike campaign in Hodeidah. Today’s attack makes it clear the Coalition has a policy of targeting anyone who attempts to flee the U.S.-backed Saudi and Emirati aggression along the west coast.

19 were killed and at least 30 were injured in today’s attack. Even hours later, first responders and reporters ran into trouble entering the scene due to the Saudi planes continuous circling. It’s common for Saudi Arabia to conduct “double-tap” airstrikes which maximize the casualty count in each attack while targeting ambulances and the press.

According to a United Nations team of experts, these double-tap strikes indicate that the Coalition makes conscious decisions to attack civilian targets by quite literally doubling down.

Ottawa will keep its $15bn arms deal with Riyadh despite concerns over Saudi involvement in the disappearance of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the diplomatic row over human rights, Prime Minister Trudeau said.
"We respected that contract," Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters on Friday, adding that his cabinet has put forward measures to make the arms sales more transparent.

"We are making sure Canadians' expectations and laws are always being followed," he said.

The contract was signed in 2014 by the previous conservative government, and has since been upheld by Trudeau. The specifics of the sales were originally not disclosed by the parties.

According to documents obtained by CBC News last month, a Canadian company is to ship 742 LAV-6 light armored vehicles to Riyadh. The same outlet revealed in March that hundreds of the LAV-6s will be outfitted as "heavy assault" and "anti-tank" types.

A delegation from Saudi Arabia has arrived in Turkey as part of a joint investigation into the disappearance of prominent Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, three Turkish sources said on Friday.

As the war in Yemen rages on, a new report says there is “strong evidence” that the Saudi-led coalition has aimed to destroy food production and distribution in areas of the country controlled by Houthi rebels.

The report, titled ‘Strategies of the Coalition in the Yemen War: Aerial Bombardment and Food War’, is a compilation of data from various sources on the impact of the coalition’s bombing campaign on the production and distribution of food in rural Yemen, and on fishing along the Red Sea coast.

President Donald Trump has vowed 'severe punishment' for Saudi Arabia if the kingdom is found to be responsible for a journalist who went missing at its consulate.

In a forthcoming interview with 60 Minutes, an excerpt of which was published on Saturday, Trump spoke about the October 2 disappearance of Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi.

Khashoggi, a Saudi citizen and fierce critic of the crown, was last seen entering the Saudi Arabian consulate in Turkey to deal with a paperwork matter.

'As of this moment, they deny it and they deny it vehemently. Could it be them? Yes,' Trump said of Saudi involvement in Khashoggi's disappearance.

What the mass slaughter of civilians and even bombing a school bus full of children in Yemen couldn't do, the murder of one of their own did: a growing list of major media companies have declared they are pulling out of a high profile investment summit in Riyadh set to start on October 23rd over the alleged Saudi state murder of Washington Post columnist and Saudi "insider" critic Jamal Khashoggi.

So far the list of media sponsors declaring their withdrawal from the Saudi-hosted Future Investment Initiative (FII) event include the Financial Times, Bloomberg, CNN and CNBC, as well as president of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, who indicated on Friday he would not be attending, according to The Guardian.

The only promise that is new about the promised peace plan is the way it will be forced on the Palestinians: no one has promised that the plan itself will be new. With Saudi Arabia and Egypt—the outside—brought onside with the promise of continued military aid despite their crimes against humanity and violations of international law and the Palestinians weakened by being silenced, economically crushed and stripped of any friends to help them, the United States and Israel are now free to attempt to impose a peace plan on the Palestinians.

Missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi may have recorded his own death on his Apple Watch, it has been claimed.

He turned on the recording function on the device before walking into the Saudi Arabia embassy in Istanbul on October 2, according to Turkish newspaper Sabah.

Then his 'interrogation, torture and killing were audio recorded and sent to both his phone and to iCloud', the newspaper report.

THE STORY OF Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance and possible murder has riveted the world’s attention with its macabre, and mysterious, details. The soft-spoken but sharply critical Saudi journalist vanished after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, on October 2. Theories about his fate include the horrifying possibility that Khashoggi was murdered — and perhaps even tortured and dismembered — at the hands of the Saudi state. (The Saudi government continues to vehemently deny these charges.) Should these allegations prove true, Khashoggi’s fate could have vast ramifications for the reputation of Saudi’s Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, known as MBS, who has until now sought to establish himself as a figure of modernization and reform. Already, Khashoggi’s case has elicited an unusually strong response from Western media and parts of the American government alike, casting Saudi Arabia’s geopolitical future in doubt.

JIZAN, SAUDI ARABIA — The media branch of Yemen’s Ansar Allah military released footage on Friday showing the moment that strategic Saudi military locations were captured in the eastern al-Doud mountains and al-Reqa’h military bases deep inside of Saudi Arabia. The bases are located in the southwestern region of Jizan, some 900 kilometers (559 miles) south of the Saudi capital of Riyadh. Saudi Arabia has not yet commented on the recent attacks.

Yemen’s army launched two ballistic missiles at a gathering of Saudi military forces, including mercenaries, just east of al-Doud. A group of Saudi-allied mercenaries south of al-Khobeh in Jizan was also targeted. Later in the day, Yemen’s army struck a Saudi military base in the kingdom’s Jizan region with two ballistic missiles, killing a number of Saudi soldiers, according to two military sources in Yemen’s army.

Yemen’s navy targeted a military vessel belonging to Saudi Arabia off of the northwestern coast of Hajjah on Wednesday, reportedly killing all aboard the vessel. The boat, which was in the Medi port, was carrying out attacks on the residential districts of Heiran and Medi in Hajjah when it was hit, according to a statement from Yemen’s navy.

