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Saudi Arabia, amid heavy fighting with Shi'ite rebels, has begun erecting another security fence along its border with Yemen. Saudi military sources said the Defense Ministry has overseen a fast-track project to construct a barbed wire fence along most of the 1,600-kilometer border with Yemen. The sources said the project reflected an urgent requirement for a physical barrier to block the flow of thousands of Shi'ite rebels and their supporters from Yemen to the Saudi kingdom. "The infiltration has reached massive proportions," a Saudi source said. "Thousands are crossing into the kingdom."

The war against Iranian supported, Shia tribesmen, in northern Yemen, continues. Many of the key rebels have retreated to their fortified villages in the mountains. The Yemeni air force is bombing these villages, and the Shia rebels are complaining about civilian casualties. That's usually a sign that they are losing, and striving to make their use of human shields as effective as possible. The Saudi Air Force is heavily patrolling, and bombing the Yemen border region, hitting rebels (and non-hostile smugglers) caught crossing the semi-desert frontier region. Yemen has had its differences with Saudi Arabia in the past, particularly over...

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that he has documented evidence that the United States was trying to prevent the coming of the Hidden Imam (messiah). According to a Khabar Online report, Ahmadinejad expounded on the plots hatched by the East and West for the annihilation of Iran....addressing an audience of the families of martyrs and altruists in Isfahan on Friday. Referring to his June reelection, Ahmadinejad said, "The enemy... was hyping the issue as if the Iranian nation has been weakened and as if this was the best opportunity to get concessions from them. But your humble son [Ahmadinejad] stood in front...

For almost a decade, Arab regimes have worried about alleged Iranian plans to create a "Shiite crescent" from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean, encompassing Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and a yet-to-be liberated Palestine. Now fresh fears have grown that the "crescent" may take another shape as well -- from the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Aden, and including chunks of Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Since January, for instance, Iran has intensified pressure on Bahrain, where a Shiite majority has grievances against the Arab Sunni ruling elite. An archipelago connected with the Saudi mainland by a bridge, Bahrain provides the...

Not that it’s important enough for mainstream media to highlight, but that elusive thing known as Iraqi political reconciliation (remember when its absence was a sign of the apocalypse?) may be upon us:

The Shia minority in Saudi Arabia has declared independence from the Kingdom, creating a country called the "The Republic of Eastern Arabia". The newly founded nation, which has received little media coverage, is formed in the eastern areas of Qatif and Al-Hasa, a website close to leading Shi'a cleric Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Namr reported. "The decision of the proclamation of the Republic was based on the demands of the people of the region," the website added, denying any foreign links for the decision. Al-Namr, known for his fiery rhetoric, was the source of major turmoil earlier this year when he...

BAGHDAD (AFP) – Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki called on all Iraqis on Saturday to unite aboard what he called a "love boat" in a stirring appeal for reconciliation in the war-torn nation. "The security in Iraq has settled down at a level that allowed the leaders of the tribes to come from everywhere," Maliki told a conference of Sunni and Shiite tribal figures in the capital. "National reconciliation has become a principle that we depend on ... I invite everyone to stay in the boat of national reconciliation, the boat of fraternity, love, justice and equality that will lead us...

Sometimes a story just doesn't seem to be "all there." Cinnamon Stillwell suspected as much in a NewsBusters item on January 10: Call me overly suspicious, but the story of 16-year-old Farris Hassan traveling to Iraq on a whim strikes me as unbelievable. Hassan's interview with Rita Cosby of MSNBC, a Florida newspaper columnist's skepticism, and a January 18 posting by the Northeast Intelligence Network (NIN), which describes itself as "a small contingent of experienced investigators ..... founded by veteran private investigator Douglas J. Hagmann," all appear to confirm Stillwell's suspicions. What is known of Farris Hassan's saga at this...

As violence in Iraq recedes, neighboring states are pondering how to deal with an unwieldy country that could re-emerge as a key player along with Saudi Arabia and Iran in one of the world's most strategic regions. The role of regional power broker may seem far-fetched for Iraq _ a devastated land best known for car bombs, death squads and suicide attackers. Still, countries of the Middle East cannot ignore the potential role of a resurgent Iraq, a nation of 28 million people, bordering Iran to the east, Syria and Jordan to the west and sitting on one of the...

