Qatar and Saudi Arabia launch military drills as Middle East tensions BOIL

QATARI forces have participated in joint military exercises in Saudi Arabia in what could be a sign of some compromise among US-allied Arab states locked in a near year-long dispute.

AFP/GETTY

Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz was present at the closing ceremony for the military drills

Qatar News Agency, quoting the Defence Ministry, said the ‘Joint Gulf Shield 1’ drill was conducted in the town of Ras Al Khair, north of Jubail city in the eastern region of Saudi Arabia from March 21 until April 16.

Officers from the Qatari Armed Forces, led by Brigadier General Khamis Mohamed Deblan, took part in the exercise, along with land, sea and air forces from 25 other countries.

It featured several stages, including a command centre drill and field training, and finished with the implementation of fire with live ammunition, followed by a military parade military parade.

The Qatari Armed Foces said in a statement that Qatari Armed Forces Chief of Staff General Ghanem bin Shaheen al-Ghanim was present for the closing ceremony on Monday, attended by Saudi King Salman and other heads of state.

Qatar did not send a senior representative to an Arab League summit in Dhahran, eastern Saudi Arabia on Sunday, but the dispute was not discussed there.

Last June, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt accused Qatar of supporting terrorism when they cut diplomatic, trade and transport ties with the peninsular Arab country.

Doha has denied those accusations and instead claimed the boycott is an attempt to impinge on its sovereignty.

The US, which has military bases in Qatar, as well as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, is trying to act as a go-between in the feud.

AFP/GETTY

The joint military strikes could be seen as a sign of compromise among US-allied Arab states

In October, Washington said it was scaling back involvement in some joint military drills in the region following the dispute.

But last month it said that the countries had agreed to resume participation in military exercises, but gave no reason for the decision.

President Donald Trump has publicly sided with the Saudi and its allies but into pushing for a resolution to restore unity in the Gulf and maintain a united front against Iran.

(express.co.uk)

Written by Carey Wedler

(ANTIMEDIA) — In yet another example that the swamp is thriving under President Donald Trump, his administration just handed the military-industrial complex another massive win.

Reuters reported Thursday that the White House is moving to expedite arms sales and “increase the role of senior U.S. officials, including President Donald Trump, in closing foreign sales, while giving greater weight to business interests in sales decisions that have long prioritized human rights.”

The plans, which have been in the works for a year, will benefit behemoth corporate welfare beneficiaries that manufacture weapons of war, including Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and General Dynamics. These companies have made billions of dollars off of government contracts over the course of decades and continue to invest heavily in lobbying lawmakers.

Bloomberg noted that “[t]he changes include allowing direct commercial sales that don’t have to go through the government by companies that obtain an export permit and eliminating special scrutiny of laser devices on drones that can be used for military targeting.”

According to Reuters:

“Human rights will now carry equal weight alongside other considerations in planned arms sales including the needs of allied nations and the economic loss if the U.S. contractor does not win the sale when decisions are made on whether to approve an arms deal.

“‘This is a balanced policy,’ said Ambassador Tina Kaidanow, an official with the State Department who oversees arms export agreements. ‘We absolutely look at human rights as one of a set of considerations that we look at.’”

“The new policy retains the legally binding language that prohibits weapons transfers when there is actual knowledge that they will be used to commit war crimes,” said Brittany Benowitz, a former U.S. Senate staffer who also worked as a lawyer who human rights issues and arms transfers.

Despite these claims, however, there is no indication that sales to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states (likely including Qatar and the United Arab Emirates) will be halted or limited. Each of these countries has abysmal and well-documented stances on human rights.

Saudi Arabia, in particular, has been widely criticized for its slaughter of civilians and civilian infrastructure in Yemen. The U.S. has provided weapons used to commit these alleged war crimes, and just last year, Donald Trump followed in former President Barack Obama’s footsteps by inking a multi-billion dollar arms deal with the Kingdom. The new policy reportedly goes even further than Obama’s 2014 relaxation on foreign arms exports.

Trump said the new approach aims to cut bureaucratic hindrances within the Pentagon and State Department. It will allow U.S. companies to more easily deal arms not only to Gulf powers but to other U.S. allies like Japan and South Korea. Japan has experienced an uptick in militarism in recent years after maintaining a pacifist policy after World War II.

Armed drones will become easier to sell, but the official policy on that specific weaponry “will remain classified along a list of potential buyers being given fast-track treatment is expanding to include more countries, a State Department official told Reuters this week.”

The policy is allegedly intended to “strengthen the manufacturing and defense industrial base” in a dynamic that continues to confirm President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s worst fears about the military-industrial complex.

Creative Commons / Anti-Media

Written by Jason Ditz

(ANTIWAR.COM) — In another groundbreaking step toward peace deals on the Korean Peninsula, North Korea’s Kim Jong-un is no longer demanding that the US withdraw all troops from South Korea as a condition for a denuclearization plan.

Denuclearization is a top priority for the US. North Korea has long expressed a willingness to make such a deal, so long as they don’t have to worry about a US attack. This was generally assumed to involve removing the 30,000 US troops along the South Korean side of the border.

North Korea now is said to be seeking a “complete denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula. This would mean both ridding themselves of their arsenal and South Korea ensuring no US nukes are being staged from their territory.