A source in Yemen’s navy confirmed to MintPress News that it targeted the Saudi vessel with a new type of domestically-manufactured missile, but did not name the missile.

The Saudi-led coalition has not yet commented on the attack, which occurred during an increase in coalition airstrikes on the residential area of Hajjah and other provinces — strikes that have killed and injured more than 50 civilians over the past 72 hours in the strategic Red Sea port.

Rarely is US hypocrisy so cynical and overt as a recent US State Department investigation into ongoing violence in Myanmar, all while the US continues its full spectrum support of Saudi Arabia's genocidal war on Yemen.

In addition to Washington's role in Yemen, the US also occupies Afghanistan and Syria while carrying out drone strikes and covert military interventions in territory stretching from North Africa to Central Asia.

In Myanmar specifically, the US has openly and for decades funded and supported groups and individuals involved directly on both sides of ongoing ethnic violence. Now, it is leveraging that violence to single out obstacles to US influence in Southeast Asia and in Myanmar specifically.

Reuters in their article titled, "U.S. accuses Myanmar military of 'planned and coordinated' Rohingya atrocities," would claim:

The Washington Post has provided further details on its prior reporting that US intelligence knew full well that Saudi Arabia was seeking to lure the now disappeared and allegedly murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi to its embassy in Istanbul in order detain or kill him.

In an interesting new revelation the Post speculates based on intel sources that the whole October 2nd incident may have been an attempted "rendition" gone wrong. As more damning evidence emerges showing a Saudi "hit team" of 15 military and intelligence individuals murdered Khashoggi and chopped up his body to carry out of the country, there now appears a strong consensus that the order may have come straight from the top, most likely from crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) himself.

British billionaire Richard Branson said on Thursday that his Virgin Group would suspend its discussions with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund over a planned $1 billion investment in the group’s space ventures, in light of the disappearance of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Reuters reports.

“What has reportedly happened in Turkey around the disappearance of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, if proved true, would clearly change the ability of any of us in the West to do business with the Saudi government,” Branson said in a statement.

Branson also said he would suspend his directorship in two Saudi tourism projects around the Red Sea, citing Khashoggi’s disappearance. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Turkey has accused Saudi Arabia of detaining and murdering journalist Jamal Khashoggi during a visit to the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on October 2. Riyadh has denied the accusations and claimed he left it safe and sound. Saudi Arabia has even provided access to the country’s consulate for investigators to prove its innocence.

Following the news about the disappearance of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the accusations against Riyadh of murdering him in its consulate in Istanbul, several media outlets and companies have announced their withdrawal from a major event to be held by the Saudis on October 23-25 — the Future Investment Initiative (FII).

President of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, will not be attending the conference, according to anonymous sources within organization, cited by Reuters. The change of plans was reportedly made due to a scheduling conflict with the event's timing. The sources didn't mention if it was connected to the missing journalist.

Journalist James M. Dorsey says Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) has suffered significant reputational damage on the eve of a major global trade conference known as Vision 2030 or “Davos in the Desert”

In an interesting new revelation the Post speculates based on intel sources that the whole October 2nd incident may have been an attempted "rendition" gone wrong. As more damning evidence emerges showing a Saudi "hit team" of 15 military and intelligence individuals murdered Khashoggi and chopped up his body to carry out of the country, there now appears a strong consensus that the order may have come straight from the top, most likely from crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) himself.

Middle East Eye, for example, concludes based on WaPo's prior report, "Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the country's de facto ruler, ordered an operation targeting journalist and US resident Jamal Khashoggi... citing US intelligence intercepts."

The government in Turkey claims to have evidence that US-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered at the Saudi Arabia embassy after the critic of the country went to get a visa for his upcoming wedding.

He was captured on CCTV footage entering the building in Istanbul October 2 and a source has told The Washington Post he was killed and then dismembered by members of security.

'The voice recording from inside the embassy lays out what happened to Jamal after he entered,' the insider told the newspaper that Khashoggi, 59, worked for.

'You can hear his voice and the voices of men speaking Arabic … You can hear how he was interrogated, tortured and then murdered.'

In a kingdom once ruled by an ever-aging rotation of elderly monarchs, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman stands out as the youthful face of a youthful nation.

But behind the carefully calibrated public-relations campaign pushing images of the smiling prince meeting with the world's top leaders and business executives lurks a darker side.

Last year, at age 31, Mohammed became the kingdom's crown prince, next in line to the throne now held by his octogenarian father, King Salman.

It's not exactly a shocker, but does still serve to confirm just what interests actually drive American foreign policy - and no it has nothing to do with "sticking up for human rights" or "punishing rogue regimes".

In fact a regime can literally lure a prominent journalist to its embassy, murder him and chop him up into pieces, and then cart the body out of a foreign country — as the fast mounting evidence increasingly confirms in the case of Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi — and the US may not so much as bat and eyelash.

President Trump told "Fox News Night" on Wednesday that he wants to know what happened to Khashoggi but expressed reluctance when it comes to blocking arms sales to the kingdom.

"I think that would be hurting us," Trump said.

"We have jobs, we have a lot of things happening in this country. We have a country that's doing probably better economically than it's ever done before."