Conventional wisdom holds that when Iran's supreme leader says, "Jump," millions of Shiites, from the Beirut slums to the Saudi oilfields, ask, "How high?" But a recent meeting in Baghdad between a wealthy Lebanese Sunni politician and an ascetic Shiite theologian twice his age suggests that there is a move afoot to empower Shiite voters throughout the Middle East to cast ballots according to their conscience, not according to the marching orders from Tehran. If that trend gains traction, it could fundamentally alter the political landscape of the region. In July, a representative of the preeminent Iraqi Shiite religious figure...

(CNN) -- The Web site of Iraq's most influential Shiite cleric was hacked on Friday, with the attackers' messages saying they are Sunnis upset over fatwas, or edicts, issued on the site. A entity called Group XP placed a video of comedian Bill Maher making fun of Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and his advice to the Shiite faithful, as well as posting messages on the site. The hackers said they are upset at the sexual nature of the advice given to faithful allegedly by al-Sistani through a spokesperson. Those who have studied the attack believe that the Maher video is meant...

Muslims are establishing Mosques all over America ranging from the ostentatious, such as in Washington D.C., to academically-cloaked university Islamic centers, to innocuous storefronts and even prison chapels. One and all have the same aims: Hold the faithful in line, recruit as many new adherents by any and all means, and indoctrinate one and all in the imperative of Islamic conquest. It is in these Islamic places that the impressionable young and the fanatical adults are drilled with the duty to carry out Jihad against the Dar ul Harb ("land of war"-anyplace not completely under the rule of Islam.) Operating...

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — It was once known as the Parrot’s Beak, a strategic jut of Pakistan that the American-backed mujahedeen used to carry out raids on the Russians just over the border into Afghanistan. That was during the cold war. Now the area, around the town of Parachinar, is near the center of the new kind of struggle. The Taliban have inflamed and exploited a long-running sectarian conflict that has left the town under siege. The Taliban, which have solidified control across Pakistan’s tribal zone and are seeking new staging grounds to attack American soldiers in Afghanistan, have sided with...

BAGHDAD — The militia that was once the biggest defender of poor Shiites in Iraq, the Mahdi Army, has been profoundly weakened in a number of neighborhoods across Baghdad, in an important, if tentative, milestone for stability in Iraq. It is a remarkable change from years past, when the militia, led by the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr, controlled a broad swath of Baghdad, including local governments and police forces. But its use of extortion and violence began alienating much of the Shiite population to the point that many quietly supported American military sweeps against the group. Prime Minister Nuri Kamal...

Two Iraqi lawmakers and a military officer on Wednesday claim that Hezbollah fighters have trained Shiite militiamen in southern Iraq before slipping into Iran to continue the training there. According to the Iraqi officials, the training ended three months ago. But they said the Hezbollah were also involved in planning some daring attacks against U.S.-led coalition forces. The most prominent was the attack at a provincial compound in Karbala in January 2007 which killed five Americans.

From the time america struck into Iraq in 2003, Iraqis have exhibited this great, persistent contradiction: the need for the foreign power's help and protection and an overweening pride that has made them bristle at their dependence. The debate now taking place about a "status of forces" agreement and a security arrangement with the United States puts this Iraqi ambivalence into sharp focus. More than 80 countries have such arrangements with the United States, but Iraq has never been a "normal" country. It has a history of brittle nationalism, and such an accord will have to be reached against the...

Iraqi Shi'ites to Iran: Stop interfering Jun. 15, 2008 The Media Line News Agency , THE JERUSALEM POST The signatures of more than two million Iraqi Shi'ites, demanding that Iran cease its interference in Iraq, were presented on Saturday during a convention in Ashraf, northeast of Baghdad, the London-based daily A-Sharq Al-Awsat reported. Representatives of more than 135 parties and organizations, as well as 1,000 tribal elders from Iraq's southern and central regions, attended the conference, titled "Solidarity with the Iraqi People." Also attending the event were representatives from the Iranian opposition group, Mujahidin Khalq. "We have gathered over two...

