December 4th, 20170SANAA - Former president Ali Abdullah Saleh was killed in a roadside attack on Monday after switching sides in Yemen’s civil war, abandoning his Iran-aligned Houthi allies in favor of a Saudi-led coalition, foes and supporters said.
Analysts said Saleh’s death would be a huge moral boost for the Houthis and serious blow to the...
December 2nd, 20170RIYADH — Saudi Arabia freed influential Prince Miteb bin Abdullah on Tuesday after agreeing to pay more than $1 billion to settle corruption allegations against him, a Saudi official said. Miteb was detained more than three weeks ago in a sweeping anti-corruption purge of the kingdom's elite.
The former National Guard chief was...
December 2nd, 20170GENEVA — The Syrian government delegation arrived in Geneva on Wednesday to participate in another round of U.N.-sponsored peace talks to bring an end to the Syrian Civil War, now in its seventh year.
All the previous rounds of U.N.-backed peace talks have failed to reach a peace deal, and have often been seriously hindered by the...
December 2nd, 20170
By Mike Whitney
"I've never thought much of Friedman's work, but this is the work of a complete toady."
Jim, New York Times comments section
"What a nauseating exercise in a…-kissing!"
Karim Pakravan, NYT comments section
NEW YORK — Why did Tom Friedman write such a gushing tribute to the Saudi tyrant, Mohammed bin Salman?...
December 1st, 20170CINCINNATI — "Every year, 15 to 20 women and girls in Jordan are burned, beaten or stabbed to death by family members because they are seen as having transgressed social codes of 'honor,'" according to a recent report from Rothna Begum, a researcher in the Women's Rights Division of HumanRightsWatch.org.
Ruling unanimously in "Olga...
November 28th, 20170PARIS — Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri said on Monday that the political and militant group Hezbollah must stop interfering in regional conflicts and accept a neutral policy to bring an end to Lebanon’s political crisis.
The Iranian-backed Hezbollah, which forms part of the Lebanese government, is fighting alongside Syrian...
November 24th, 20170DUBAI- Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince called the Supreme Leader of Iran “the new Hitler of the Middle East” in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday, sharply escalating the war of words between the arch-rivals.
The Sunni Muslim kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Shi‘ite Iran back rival sides in wars and political...
November 23rd, 20170Saudi Arabia added this week another political downfall to its long list of successive defeats in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Qatar and Palestine. The last blunder of the immature Saudi Crown Prince was holding the Prime Minister of Lebanon Saad al-Hariri hostage and forcing him to abruptly resign from a discreet place in his fumbling kingdom,...
November 22nd, 20170BEIRUT — Lebanon’s Saad al-Hariri on Wednesday shelved his decision to resign as prime minister at the request of President Michel Aoun, easing a crisis that had deepened tensions in the Middle East.
Hariri made his announcement after returning to Beirut for the first time since he quit abruptly on Nov. 4 in a broadcast from Saudi...
November 21st, 20170BEIRUT - Saad al-Hariri returned to Beirut on Tuesday for the first time since he resigned as Lebanon’s prime minister in a broadcast from Saudi Arabia and plunged his country into political crisis.
Hariri’s sudden resignation on Nov. 4 thrust Lebanon to the forefront of regional tussle between Saudi Arabia and Iran, whose...
November 18th, 20170PARIS - Saad al-Hariri, who resigned as Lebanon’s prime minister this month while in Saudi Arabia, said on Saturday he would clarify his position when he returns to Beirut next week for Independence Day.
Hariri’s resignation on Nov. 4 threw Lebanon into political crisis and put it center-stage in the Middle East’s overarching...
November 17th, 20170By Patrick J. Buchanan
If the crown prince of Saudi Arabia has in mind a war with Iran, President Trump should disabuse his royal highness of any notion that America would be doing his fighting for him.
Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS, the 32-year-old son of the aging and ailing King Salman, is making too many enemies for his own good,...
November 17th, 20170DEARBORN — They might be thousands of miles away, but news of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Al-Hariri's resignation – and the prospect that Saudi Arabia has something to do with it – has Lebanese expatriates on edge.
Dozens of Lebanese Americans in Metro Detroit joined a protest at the Lebanese American Heritage Club in Dearborn...
November 15th, 20170BEIRUT - France said on Wednesday that Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri, who Lebanon’s president says is being held hostage by Saudi Arabia, will visit France with his family in coming days.