Weddings. Funerals. A school bus full of children. The Saudi-led coalition continues to bomb civilians in Yemen’s civil war. In fact, according to a recent report from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, the coalition’s offensive against the port city of Hodeida is largely responsible for a 164 percent increase in civilian deaths in Yemen since June. Thankfully, a group of 24 fed-up House representatives led by Reps. Ro Khanna (D-California) and Adam Smith (D-Washington) are reviving efforts in Congress to end US support for this brutal intervention. Their bipartisan legislation introduced last month, H.Con.Res.138, enjoys a privileged status that should guarantee it a floor vote in the House of Representatives. It deserves unanimous support.

Saudi warplanes continue to point the vital aid port of Hodeidah in northern Yemen, with a Wednesday strike targeting a crowd of civilians near one of the charity drinking water pumps set up in the city.

The strike killed five civilians, identified as farmers by the local hospital. This is the second incident of Saudi strikes in Hodeidah killing civilians this week, as on Monday another strike killed a group of beekeepers.

Saudi-led forces have been attacking Hodeidah for months. The port provides food for an estimated 70% of Yemenis, and is the last aid port controlled by the Shi’ite Houthi movement. As the offensive escalates against the city, so too do Saudi airstrikes.

Yemen’s navy targeted a military vessel belonging to Saudi Arabia off of the northwestern coast of Hajjah on Wednesday, reportedly killing all aboard the vessel. The boat, which was in the Medi port, was carrying out attacks on the residential districts of Heiran and Medi in Hajjah when it was hit, according to a statement from Yemen’s navy.

A source in Yemen’s navy confirmed to MintPress News that it targeted the Saudi vessel with a new type of domestically-manufactured missile, but did not name the missile.

US Secretary of State Secretary Mike Pompeo must address concerns regarding his approval of military aid to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, seven senators said in a letter.

"We are skeptical a certification that the two Governments have undertaken demonstrable actions to reduce the harm to civilians is warranted when the Saudi coalition has failed to adopt some US recommendations while civilian deaths and casualties due to coalition airstrikes have increased dramatically in recent months," the letter said on Wednesday. The lawmakers called on Pompeo to hand over data on the increase in civilian casualties, among other requests, by October 31.

Last month, despite a UN report that accused the Saudi-led coalition of being responsible for some 16,000 deaths in Yemen, Pompeo certified to Congress that the coalition was limiting civilian casualties in the conflict, paving the way for more US military aid.

Washington knew... and apparently did nothing, reports Bloomberg based on a bombshell Washington Post report:

U.S. intelligence services intercepted communications of Saudi officials discussing a plan to capture Saudi journalist and government critic Jamal Khashoggi, whose disappearance in Turkey last week threatens to damage the warm ties between the kingdom and Washington.

The Saudis were discussing a plan to lure Khashoggi back to the kingdom, The Washington Post reported, citing a person familiar with the communications, which were intercepted before he vanished. Khashoggi, a columnist for the newspaper, was last seen entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2 and is feared to be detained or dead.

For whatever reason, the Post report buried the lede as the story is headlined simply, Saudis are said to have lain in wait for Jamal Khashoggi.

Jamal Khashoggi's disappearance has prompted US senators to launch a probe into Saudi officials. Turkish authorities have accused the Saudis of killing the Washington Post writer at the kingdom's Istanbul consulate.

Thanks to WikiLeaks, Reporters Without Borders is able to expose how Saudi Arabia’s government, which has suppressed all media freedom domestically, tries to co-opt foreign media outlets in order to project a positive image of the kingdom internationally.

Its methods are revealed in leaked cables between Saudi embassies and the Saudi foreign ministry which WikiLeaks has been publishing as the “Saudi Cables.” Not all of them are dated but the bulk of the documents cover the period from 2010 to 2015.

While it is not always clear from the cables what was actually done, they expose the extraordinary initiatives that were at least considered by the Saudi government in an attempt to improve its image abroad.

It is beyond doubt that the Saudi government abducted, or killed, the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. But what did the Trump administration knew about the threat to Khashoggi? Did U.S. intelligence services warn him as their regulations require? Was such a warning blocked by the White House? And what will Trump do about the case?

The Turkish government published pictures of 15 men who had come from Saudi Arabia and were in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul shortly before Khashoggi visited it to get his divorce papers. They moved Khashoggi to the residence of the consul and later that day flew back on the same two private Saudi jets that had brought them to Istanbul.

Al-Jazeera distances itself from Khashoggi death claims, blames Reuters
Qatari broadcaster Al-Jazeera has distanced itself from a news item speculating that Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered while visiting the Saudi consulate in Turkey.

Al-Jazeera Arabic, which had repeated the Reuters story extensively, has acknowledged the claims to be unverified and instead blamed newswire Reuters for the information.

The Reuters story cited only Turkish sources without naming them or providing any substantial evidence to support Khashoggi’s death claims.

A Washington Post columnist who went missing after visiting the Saudi consulate in Istanbul was spirited out of Turkey in a private jet and held captive in the kingdom where he may still be alive, a source close to its royal family has claimed to DailyMail.com.

Jamal Khashoggi, a long-standing critic of Saudi Arabia and for the last year a columnist for the Post, has been at the center of international concern that he has been murdered after walking into the consulate in Turkey’s largest city and vanishing.

Turkish police were allowed into the building on Tuesday, a week after Khashoggi vanished, and said that CCTV footage from inside has gone missing and Turkish staff were abruptly told to take a holiday on the day in question, The Guardian reports.

The rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia has for decades roiled the Middle East with sectarian conflict, instability and war. Thinking about how the region would look if these two powerhouses normalized relations is intriguing.

But, sadly, such an outcome is unrealistic.