June 13 -- The Bush administration's Iraq policy suffered two major setbacks Friday when Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki publicly rejected key U.S. terms for an ongoing military presence and anti-American Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr called for a new militia offensive against U.S. forces. During a visit to Jordan, Maliki said negotiations over initial U.S. proposals for bilateral political and military agreements had "reached a dead end." While he said talks would continue, his comments fueled doubts that the pacts could be reached this year, before the Dec. 31 expiration of a United Nations mandate sanctioning the U.S. role in Iraq....

For two and a half days, Hussein al-Haj Obaid lay on the floor of a darkened warehouse in west Beirut, blindfolded and terrified. Militiamen loyal to Hezbollah had kidnapped him at a checkpoint after killing his nephew right in front of him. Throughout those awful days, as his kidnappers kicked and punched him, applied electrical shocks to his genitals.... ******************* Those feelings are being echoed throughout Lebanon. After almost a week of street battles that left scores dead and threatened to push the country into open war, long-simmering Sunni-Shiite tensions here have sharply worsened, in an ominous echo of the...

Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr is known in America for heading the Mahdi Army militia, but his followers also see him as someone who can provide them with things their government can't. BAGHDAD -- When Ali Ateya was killed last month at the age of 23 -- a victim of an American airstrike on a block of concrete tenements in Baghdad's Sadr City slum, according to his family -- there was no money for his burial. Within days, two officials from Sadr City's main humanitarian organization showed up at the family home. Unsolicited, they offered to pay for Ateya's Shiite...

Al-Qaeda has reportedly called on its operatives to go to Lebanon and defend what it called the Sunni community of the country. The report came while some Arab media outlets described the current clashes in Lebanon as a fight between Sunni and Shia communities. In an interviews with Sunni clerics with links to Saad Hariri's pro-government bloc, Al-Arabiya TV network described the ongoing clashes as a sectarian strife. Sheikh Ali al-Jozo, Mufti of the Jebel region, who is well known for his harsh stance against Hezbollah told the TV network that the clashes are a battle between Lebanon's Shia and...

Ten years ago, when Dr. David Sagiv began preparing the Arabic-Hebrew Hebrew-Arabic dictionary he recently completed, he was more optimistic than he is today. At that time, he and his wife, Marcelle, would go every year to Cairo, where he had established contact with some of the most important intellectuals in Egypt. The shelves of his bookcase in Jerusalem are filled with Arabic books, some of which contain dedications from Egyptian authors. For several years, it seemed as though cultural relations between Israel and Egypt were gradually being woven. But in the last few years, since the Al-Aqsa Intifada broke...

Fifteen people died in Yemen during fierce gun battles between Shiite gunmen and members of a tribe loyal to the government, witnesses said on Sunday. Thirteen people were hurt in the fighting between the pro-government Al-Bukhtan tribe and the gunmen, they said, according to AFP. The fighting, which broke-out on Saturday in a market in the Saada province near the border with Saudi Arabia, came two months after Zaidi gunmen killed an Al-Bukhtan member who they accused of supporting the government. Government forces have since joined the battle by shelling Zaidi positions.

A crackdown on leading clerics and politicians from Kuwait's Shiite minority has stoked sectarian tensions in the oil-rich Gulf state, raising questions about its aim and timing, analysts say. Claims that Shiite activists who took part in a controversial rally in February are seeking to topple the regime "amount to a sectarian campaign by the security agencies ... against prominent figures of the Shiite community," a group of leading Shiite clerics said in a statement. "If you're a Shiite in Kuwait, you have to swear five times a day after each prayer that you hate Iran and love Israel" in...

Was Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King on the mark last week when he asserted Islamic terrorists would rejoice if Sen. Barack Obama becomes the next U.S. president? As a journalist and author who has conducted dozens of on-the-record interviews with Muslim terrorists, including with some of the most notorious Palestinian terror leaders, and who has documented many of those interviews in a recently released, 210-page book, "Schmoozing with Terrorists," I can answer the above question with a resounding "yes." Terrorists worldwide would indeed be emboldened by an Obama election victory not so much because of the senator's middle name –...