Hariri travelled to Riyadh on Nov. 3 before abruptly resigning in a televised statement a day later. He has stayed in Riyadh and top...
November 14th, 20171By Farah Harb
The Arab American News – intern
LEBANON - As speculations continue to surface in the wake of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Al-Hariri's resignation on Nov. 4, there is still no answer to the questions, what's next for Lebanon and who are the potential parties involved in the equation?
From Riyadh, Hariri said he's...
November 12th, 20170Saad al-Hariri, who announced his resignation as Lebanon's prime minister on November 4 while in Saudi Arabia, said on Sunday he would return to his country within days.
Speaking from Saudi Arabia in an interview with Future TV, a station affiliated with his political party, Hariri said he had offered his resignation in the interest...
November 6th, 20170BEIRUT - Lebanon’s president appealed for national unity on Monday after Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri quit in a broadcast from Saudi Arabia, plunging the coalition government and country into political crisis.
After Hariri’s shock announcement, political uncertainty deepened further when Lebanon’s parliamentary speaker said it...
November 5th, 20170Prince Mansour bin Moqren, the deputy governor of Saudi Arabia's southern Asir province, and several colleagues were killed in a helicopter crash on Sunday, Saudi state TV Ekhbariya reported.
Local newspaper Okaz reported the helicopter went down while the officials were taking a tour of an area near the coast in Asir, which borders...
November 4th, 20170RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - Lebanon's prime minister Saad al-Hariri resigned on Saturday, citing an assassination plot against him and accusing Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah of sowing strife in the Arab world.
His resignation thrusts Lebanon back into the frontline of Saudi-Iranian regional rivalry and seems likely to exacerbate...
September 26th, 20170RIYADH ― Saudi King Salman on Tuesday ordered that women be allowed to drive cars, state media said, ending the conservative Islamic kingdom’s status as the only country where that is forbidden.
The royal decree ordered the formation of a ministerial body to give advice within 30 days and then implement the order by June 2018,...
September 14th, 20170CAIRO ― Diplomats from Qatar and the four states boycotting it exchanged heated words at an Arab League meeting on Tuesday.
Tensions flared after Qatar’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Sultan bin Saad al-Muraikhi discussed the boycott in his opening speech despite the Gulf dispute not being on the agenda.
He called the...
September 14th, 20170
HAMTRAMCK – A crowd of about 200 people attended a protest and vigil in front of Hamtramck’s City Hall on Saturday, September 9. The event focused on denouncing all violence in Yemen, the internal and external wars that continue to cripple the nation’s population of more than 25 million.
Hamtramck is about 30 percent Yemenis...
September 14th, 20170Saudi Arabia ― The Saudi Kingdom has urged its people to report subversive comments spotted on social media via a phone app, a move denounced by a human rights watchdog as “Orwellian”.
The appeal, announced on a Twitter account run by the interior ministry late on Tuesday, coincides with an apparent crackdown on potential...
September 14th, 20170GENEVA ― China signaled on Wednesday it was willing to back an international inquiry into atrocities in Yemen, as demanded by the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, but Saudi Arabia and the United States said they did not support the idea.
For three years running U.N. human rights chief Zeid Ra‘ad al-Hussein has asked the 47...
September 8th, 20170WASHINGTON — On Thursday, President Trump said he would be willing to step in and mediate the worst dispute in decades among the U.S.-allied Gulf Arab states and Qatar, and said that he thinks a deal could come quickly.
"If I can help mediate between Qatar and, in particular, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, I would be willing to do so,...
September 3rd, 20170MECCA - More than two million pilgrims participating in the haj this week began returning to Mecca on Sunday for final prayers as the world’s largest annual gathering of Muslims winds down.
Senior Saudi officials said the rituals, which have in the past seen deadly stampedes, fires and riots to which authorities sometimes struggled to...
August 25th, 20170SANAA - An air raid by Saudi led Coalition struck a building in Yemen’s capital on Friday, killing at least 12 people, six of them children, when an adjacent apartment block collapsed, residents said.
RThe International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) denounced the loss of life as outrageous and put the death toll in the early...
August 20th, 20170SANAA — Yemen suffered more airstrikes in the first half of this year than in the whole of 2016, increasing the number of civilian deaths and forcing more people to flee their homes, according to a report by international aid agencies.
The pace of clashes on the ground has also intensified this year, especially around Yemen's third...