When President Trump recently spoke contemptuously of the Saudi rulers, saying“they wouldn’t last two weeks without US military protection”, it was a candid moment of truth.

However, US neocolonialism as it currently exists, will endeavor to always prop up the Saudi rulers no matter how despotic.

American power and Saudi rulers are a symbiotic scourge on the region, which, shamefully, will never permit restoration of relations with Iran.

If the latest outrage from Mohammed bin Salman changes anything, it should at the very least put an end to the absurd description of the crown prince and his allies as “reformers” once and for all. Reformer is a label that Western pundits and politicians use to describe foreign leaders when they want to express approval and support. It is often not intended to be an accurate statement about the leader’s record, but rather serves to distract from the worst parts of that record in order to sell the leader to Western audiences. Foreign leaders know that they can win a lot of supporters in the West just by saying the right things about a handful of issues, and as long as they keep up appearances their Western boosters will overlook or even defend the worst excesses.

THE DISAPPEARANCE of Jamal Khashoggi remained a mystery on Monday, but unlike many mysteries, it is one that could easily be solved. The Saudi journalist and Post Global Opinions columnist walked into the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul at about 1:30 p.m. last Tuesday, Oct. 2, and has not been seen or heard from since. Turkish government sources are saying he was murdered inside the consulate; Saudi officials are calling that allegation “baseless and ridiculous.” They contend that Mr. Khashoggi left the consulate shortly after he arrived.

If either account is correct, there should be tangible evidence — videos, travel logs and other documents — to back it up. Such evidence should be immediately released. Any delay only magnifies the suffering of Mr. Khashoggi’s family, including the fiancee who waited for him in vain outside the consulate. It compounds the crime of those responsible for his disappearance, who will not succeed in deflecting questions through stonewalling.

Last year, Khashoggi fled Saudi Arabia over harsh crackdowns on regime critics. Friction between him and its despotic ruling family surfaced after saying the kingdom should be “nervous about a Trump presidency.”

He opposed Saudi aggression in Yemen, its unacceptable policies toward Qatar, and harshness against critics.

Banned from writing and speaking out publicly, he self-exiled himself to America, saying

“I have left my home, my family and my job, and I am raising my voice,” adding:

“To do otherwise would betray those who languish in prison. I can speak when so many cannot.”

Earlier this year, he said Saudi intellectuals and journalists risk imprisonment for criticizing ruling family policies.

The State Department was largely silent on Khashoggi’s disappearance, a statement saying it’s aware of reports and seeks more information.

It has been nearly a week since renowned Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2 and never walked back out. In the ensuing days, the Western media has become incensed by reports that the Saudis sent a 15-man "hit squad" to the consulate to carry out the "preplanned" torture and murder of Khashoggi. Afterwards, they reportedly dismembered his body and smuggled his remains out of the building, all while Khashoggi's Turkish fiance waited outside in her car. After sending a "security team" to the consulate to look for the missing dissident, Turkish investigators launched an investigation into Khashoogi's disappearance on Friday - an investigation for which Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has pledged his "personal involvement".

Saudi prince Khalid bin Farhan al-Saud, who has fled to Germany after the empowerment of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, called on people to overthrow the current rulers in Riyadh after the recent murder of prominent journalist Jamal Khashoggi by the Al-e Saud.
"If the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi is proved, I invite all walks of life in Saudi Arabia to cooperate in a legal measure and change the political system through civil disobedience," Farhan al-Saud wrote on his twitter page on Monday.

He proposed the Saudi people pave the ground for transferring power to Ahmed bin Abdulaziz, the Saudi King Salman’s younger brother who is in exile in Britain, and form a new government based on the constitution.

Turkish officials said they had concrete evidence missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered, with a friend of the prominent writer saying they think he might have been dismembered.

The Mustache of Understanding, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, is pissed that the Saudi clown prince Mohammad bin Salman ordered the kidnapping of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Every ten minutes a child in Yemen starves because of the famine caused by the Saudi, UAE, U.S. and UK war on the country. The renewed attack on the harbor of Hodeidah and hyperinflation over the recent months have doubled the prices of food and gas Most people in Yemen no longer have the income to pay for the needed food. Tens of thousands were already silently starved, millions will likely follow. By what humanitarian 'principle' would the potential death of one bootlicking columnist be worse than that?

Turkey said Tuesday it will search the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul as part of an investigation into the disappearance a week ago of a Saudi contributor to the Washington Post.

The announcement came as a surveillance image surfaced of Jamal Khashoggi walking into the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul just before he disappeared.

Khashoggi, 59, went missing while on a visit to the consulate for paperwork to marry his Turkish fiancée. He had been living since last year in the United States, in a self-imposed exile, in part due to the rise of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the son of King Salman.

Turkish officials have said they fear the columnist was killed on the premises of the consulate.

The revelation that Russia worked privately with the Saudis “on Trump’s order” to aid the U.S. effort to halt Iranian oil exports without causing a supply shock seems to contradict Russia’s public promise to defend Iran’s economy against aggressive U.S. sanctions.

As we suggested on Saturday, the suspected extrajudicial torture, murder and dismemberment of a Washington Post columnist inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul is already straining tensions between Riyadh and Ankara. To wit, on Saturday, Turkish prosecutors officially launched an investigation into the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi, according to Turkey's official Anadolou news agency, after a "Turkish security team" was allowed inside the consulate by Saudis (presumably under the assumption that they would produce a clean bill of health). Meanwhile, a handful of anonymous Turkish officials reportedly tipped off the Washington Post and Reuters about the murder.

