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(Moderator, if I can't excerpt the BBC, please note) Drone attacks have set alight two major oil facilities run by the state-owned company Aramco in Saudi Arabia, state media say. Footage showed a huge blaze at Abqaiq, site of Aramco's largest oil processing plant, while a second drone attack started fires in the Khurais oilfield. The fires are now under control at both facilities, state media said. A spokesman for the Iran-aligned Houthi group in Yemen said it had deployed 10 drones in the attacks. The military spokesman, Yahya Sarea, told al-Masirah TV, which is owned by the Houthi movement...

The Senate voted to block the sale of billions of dollars of munitions to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates on Thursday, in a sharp and bipartisan rebuke of the Trump administration’s attempt to circumvent Congress to allow the exports by declaring an emergency over Iran. In three back-to-back votes, Republicans joined Democrats to register their growing anger with the administration’s use of emergency power to cut lawmakers out of national security decisions, as well as the White House’s unflagging support for the Saudis despite congressional pressure to punish Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman after the killing in October...

Arab leaders are pressuring the Palestinian Authority to accept the peace plan drawn up by the Trump administration, which is expected to be released this June, a source within the Palestinian Authority claims. According to a report over the weekend by the Qatari Alkhaleej Online outlet, a member of the Central Committee of PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ ruling Fatah party said that Arab leaders are applying “political and financial pressure” on the Palestinian Authority to accept the so-called ‘Deal of the Century’ – a framework for a final status agreement between Israel and the PA drawn up by the White...

No thank you, Mr. Pecker Something unusual happened to me yesterday. Actually, for me it wasn’t just unusual — it was a first. I was made an offer I couldn’t refuse. Or at least that’s what the top people at the National Enquirer thought. I’m glad they thought that, because it emboldened them to put it all in writing. Rather than capitulate to extortion and blackmail, I’ve decided to publish exactly what they sent me, despite the personal cost and embarrassment they threaten.

Defying President Trump, senators sent a strong signal Wednesday they want to punish Saudi Arabia for its role in the slaying of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The Senate voted 63 to 37 to move forward with legislation calling for an end to U.S. involvement in the Saudi-led war in Yemen. The vote was a rebuke not only to Saudi Arabia but to the Trump administration, which has been clear it does not want to torpedo the long-standing U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia over the killing.

But Democrats view it as yet another expression of the prime minister’s overzealous backing for a despised U.S. president The Mossad’s Kidon unit, which foreign media describe as Israel’s official assassination squad, must be worried sick over the fallout from the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Alongside its many successful hits, some of which are surely still unknown, Kidon’s men (and presumably women) have also known notorious failures, including the mistaken 1970 killing of Moroccan waiter Ahmed Bouchiki in Lillehammer, Norway, the failed 1997 assassination of Hamas leader Khaled Mashal in Jordan and...

Sen.-elect Mitt Romney(R-Utah) (R-Utah) on Wednesday condemned President Trump's and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's latest comments about journalist Jamal Khashoggi's killing, calling them "inconsistent" with the U.S. national interest. "The President's and Secretary of State's Khashoggi statements to date are inconsistent with an enduring foreign policy, with our national interest, with basic human rights, and with American greatness," Romney said in a statement. "Sanctions do not necessarily require ending the alliance; they do demand real and painful consequence," he added.

Of President Donald Trump’s many disruptions to the established order, his foreign policy has been perhaps the least understood and least accepted by elites. Yesterday, President Trump resisted public pressure and declined to significantly reorient American foreign policy in light of Saudi Arabia’s brutal killing of its political opponent Jamal Khashoggi, who was also a columnist for the Washington Post. In a statement, Trump said that what happened to Khashoggi was terrible, but that Saudi Arabia is an ally that shares our broader strategic interests in the region, while Iran remains a foe to be countered. Trump had already imposed...

A group of prominent U.S. evangelical figures, including several of President Donald Trump's evangelical advisers, met Thursday with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whose role in the killing of Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi remains unclear. In a statement that included smiling photos, the group said "it is our desire to lift up the name of Jesus whenever we are asked and wherever we go." The meeting at the royal palace in Riyadh comes amid widespread questions about the role the prince played in the operation that left Khashoggi dead after he entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul...

The Trump administration and the US defence industry are scrambling to save the few actual deals in the much-touted $110 billion arms package for Saudi Arabia as concerns rise about the role of the Kingdom's leadership over the death of a prominent critic. President Donald Trump has hedged his criticism of Saudi leaders over the disappearance and death of US resident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, insisting he does not want to imperil a "tremendous order" of $110 billion of weapons he says will support 500,000 US jobs - figures that experts say are highly exaggerated. Khashoggi's killing in...