Iran wants to weaken the burgeoning Sunni political movement in Iraq while also breathing new life into Al Qaeda? Go figure. The US military claims to have proof that armed groups supported by Tehran are trying to sabotage Iraq’s US-backed Awakening Councils, the armed neighbourhood groups that have successfully driven al-Qaeda out of many districts of Baghdad and elsewhere.In an interview with Adnkronos International (AKI), US military spokesman Adm Gregory Smith said that “the American military recently obtained confessions from detainees who are members of the Al-Quds Brigade and other Shia group who have been arrested in various parts of...

Yemeni soldiers and fighters from the minority Zaidi sect clashed overnight in the northwestern province of Saada after some 20 troops were killed in ambushes, witnesses said on Thursday. According to AFP, they said government forces used heavy artillery to bombard members of the sect dug into positions in the mountainous region of Miran. The clashes followed several ambushes carried out over the past two days by the Shiites in which nearly 20 soldiers and nine local civilians were killed, the witnesses said. Two Shiite fighters had been arrested. A source close to the militantls' military leader, Abdallah al-Houthi, said...

They come so frequently, it's hard to get worked up, but there's a dead giveaway this time. The teaser for the piece reads, "At the risk of sounding like an apologist for the Islamic Republic..." The author is Hooman Majd, who accuses the Pentagon of manufacturing the incident with Iran in the Gulf this week. The Pentagon's version of the encounter in the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday morning, involving U.S. Navy warships and Iranian Revolutionary Guard patrol boats is, at the very least highly suspicious. On Tuesday, the Navy released video footage and an audiotape to back its claims...

WASHINGTON - All out nuclear war between Israel and Iran: a doomsday scenario that we all fear deeply. A new study compiled by the US Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), headed by former Pentagon analyst Anthony H. Cordesman, explored just such a nightmare scenario, noting that it could lead to the death of between 16-28 million Iranian civilians, and 200-800 thousand Israelis. As pertains to nuclear warfare, the study found that an Israeli nuclear scrimmage with Iran would most likely last for about three weeks...

I had to look up the word "conniption." I wasn't sure how to spell it, but I'm sure that the likes of Code Pink, MoveOn, and other far left anti-war groups had a collective conniption fit last week. One of their poster boys, John Murtha, quit toeing their line. Surely what followed were the same fits of rage I've seen them have before. In September at a Washington D.C. rally as Senator Joe Lieberman began to address a group of pro-mission vets and Gold Star Families, several members of the anti-war groups charged toward the stage with seemingly unrestricted fury,...

BAGHDAD, Nov 27 (KUNA) -- Leading Shiite cleric in Iraq Ali Sistani Tuesday banned the killing of Iraqis, particularly the Sunnis, and urged the Shiites to protect their brother Sunnis. Sistani bans the Iraqi blood in general the blood of Sunnis in particular. His announcement came during a meeting with a delegation from Sunni clerics from southern and northern Iraq. The clerics are visiting Najaf to participate in the first national conference for Ulemaa of Shiites and Sunnis. Sistani called on the Shiites to protect their Sunni brothers, according to Sheikh Khaled Al-Mulla, head of the authority of Ulemaa of...

This past summer during one of the last episodes of HBO's mega-hit "The Sopranos," A.J., the whiny suicidal son of the show's mafia boss anti-hero, was heard to worry about what he saw as the certain bombing of Iran by President Bush. "You don't know that," his mafia princess sister responded. Though this stray snippet, which was widely noted in reviews of the show, did not offer any clues as to the fate of the fictional leaders of the North Jersey mafia, it may have heralded the beginning of a new twist on what it means to be "anti-war" in...

Venezuelan President released another attention-catching remark about his long-time foe U.S. President George W. Bush. Chavez also attacked Spanish King Juan Carlos I, with whom he had recently come into conflict in Chile’s capital Santiago. Chavez blasted the U.S. and Spanish leaders visiting Paris and Lisbon, ITAR-TASS reports. The Venezuelan president stated in Paris that George W. Bush should be placed in an asylum for his comments about a possibility to start Third World War if Iran developed nuclear weapons. In Lisbon Chavez said that the Spanish King could not make up with the fact that Latin American countries (former...