The Yemeni military announced on Sunday the deployment of additional army troops, consisting of Sudanese servicemen and supporting the Saudi-led coalition, in the vicinity of the embattled Yemeni port city of Hodeidah, controlled by the Houthi militants, also known as Ansar Allah movement.

"The aim of the arrived Sudanese servicemen will be to reinforce troops already deployed there in order to fully liberate the territories which remain under the Houthis' control," the military said in a statement.

Desperate for funding to fend off a financial crisis fuelled in part by mounting debt to China, Pakistan is playing a complicated game of poker that could hand Saudi Arabia a strategic victory in its bitter feud with Iran at the People’s Republic’s expense.

Turkish government sources have said that a former trusted aide of the Saudi royal family, who was shunned by Riyadh after criticizing Saudi policies, was murdered inside the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul. Jamal Khashoggi, 59, is an American-educated former adviser to Saudi royals. He worked for years as an advisor to Prince Turki al-Faisal, one of Saudi Arabia’s most recognizable public figures who represented the Kingdom as ambassador to the United States and the United Kingdom. But in 2015, when Mohammad bin Salman, favorite son of Saudi Arabia’s King Salman, began to rise through the ranks of the royal family, Khashoggi became sharply critical of changes in the Kingdom’s style of governance. He moved to the United States, from where he began to criticize Saudi Arabia’s involvement in the civil war in Yemen, its support for the repression of political freedoms in Egypt, and other issues.

This much, at least, can be said for Mohammed bin Salman, the putatively reformist crown prince of Saudi Arabia: He has made all the right enemies. Among those who would celebrate his end are the leaders of ISIS, al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas, as well as Yemen’s Houthi rebels, and the entire clerical and military leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran. As a bonus, there are members of his own family, the sprawling, sclerotic, self-dealing House of Saud, who would like to see him gone—or at the very least, warehoused at the Ritz-Carlton in Riyadh, where the 32-year-old prince recently imprisoned many of his enemies and cousins during an anti-corruption sweep of the kingdom.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the 33-year-old de facto leader of Saudi Arabia widely praised as a “reformist” by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and others, turns out to be a suspected murderer.

Here’s what happened: 5 days ago, Jamal Khashoggi, a one-time Saudi insider who became a prominent critic and self-exiled in Washington, entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, to get a document he needed to re-marry. His fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, said he never emerged.

The Washington Post reports that Turkish investigators now believe that a 15-member murder team sent in from Saudi Arabia killed Khashoggi inside the consulate. There have been further reports that his body was dismembered before being removed.

Reports are growing that Muhammad bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s hyperactive crown prince, is losing his grip. His economic reform program has stalled since his father, King Salman, nixed plans to privatize 5 percent of Saudi Aramco. The Saudi war in Yemen, which the prince launched in March 2015, is more of a quagmire than ever while the kingdom’s sword rattling with Iran is making the region increasingly jumpy.

Heavy gunfire in Riyadh last April sparked rumors that MBS, as he’s known, had been killed in a palace coup. In May, an exiled Saudi prince urged top members of the royal family to oust him and put an end to his “irrational, erratic, and stupid” rule. Recently, Bruce Riedel, an ex-CIA analyst who heads up the Brookings Institution’s Intelligence Project, reported that the prince is so afraid for his life that he’s taken to spending nights on his yacht in the Red Sea port of Jeddah.

Several months into the invasion of the Yemeni aid port of Hodeidah, the forces loyal to the United Arab Emirates have been escalating dramatically, looking to gain ground faster in an effort to seize the nation’s largest aid port.

Hodeidah is estimated to import food aid for about 70% of Yemen, and fighting has at this point effectively cut off traffic to an from the city. Promises by the Saudis for a humanitarian corridor haven’t been followed through on so far, and that means no one is getting food.

This has happened before in the Saudi-led war in Yemen, with Saudi naval blockades regularly cutting the nation off from food imports for weeks at a time. Fighting could drag on much longer, however, and that could mean mass starvation, particularly in northern Yemen.

It was May 2017. The Saudis were growing increasingly nervous. For more than two years they had been relying heavily on U.S. military support and bombs to defeat Houthi rebels in Yemen. Now, the Senate was considering a bipartisan resolution to cut off military aid and halt a big sale of American-made bombs to Saudi Arabia. Fortunately for them, despite mounting evidence that the U.S.-backed, supplied, and fueled air campaign in Yemen was targeting civilians, the Saudi government turned out to have just the weapon needed to keep those bombs and other kinds of aid coming their way: an army of lobbyists.

Yemenis have intensified their counterattacks against the Saudi-led coalition which has already escalated its offensive on the port city of Hudaydah over the past weeks. Our correspondent Mohamed Al-Atab has made a tour of Hudaydah and filed this report on the growing national resilience of the city’s people against the Saudi-led war and blockade.

Long-standing separatist ambitions in South Yemen could be coming to a head soon, with troops loyal to the Saudi-backed government massing in the city of Aden. They are preparing to resist calls by separatists to launch a full-scale uprising.

The Southern Transitional Council (STC), which envisions itself becoming an interim government after this uprising, is said also to be mobilizing, with its own forces preparing to seize government buildings across the south.

The STC is blaming Saudi Arabia for mounting corruption across the south, and has long envisioned ending the Saudi invasion by just splitting the country along the pre-unification borders. Pro-Saudi officials say that the STC must abandon all plans, saying they would benefit Iran.