Just another devolved heathen tribe. Their highest leaders are low-level thugs who commit heinous murder, dismember the body then tell insulting, childish lies to our faces. These devolved humans are the same heathen Wahhabis responsible for 911 - either DIRECTLY or by giving aid, cover and safety to the evil doers. Why are we friends with them again? I'll give you ONE guess. A nation like the USA absolutely cannot have cozy relationships (any relationships really) with blatant, cold blooded, liar-murderers. We should not be arming *any* Mideast tribes - those arms will eventually/inevitably be used for evil, possibly against...

Since the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi disappeared over two weeks ago, details from the police investigation, including gory descriptions of audio recordings that reveal he was killed in Tarantino-like fashion, have been leaked, drip by drip, to keep the world suspended as the mystery unfolds. The calculated media strategy has proved remarkably effective for the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, ensuring that the case remains front-page news around the world. But it has also served a deeper agenda — to push the United States to pressure Saudi Arabia — while shielding the government behind the news media to avoid...

"He'll get money from the Saudis. He'll make money from Putin when he gets out — that's why he's been Putin's lapdog. Donald Trump is all about money," the 'Morning Joe' co-host said on 'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.' MSNBC's Morning Joe co-host Joe Scarborough has a bold political prediction: he doesn't think President Donald Trump will run for re-election in 2020. "I don't think Donald Trump's going to run for re-election. He didn't want to be elected president, he didn't think he would be elected president. He didn't even think he was going to get the Republican nomination....

Former CIA Director John Brennan suggested Wednesday night that President Trump is conspiring with Saudi leaders to make up a story about journalist Jamal Khashoggi's disappearance. The Saudi journalist was last seen on October 2 walking into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Turkey says the Saudis killed him, but Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman and Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud deny the charge. Trump suggested that he has no reason not to believe him and cited our economic relationship. That left Brennan with this theory. “So they’ve been working to concoct a story that’s going to stand...

It seems to me the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi, last seen in Istanbul, is Erdogan-brand Turkish taffy, a confection of sugary lies made to inflame Americans against the Saudis and aid the far more dangerous to our well-being mullahs of Iran I confess to prejudice in this matter. I think Iran is a grave threat to the world, and the Saudis are aiding us in constraining the mullahs. Like Matthew Continetti, I believe the Saudis are now an important counterterrorism ally and roiling the waters there would disrupt “energy markets, create pockets of instability in which jihadists and Iranian-backed militias...

Court documents recently filed by the government further rock the credibility of Russia Special Counsel Robert Mueller because they show that as FBI Director Mueller he worked to cover up the connection between a Florida Saudi family and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The documents reveal that Mueller was likely involved in publicly releasing deceptive official agency statements about a secret investigation of the Saudis, who lived in Sarasota, with ties to the hijackers. A Florida journalism nonprofit uncovered the existence of the secret FBI investigation that was also kept from Congress.

LONDON/DUBAI (Reuters) - OPEC sees oil’s rally towards $80 a barrel as a short-term spike driven by geopolitics rather than any supply shortage, four OPEC delegates said, a sign the group is not rushing yet to rethink its supply-cutting agreement. The view of top exporter Saudi Arabia is that any brief, speculator-driven jump in oil prices is not sufficient grounds for producers to boost output, an OPEC source familiar with the kingdom’s thinking said.

Iran's aspirations, Abbas and the "Palestinians," the Iran deal and the possibility of the U.S. pulling out, the Netanyahu bribery accusations, and the Saudi participation in the growing march toward war. Saudi Arabia may care more about stopping Iran even than Israel does. Quote from Netanyahu: "Iran must be stopped. and we are going to stop it."

Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) initiated a massive anti-corruption operation last year. Today, just as a Qatari delegation arrives in DC and concedes to the terms of the alliance, Reuters is reporting the resulting Saudi asset seizures total more than $106 billion.

A recent government court filing is raising questions about then-FBI Director Robert Mueller’s involvement in the public release of deceptive official statements about a secret FBI investigation of Sarasota Saudis with apparent ties to the 9/11 hijackers. The misleading statements, issued by FBI officials in Miami and Tampa, were made within days of a September 2011 Florida Bulldog story disclosing the existence of the investigation and reporting that Congress had been kept in the dark about it.