ABC NEWS
"Syrian Kurdish leader says Turkish attacks continue, contradicting US claims"
1 NOVEMBER 2019
The leader of the Syrian Kurds' civilian government accused Turkey and its forces of continuing its offensive into northern Syria using armed drones and heavy artillery, and conducting ethnic cleansing against the Syrian Kurds, despite ceasefire agreements.
The charge flies in the face of the Trump administration's characterization that its ceasefire with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has halted his operation and allowed U.S. and Syrian Kurdish forces to again focus on fighting the remnants of the Islamic State.
"If the U.S. is really serious about sustaining the operation against terrorism, they should stop the Turkish incursion," said Ilham Ehmed, president of the Syrian Democratic Council, the political wing of the Syrian Democratic Forces, which controls the territory in northeast Syria that they won back from ISIS with the U.S. and a global coalition.
While President Donald Trump has, for now, reversed his withdrawal and will now keep up to 900 troops in Syria, Ehmed said the administration's plans are unclear.
"The American map on Syria is not clear yet."
"We've just heard from our meetings here that they have the will to stay, but until when, why and for what, we have no clear answer yet," she said Thursday through a translator.
After fighting together, the SDF and SDC have accused the Trump administration of abandoning them when Trump moved U.S. forces back from the Turkish-Syrian border, effectively allowing Turkey to launch its offensive against the Syrian Kurds, which Ankara considers a terrorist organization because of its ties to Kurdish separatists in Turkey.
A U.S.-Turkish ceasefire halted that operation in return for the SDF departing the areas Turkey controlled.
U.S. officials said that will allow the fight against ISIS to resume, as U.S. forces remain behind to conduct joint operations against the terror group and protect oil fields from being exploited by it for revenue.
A senior State Department official told ABC News on Wednesday that there were "conflicting claims of who's where, whether people are still in the zone," but could not offer an update.
But Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Wednesday that he was "pleased" with how the ceasefire has held.
Ehmed said that was not true, however, describing daily attacks by armed drones and heavy shelling by Turkish forces and their allied Syrian opposition forces.
"No, it did not stop at all."
"There was a media announcement."
"... But practically speaking, the military attacks have been carried out a daily basis, they did not stop at all," she said.
Turkey has accused Syrian Kurdish forces of not exiting the full buffer zone that Erdogan negotiated with Russian President Vladimir Putin, days after reaching the deal with Vice President Mike Pence.
Turkey and Russia began joint patrols on Wednesday to inspect the area and ensure its cleared of Syrian Kurdish forces.
Instead of those joint patrols, Ehmed called for a no-fly zone and an international force to monitor security in the Turkish-Syrian border area.
"We call on the Pentagon to not allow Turkey to use the Syrian airspace, and we hold the Pentagon responsible for all the crimes committed by Turkey if they block the airspace," Ehmed said.
Ehmed and others testified last week before the House that Turkey and its opposition forces committed war crimes, including the use of white phosphorus as a weapon, attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure, and executing captured SDF fighters.
U.S. special envoy for Syria James Jeffrey said Wednesday that the U.S. had noted "several incidents which we consider war crimes" and was investigating how the white phosphorus was deployed.
Ehmed said the SDC had provided evidence and documentation to the U.S., but there were still American diplomatic and military personnel in the area who are "seeing the massacres in their naked eyes."
Since the Turkish operation began, Ehmed said that over 400,000 people were displaced, including 18,000 children; 412 SDF fighters had been killed and 419 injured; and 509 civilians had been killed and 2,733 injured.
ABC News could not independently verify those statistics.
Despite the anger and feelings of abandonment among Syrian Kurds, Ehmed said the SDF remains open to working with the U.S., but both sides need to rebuild "mutual trust."
"... We still hope that they are going to keep their promises and re-evaluate all the bad decisions that they're taking."