I don't think President Bush is going to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities, not before the presidential election next November 4, and not between then and the day he leaves office the following January 20, either. As reckless as he is, I don't think he's that reckless. He wouldn't make a move that could set off WMD missile wars, invasions, coups, Islamic revolutions and whatnot all over the Middle East, then just fly back to the ranch and let somebody else clean up the mess. If Bush was at the beginning of his term, he might do it, but not with...

One of the many tragic consequences of the Iraq war is that it has made it harder to act against Iran. The geographical and alphabetical proximity of the two countries tempts us into false comparisons. Look at the mess the neo-cons made in Iraq, we think. We surely can't let those clots try the same failed strategy against Iran. Nor do you hear this argument only from tousled students. Mohammed El-Baradei, who heads the International Atomic Energy Agency, says that Iraq should serve as a warning to those who want a forward policy against Teheran. Well, I am no neo-con....

Egypt: Activists Detained for Advocating for Shi`a Minority Human Rights Watch (press release) - Oct 6, 2007 The two men were arrested after also criticizing the prevalence of torture in Egyptian prisons. The charges equate defending Shi`ism with an attack on Islam ...http://hrw.org/english/docs/2007/10/06/egypt17042.htm

WASHINGTON, Oct. 24, 2007 – A movement toward peace that began in mostly Sunni areas of Iraq now is moving into Shiite areas as well, a senior commander said in Baghdad today. “Bound together by the desire for peace and prosperity, the Iraqi people are overcoming differences to provide a better future for their children,” said Army Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, Multinational Corps Iraq commander. In a news briefing, Odierno and Iraqi army Lt. Gen. Abud Qanbar said they are upbeat about the security situation in the Iraqi capital. Both said the shift of Iraqis to supporting the coalition...

In a number of Shiite neighborhoods across Baghdad, residents are beginning to turn away from the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia they once saw as their only protector against Sunni militants. Now they resent it as a band of street thugs without ideology. The hardening Shiite feeling in Baghdad opens an opportunity for the American military, which has long struggled against the Mahdi Army, as American commanders rely increasingly on tribes and local leaders in their prosecution of the war. The sectarian landscape has shifted, with Sunni extremists largely defeated in many Shiite neighborhoods, and the war in those places...

Justin Logan is a foreign policy analyst a member of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy. Former White House chief of staff Andrew Card famously remarked that the reason the White House ramped up the case for the Iraq War in September was that "from a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August." To judge from recent developments, Americans may look back on August 2007 as the month the country again turned toward war—with Iran. The same network of think-tank analysts, media outlets, and government officials who brayed for war in Iraq have set their...

President Bush has endorsed General David Petraeus's recommendation to begin withdrawing 30,000 U.S. troops from Iraq by next summer. Yet the drawdown would only restore troop levels to where they were before the surge began in January 2007. In the final months of 2006, debate in Washington centered on how fast a reduction from pre-surge levels could occur. The Iraq Study Group recommended that approximately half of the 130,000 troops then in Iraq be withdrawn by early 2008. In marked contrast to that and similar proposals, President Bush is now endorsing a step that would mean a return to the...

My cousin Kamran is a successful software engineer in Tehran with a house, a thriving business of his own, and a brand new Peugeot, which he likes to show off by careening through the city's clogged streets at maniacal speeds. Like most of Iran's young and highly educated population, he must rely on other means to make ends meet. So, in addition to running his software business, Kamran tutors neighborhood children, raises chickens on his aunt's farm, hires himself out as a guide and translator for tourists, dabbles in real estate, and occasionally sells imitation designer handbags out of the...

History, as Marx famously said (by way of paraphrasing Hegel), repeats itself -- "the first time as tragedy, the second as farce." A catchy concept, to say the least. And while there's definitely something to it, it's also true that sometimes history does not repeat itself. Take American wars in Japan, the Koreas, Vietnam and Iraq. President Bush, addressing the Veterans of Foreign Wars, recently made a case -- a flawed case -- for a kind of core continuity linking these disparate conflicts. It's not that he didn't admit there are many differences among them ("There are many differences" among...