Yemen was unified militarily in 1990, when North Yemen’s former President Ali Abdullah Saleh conquered the South. Since then, separatists have remained an active movement in the south, envisioning reclaiming the lost country.

This is how they roll in the Saudi Kingdom.

Saudi Arabia’s public prosecutor has charged Essam al-Zamil, identified by activists as a prominent economist who once criticized plans to float shares of Saudi Aramco, with joining a terrorist organization and meeting with foreign diplomats, reports Reuters.

Local media, including Arabic-language newspaper Okaz, reported on Monday that the accusations include membership in the banned Muslim Brotherhood as well as communicating with neighboring Qatar and inciting protests inside Saudi Arabia.

Zamil has been detained since Sept. 2017 along with dozens of intellectuals and clerics in a crackdown on potential opponents of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whose ambitious economic reform program centered on selling up to five percent of the state-owned Aramco oil company, notes Reuters.

Trump, speaking at a rally in Mississippi on Tuesday night, went out of his way to humiliate Saudi King Salman, his close ally in his attempt to corral Iran.

“We protect Saudi Arabia. Would you say they’re rich? And I love the King, King Salman. But I said,

‘King – we’re protecting you – you might not be there for two weeks without us – you have to pay for your military.'”

By “your military” Trump apparently meant the US army, navy and air force, which has often protected Saudi Arabia, as during the Gulf War when the US military spearheaded pushing Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, which he had invaded, and from which he could have menaced Riyadh as well. Some 80% of the cost of the Gulf War was shouldered by US allies, especially Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other Gulf states. Saudi Arabia alone pitched in $16.8 billion.

The “28 pages” from a 2002 Congressional Joint Inquiry report on the attacks was declassified on July 15, 2016, but large portions of the release remained redacted. This move pushes to finally remove the redactions on these and other documents related to 9/11.

The documents seem to point the finger at the highest level of the government of Saudi Arabia as being responsible for the financial backing for the attackers on 9/11.

S.Res. 610 Resolution Reads as follows:

Urging the release of information regarding the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks upon the United States.

Whereas tens of thousands of pages of documents relating to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks upon the United States remain classified by the Federal Government;

Whereas the Federal Government may properly classify and control access to information in order to protect sources and methods of collecting critical information in defense of the country and the people of the United States;

The latest attack comes just hours after Saudi Arabia admitted that its forces have committed what it called “certain mistakes” in Yemen, after increasing pressure from international bodies and human-rights groups that accuse the kingdom of carrying out war crimes in the country.

About one million people in northern Yemen are living in makeshift camps on the verge of famine.

They're in a Houthi-controlled area that the Saudi-Emirati coalition has been attacking and that's making it difficult for aid to reach camps. Without a ceasefire and end to the attacks, aid organisations cannot bring in the amount of food necessary for the displaced Yemenis to survive the conflict.

A Saudi dissident living in Canada was likely spied on by Israeli phone-hacking technology, according to a Monday report.

The Herzliya-based NSO Group uses its controversial Pegasus spyware program to turn smartphones into listening devices. It has been accused of selling the technology to countries, including Saudi Arabia, who use it to spy on dissidents, journalists, and others.

The Citizen Lab, a group of academics from Toronto University, said it has “high confidence” that the Israeli technology was used to spy on 27-year-old Omar Abdulaziz, an outspoken Saudi dissident who sought asylum in Canada.

The advanced defence and surveillance systems which Russia intends to send to Syria will be able to monitor flight movements in Israel, Saudi Arabia and Europe, media reports said.

“We will know not only that someone has entered the airspace in this region, but also that somewhere a plane is only operating on the runway, be it in Israel or Saudi Arabia or even in Europe,” Vladimir Mikheyev, first deputy director of government-owned Concern Radio-Electronic Technologies, told Russia’s Tass news agency

“Systems capable of combating precision weapons-guided bombs and missiles … will be added to the conventional radar protection systems,” he added.

Mikheyev pointed out that Moscow is planning to strengthen its own defence systems which could include the instalment of aerosol smokescreens which make airplanes invisible to missiles.

Saudi-backed forces are reporting heavy fighting in and around the vital aid port of Hodeidah, in northwestern Yemen. Reports suggest that over 60 were killed in the course of the day’s clashes, with 54 of them Shi’ite Houthis.

Fighting initially focused on some of the rare farms around the province, and some military positions leading into the port city itself. The port is the source of food aid for about 70% of Yemen, and the lone port under the control of the Houthi movement.

Yemen imports the vast, vast majority of its food, so a protracted battle for the last Houthi port could cut off millions in Houthi territory from any food aid at all, leading to mass starvation. The Saudi-backed forces have promised to eventually open “humanitarian routes” out of the city.

Addressing the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child on Monday with respect to the massive civilian death toll in the Saudi invasion of Yemen, Saudi officials made rare admissions of fault, saying that they had made “mistakes” in targeting and were working hard to rectify the problem.

Saudi officials were clearly trying to use this to get a pass on the ten thousand-plus killed civilians, insisting that the internal investigations note the “mistakes,” and that perpetrators will be “held to account,” despite little evidence that this ever happened.

The UN committee didn’t appear to be sold on this idea either, with members noting the war has been going on since 2015 with no sign of prosecutions for civilian deaths. Panel chairwoman Renate Winter noted that an awfully large number of these “mistakes” had hit the same civilian targets, with several schools and hospitals hit myriad times. She asked how many times the Saudis could possibly keep making that same mistake.

Those rare moments that WikiLeaks gets invoked at the United Nations are always fun, especially when part of a tense feud between Middle East rivals and involving Hillary Clinton.