This is a substantial change in North Korea’s deterrent calculation. The likely reason for this is ongoing progress toward a peace deal, formally ending the 1950 Korean War. If such a deal is reached, it greatly reduces the risk of a US attack out of South Korea, as South Korea would doubtless object to being a staging area immediately after pushing for peace.

Even with peace in Korea, withdrawing 30,000 US troops would be no small matter for the administration to sign off on. This is a substantial overseas deployment, and decisions on removal or relocation of the force could take time. With it no longer a North Korean demand, such a move could be done at leisure afterwards, and no longer risks holding up the grand bargains sought in Korea.

The prospect of such a peace deal only become public knowledge this week. In fact, South Korean officials confirmed media reports about such talks on Wednesday, though the US had previously affirmed that they were in favor of such a peace deal.

Officials not only confirmed that the Kim-Moon summit would be dealing with this, but that South Korea would also try to set the stage for the Trump-Kim summit, and a denuclearization deal.

White House officials added, amid confirmation of their support for peace, that they’ve been holding very high level direct talks with North Korea. They did not elaborate, but reports have CIA Director and Secretary of State nominee Mike Pompeo having made a secret trip to North Korea to meet Kim.

This serious prospect of peace is a testament to how much diplomatic progress has been made so far in 2018, with North Korea having gone from a pariah nation to pursuing a number of important diplomatic avenues. In addition to the Kim-Moon summit, they also have a Kim-Trump summit planned for May or early June.

Substantial progress has been made on other avenues as well. The US is reportedly considering opening an embassy in North Korea. On Friday, the hotline between North and South Korea is scheduled to be turned back on.

Peace is a high priority in both North and South Korea, as the resumption of the war in earnest would destroy much of both nations. The two sides have been steadily increasingly their armament throughout the conflict, and are armed to the teeth.

Finalizing all the details on this grand bargain of peace will take time. This is unsurprising, as 68 years of war is a lot to unravel in a timely fashion. There is so much to be gained, however, that it seems set to be a major focus of bilateral diplomacy going forward.

By Jason Ditz / Republished with permission / ANTIWAR.COM

Iraqi air forces carry out strikes on ISIS positions in Syria

Written by Tyler Durden

(ZHE) After Venezuela, Germany, Austria and the Netherlands prudently repatriated a substantial portion (if not all) of their physical gold held at the NY Fed or other western central banks in recent years, this morning Turkey also announced that it has decided to repatriate all its gold stored in the US Federal Reserve and deliver it to the Istanbul Stock Exchange, according to reports in Turkey’s Yeni Safak. It won’t be the first time Turkey has asked the NY Fed to ship the country’s gold back: in recent years, Turkey repatriated 220 tons of gold from abroad, of which 28.7 tons was brought back from the US last year.

According to the latest IMF data, Turkey’s gold reserves are estimated at 591 tons, worth just over $23 billion. This makes Ankara the 11th largest gold holder, behind the Netherlands and ahead of India.

Turkey’s gold repatriation come at a sensitive time for Turkey’s currency, the lira, which has been pounded, and plunged to all time lows against both the dollar and the euro despite runaway, double-digit inflation in Turkey, as the central bank is seemingly afraid of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and refuses to raise rates.

Meanwhile, Erdogan has taken a tough stance against the US currency, criticized dollar loans and saying that international loans should be given in gold instead.

“Why do we make all loans in dollars? Let’s use another currency. I suggest that the loans should be made based on gold,” Erdoğan said during a speech at the Global Entrepreneurship Congress in Istanbul on April 16, according to Hurriyet.

In what some saw an appeal for a gold standard by the Turkish president, Erdogan added that “with the dollar the world is always under exchange rate pressure. We should save states and nations from this exchange rate pressure. Gold has never been a tool of oppression throughout history.”

Well, now that Turkey will soon have all of its gold on the ground, Erdogan will be able to launch a gold-backed currency if he so desires. Unfortunately, all signs point to the gold being repatriated only so it can be raided, pillaged and promptly deposited in offshore vaults by members of the ruling oligarchy.

As noted above, Turkey has been one of several countries which have moved their gold from the world’s biggest, and most secure gold vault, that located 95 feet below sea level at 33 Liberty Street in Manhattan, also known as the New York Fed.

The repatriation wave began in 2012, when Venezuela announced it was withdrawing all of its 160 tons of gold at the NY Fed, valued at around $9 billion. Germany’s Bundesbank then demanded 300 tons be returned, with the Fed saying it would take seven years to do so; a scrambling Germany was able to complete the process 3 years ahead of schedule. The Netherlands has also repatriated 122.5 tons of gold.

As a result, according to the latest Fed data, the amount of physical gold stored at the NY Fed has dropped to the lowest on record, or 7.819 thousand tons, following a withdrawal scramble that started in 2014 and continued until the end of 2016. After a 15 month hiatus, withdrawals resumed in 2018, with 15.5 tons of gold repatriated in January and February.

“The central banks started the repatriation already a few years ago, meaning before we had Brexit, Catalonia, Trump, AFD or the rising tensions between the Politburo in Brussels and the nations of Eastern Europe,” said Claudio Grass of Precious Metal Advisory in Switzerland.

According to him, the world is becoming less centralized. “If we follow this trend, it should be obvious that the next step should be an even bigger break up into smaller units than the nation state. With such geopolitical fragmentation comes also the decentralization of power.”

By Tyler Durden / Republished with permission / Zero Hedge