The tempting thought that it is now safe to begin withdrawing from Iraq is being dangled in front of the American people this summer. Maybe if the United States and our allies pull out, or pull over, or pull to the side, the Shiite and Sunni moderates — facing destruction — will summon the ability to defeat al-Qaida and Iran's Shiite surrogates and go on to construct a solid peace. It is more likely, however, that bloodshed of historic proportions will flow. Not hundreds of deaths a week, as now, but hundreds of thousands in a few months, and the...

From observing the Middle East for some 40 years, I can say without equivocation that no one is better than the Arabs at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. It happened in 1973 when nothing separated Syria's superior armor capability from the heart of Israel but one Israeli tank. The Syrians halted their armored charge into the Jewish state because commanders believed it must be a trap. It was simply too good to be true. That heroic Israel tank commander bought enough time for air and tank reinforcements, and Israel was able to repel the Syrian invasion. It happened...

BAGHDAD, April 29 -- A department of the Iraqi prime minister's office is playing a leading role in the arrest and removal of senior Iraqi army and national police officers, some of whom had apparently worked too aggressively to combat violent Shiite militias, according to U.S. military officials in Baghdad. Since March 1, at least 16 army and national police commanders have been fired, detained or pressured to resign; at least nine of them are Sunnis, according to U.S. military documents shown to The Washington Post. ...The dismissals have angered U.S. and Iraqi leaders who say the Shiite-led government is...

An Iranian opposition group claimed Saturday that Iran's capture of 15 British sailors and marines was planned in advance and carried out in retaliation for UN sanctions imposed against Tehran. The National Council of Resistance of Iran - the political wing of the Iranian MEK opposition group which is listed as a terrorist group by Britain, the US and the European Union - said the British crew's capture was planned in advance, but offered no evidence to support the claims. Hossein Abedini, a member of the council's foreign affairs committee, claimed the group had obtained information from sources within Iran's...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Insurgents in Iraq detonated an explosives-rigged vehicle with two children in the back seat after US soldiers let it through a Baghdad checkpoint over the weekend, a senior US military official said Tuesday. The vehicle was stopped at the checkpoint but was allowed through when soldiers saw the children in the back, said Major General Michael Barbero of the Pentagon's Joint Staff. "Children in the back seat lowered suspicion. We let it move through. They parked the vehicle, and the adults ran out and detonated it with the children in the back," Barbero said. The general said...

Terrified that sectarian Muslim bloodshed could soon engulf the region, U.S. allies and adversaries in the Middle East have stepped up joint efforts to head off a religious civil war. Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia and Shi'ite Iran have held intensive talks in recent days on ways to tamp down sectarian violence in Iraq and Lebanon. Over the weekend, Saudi King Abdullah issued an unusual public call for calm. Top Islamic clerics and scholars in Egypt, Qatar and Iraq also have issued statements urging Muslim unity, often blaming the United States and other outside actors of trying to divide the faithful....

Substitute Friday prayers leader of Tehran Ayatollah Mohammad Emami Kashani on Friday warned against the US and UK attempts to divide Shiites and Sunnis. Delivering his second Friday prayers sermon at Tehran University campus, Ayatollah Kashani said dividing Shiites and Sunnites is a "rusted and useless weapon." "That's a rusted weapon and the US and UK do not know what a hell they can do. Sometimes they decide to divide Shiites and Sunnis, sometimes they attack Iranian consulate in Erbil and sometimes they speak of issuing sanctions against Iran," said Ayatollah Kashani. He called on Shiite and Sunni leaders to...

Sadr fears for life in security crackdown Mark Oliver and agencies Friday January 19, 2007 Guardian Unlimited (UK) Moqtada al-Sadr has moved his family to a secure location because of fears he will become the target of a security sweep of Baghdad, it was reported today. News of the radical cleric's decision came as the US military said it had detained a suspected death squad leader. Aides to Mr Sadr described the arrest of the man, named as Abdul-Hadi al-Darraji, as a "provocation", saying he was a spokesman for their movement. "We are angry," Abdul-Mehdi al-Matiri told Reuters. "This is...