Iranian Ambassador to the UN Gholamali Khoshroo gave a fiery speech during the final days of the UN General Assembly meeting in New York wherein he responded to specific charges of Saudi Arabia that Iran sponsors terrorism and is waging proxy wars on Riyadh throughout the Middle East, saying that global terrorism actually originates with the Saudis.

The Iranian ambassador supported his case by appealing to a specific WikiLeaks email: “Everybody knows that Saudi Arabia supports terrorism in a very blatant and widespread manner,” he said. In a shock statement before his UN audience, he added, “in the framework of WikiLeaks in 2009, Hillary Clinton is said to have stated that Saudi Arabia is the greatest donor to terrorist groups around the world.”

US President Donald Trump called on Riyadh to increase its military spending, with an eye on more weapons sale to the "rich" kingdom.
Speaking at a campaign rally in West Virginia on Saturday, the US president stressed that he had complained that Washington was not getting what it should from Saudi Arabia during a phone conversation with King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Middle East News.

Trump said he had told King Salman that Riyadh has "trillions of dollars" and could pay its military bills.

"I love Saudi Arabia. They are great, King Salman, I spoke with him this morning. I said, king, you have got trillions of dollars. Without us, who knows what’s going to happen. .... With us they are totally safe. But we don’t get what we should be getting," he stated.

Trump further threatened to end what he claimed to be subsidies for the Saudi military.

New data from the US Air Force shows that the refueling operation for the Saudi-led war in Yemen is continuing apace with no sign of slowing. The US has refueled Saudi warplanes attacking Yemen since April of 2015.

Central Command revealed that the US has conducted 2,919 sorties, offloading 92.3 million pounds of fuel since the war began. The statement confirmed this was “in support of US missions and Saudi and Emirate operations against threats throughout the horn of Africa.”

US involvement in the Yemen War has been extremely controversial, with Congress once again working on a bill aiming to compel the administration to stop participating. The war was never authorized by the US Congress.

Refueling is the primary US operation in Yemen, which is a particularly controversial part of the war, since Saudi airstrikes have been killing massive numbers of Yemeni civilians in the course of the war.

At Nasr Hospital's emergency room in the Yemeni city of Daleh, a little boy struggles to breathe. He is too tired, or too hungry, to cry.

Born with a degenerative neurological disease, his muscles have atrophied to nothing, his tiny joints visible through his pale skin, his stomach distended.

The child's body cannot retain even water, so nurses have resorted to putting him in diapers.

And doctors say there is nothing they can do.

The boy is one of an estimated five million Yemeni children who may not see their next birthday in a war the UN children's fund has described as a "living hell" for minors.

The UN has warned that international aid agencies are losing the fight against famine in Yemen, where 3.5 million people may soon be added to the eight million Yemenis already facing starvation -- more than half of them children.

In a 21-8 vote, the UN Human Rights Council has agreed to extend the inquiry into human rights violations committed during the Saudi-led war in Yemen. Saudi Arabia and its allies in the United Arab Emirates both condemned the news.

Such votes happen every year around the UN General Assembly meeting, with the Saudis trying to limit such votes and insisting that any investigations are only going to “deepen divisions” in Yemen.

The council spent several days debating the matter, with those in favor of more investigations, led by the Netherlands and Canada, winning out handily, while many other nations chose to abstain.

Saudi Arabia's foreign minister asked Canada to apologise for demanding the release of Saudi women's rights activists and stop treating the kingdom as "a banana republic" if it wanted to resolve a diplomatic dispute between the two countries.

In August, Saudi Arabia froze new trade with Canada, blocked grain imports, expelled Canada's ambassador and ordered all Saudi students home after Ottawa called for the release of activists detained for urging more rights for women.

IN CONGRESS, FRUSTRATION with the U.S. role in Yemen is nearing a breaking point. Sen. Bob Menendez — the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — is holding up a $2 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates over concerns that the two countries routinely bomb civilian targets. Meanwhile, in the House, U.S. assistance to the Saudi- and UAE-led coalition is about to face another major hurdle.

On Wednesday, California Democrat Ro Khanna introduced a resolution invoking the 1973 War Powers Act, declaring that Congress never authorized U.S. support for the coalition in Yemen and directing President Donald Trump to withdraw U.S. troops from “hostilities” against the Houthis, the Iranian-backed rebel group at war with Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The resolution would not affect U.S. forces who are on the ground in Yemen fighting Al Qaeda.

By now, the images are infamous: stunned, bloodied Yemeni children arriving at the hospital after their summer camp bus was bombed by Saudi aircraft. The United States is deeply implicated in that August 9 attack, which killed 54 people – most of them children

Fragments from the bomb bear the labels of U.S. weapons manufacturers. The indefensible nature of the bombing – there were no combatants anywhere in sight – has garnered headlines and even attention on Capitol Hill, opening a new conversation about US involvement in the years-long siege of Yemen by a coalition headed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Less than a month after Iran’s consulate in Basra was attacked, a group of terrorists claiming to be members of the Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz attacked a military parade in the capital of Iran’s Khuzestan province, killing 25 people and wounding many more. When the Basra consulate incident took place , some commentators in Iran speculated that the attackers also wanted to target Khorramshahr and Abadan. Now it seems that they were not too wrong.

Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, the Saudi-backed “president” of Yemen, spoke at the UN General Assembly today, dismissing the idea of any further attempts at peace talks with the Houthi movement as “doomed to fail.”

Hadi was installed as the Yemeni President in a US and UN-backed move after the Arab Spring. He was nominally “elected” in a vote in which he was the only allowed candidate. He was given a two-year term, starting in 2012. That has long since expired, though he maintains he is the legitimate president, and the Saudis maintain reinstalling him is the purpose of their war in Yemen.

Hadi’s attempts to cling to power, and to violently crush the Shi’ite Houthis led to his initial expulsion from the country, and the Saudi-led war intends to put him back. Hadi insists that there is no point in talks with the “gangster-like” Houthis, and continues to refer back to UN Security Council resolutions from years ago calling for the Houthis to surrender all territory to Hadi.

Escalations of the Saudi-led war in Yemen, including the attack on the Yemeni port city of al-Hodeidah, has seen the already huge civilian death toll of the war skyrocket, up 164% just since June.

According to the International Rescue Committee, the month of August was by far the worst of the year, with a single nine-day period leaving nearly 500 civilians killed. They noted that on- third of Saudi airstrikes have hit non-military targets.

It is unsurprising that August would be such a particularly deadly month, with a Saudi airstrike early in the month hitting a school bus full of children, killing 51 of them. Saudi officials long maintained that the attack was “legitimate,” but there was never any question the victims were civilians.

Iran's president has criticized the US ambassador to the United Nations’ response to the deadly attack in Ahvaz. He tweeted “a US official has held the Iranian government responsible for the attack,” adding, “What would Americans think if we were to say such a thing about the 9/11 terrorist attacks?”

Earlier, Iran's Revolutionary Guards promised a “crushing and devastating” response to the assault.

Radio Sputnik discussed the attack in Ahvaz with Alexander Azadgan, professor of international political economy, a senior geopolitical analyst and editor-at-large with Imperia News.

Less than a month after Iran’s consulate in Basra was attacked, a group of terrorists claiming to be members of the Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz attacked a military parade in the capital of Iran’s Khuzestan province, killing 25 people and wounding many more. When the Basra consulate incident took place , some commentators in Iran speculated that the attackers also wanted to target Khorramshahr and Abadan. Now it seems that they were not too wrong.

Invoking the War Powers Resolution, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (HI-02) joined a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers today in introducing a privileged resolution to stop US military support for Saudi Arabia’s genocidal war in Yemen. US support of this war continues to fuel the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, killing thousands of civilians, with millions suffering from mass starvation, famine and cholera.

On Monday, a spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition attacking Yemen announced that they will open a humanitarian corridor out of the vital aid port of Hodeidah. The corridor is intended to allow aid deliveries to the capital city of Sanaa.

The decision is being done in coordination with the UN. Officials did not say when this corridor would be opened, but it would only allow travel parts of the day through certain routes. Hodeidah is the lone source of food aid for all of northern Yemen, and is estimated to feed about 70% of the entire country.

With Saudi-led forces attacking Hodeidah, and cutting off all supply routes, materially no aid is coming out of the city right now. This had led aid groups to warn that Yemen will run out of food in the next two months, leading to mass starvation.

Terrorists in Iran launched an attack on a parade on Saturday killing 25 — including a four-year-old girl. Unsurprisingly, the group claiming responsibility for the massacre has links to foreign entities in Saudi Arabia and their allies.

Also on Saturday, Donald Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, spoke at an “Iran Uprising Summit” in New York City’s Time Square supporting efforts to overthrow Iran’s revolutionary government. The summit included supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and other groups that share Washington’s goal of overthrowing Tehran.

“The people of Iran obviously have now had enough,” Giuliani said on Saturday. “The sanctions are working. The currency is going to nothing … these are the kinds of conditions that lead to successful revolution.”

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman is working to “westernise” the Kingdom and change people’s mindsets when it comes to Israel, Twitter user Mujtahidd has reported.

The account, which is believed to be reporting from inside the ruling family in Saudi Arabia, wrote: “Arrangement among the UAE, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain is wider than our expectations. Israel and American bodies linked to Trump are involved.”

“The plan is complete. It is based on unifying the bases of security, media, culture and education, including religion, in Egypt and all the Gulf States except Oman.”

The plan, according to Mujtahid, was drawn in Egypt which is the “supplier of cadres who will deal with the issues of media, security, Islamic movements, education syllabuses and religious institutions.”

The coalition’s strategy seems to be to seal the Houthis into Hodeida and squeeze.

On rare occasion a story is unearthed in the mainstream media which demonstrates in stunning clarity how major foreign policy decisions are really made in Washington, especially when it comes to waging perpetual war in the Middle East often under the official rhetorical guise of “protecting civilians”.

A bombshell Wall Street Journal report details a leaked classified memo which shows Secretary of State Mike Pompeo decided to continue US military involvement in the Saudi war on Yemen in order to preserve a massive $2 billion weapons deal with Riyadh.

Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Russia has revealed his hope that the US will not impose sanctions on his country for its plans to buy the S-400 missile defence system from Moscow, AlKhaleejonline.com reported on Friday.

Raed Ben Khalid Qarmali made his comment when asked if Saudi Arabia is going ahead with its plan to purchase the system, just one day after America imposed sanctions on China for a similar deal with the Russians.

“I hope that no one imposes sanctions on us,” said Qarmali. He noted that 14 memorandums were signed during the visit of Saudi King Salman to Moscow, including four military deals. “The implementation of three has just started,” the ambassador added.

The Trump administration imposed sanctions on China after Beijing bought aircraft and other military equipment from Russia. The Chinese government described the American move as a “flagrant violation of the rules of international relations.”