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/syr ... 7Kz#page=2
THE MIDDLE EAST
Re: THE MIDDLE EAST
THE NEW YORK TIMES
"Iran Fires on U.S. Forces at 2 Bases in Iraq, Calling It ‘Fierce Revenge’"
Alissa J. Rubin, Farnaz Fassihi, Eric Schmitt and Vivian Yee
8 JANUARY 2020
BAGHDAD — Iran attacked two bases in Iraq that house American troops with a barrage of missiles early Wednesday, Iranian official news media and United States officials said, fulfilling Tehran’s promise to retaliate for the killing of a top Iranian commander.
“The fierce revenge by the Revolutionary Guards has begun,” the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said in a statement on a Telegram messaging app channel.
Iraqi military officials said that Iran had fired 22 missiles at two military bases in Iraq where American troops are stationed.
United States officials initially said there were no immediate indications of American casualties, and senior Iraqi officials later said that there were no American or Iraqi casualties in the strikes.
After the strikes, President Trump, who has vowed a strong response to any Iranian attack on American targets, met at the White House with his top national security advisers, including Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to discuss possible retaliatory options.
On Twitter a few hours later, Mr. Trump struck an upbeat tone and promised to make a statement on Wednesday morning.
Some aides said they believed that Mr. Trump wanted to find a way to de-escalate the crisis.
“All is well!” he wrote.
“Missiles launched from Iran at two military bases located in Iraq."
"Assessment of casualties & damages taking place now."
"So far, so good!"
"We have the most powerful and well equipped military anywhere in the world, by far!”
Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, also seemed ready to stand down, for now.
“Iran took & concluded proportionate measures in self-defense,” Mr. Zarif tweeted.
“We do not seek escalation or war, but will defend ourselves against any aggression.”
The American killing of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, a hero at home but a terrorist to the United States government, has scaled into one of the most dangerous confrontations between the two countries in the four decades of animosity that have followed the Islamic Revolution.
Iran’s firing of ballistic missiles from inside its borders — not relying on rockets from Iranian-backed proxies — at two of the main military bases where many of the more than 5,000 American troops in Iraq are stationed was a significant escalation of force that threatened to ignite a widening conflict throughout the Middle East.
It was also a stark message from Tehran that it has the will and the ability to strike at American targets in neighboring Iraq.
“It is clear that these missiles were launched from Iran and targeted at least two Iraqi military bases hosting U.S. military and coalition personnel at Al Asad and Erbil,” Jonathan Hoffman, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, said in a statement.
Iranian news media reported the attacks hours after the remains of General Suleimani were returned to his hometown in Iran for burial amid a huge outpouring of grief and rage at the United States.
The funeral procession was so huge and unwieldy that more than 50 people died in a stampede, state news media reported, forcing a delay in the burial.
Iranian officials said the attacks began at 1:20 a.m. — the time General Suleimani was killed Friday by an American drone at the Baghdad International Airport.
Some Iranian officials posted images of their country’s flag on Twitter, in a pointed rejoinder to Mr. Trump, who tweeted an American flag after General Suleimani was killed.
Iran’s military planners had anticipated retaliatory strikes by the United States.
Key military, oil and energy sites were placed on high alert, and underground missile defense systems were prepared to counterattack, said a person familiar with the planning.
Iranian officials had been waiting for Mr. Trump to address the nation on Tuesday night, and when he did not do so, they suspected that the United States might wait to respond or not respond at all, the person said.
Two people close to the Revolutionary Guards said that if the United States did not strike, Iran would also de-escalate.
But if the United States did attack, then Iran was preparing for at least a limited conflict.
Reports from American intelligence agencies of an imminent attack from Iran had intensified throughout the day, and senior officials had said they were bracing for some kind of attack against American bases in Iraq or elsewhere in the Middle East.
Over the past two days, American military and intelligence officials had closely monitored the movements of Iran’s ballistic force units — the crown jewel of the country’s arsenal.
It was initially unclear whether the movements were a defensive dispersal or the preparations for a retaliatory attack.
But by midday Tuesday, top American officials said it had become clear that some kind of Iranian attack was coming.
As tensions mounted, the president’s top national security advisers began gathering in the White House Situation Room about 2 p.m. — about three and a half hours before the attacks.
Mr. Trump joined them after a previously scheduled meeting with the Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
Unlike after the American drone strike last week that killed General Suleimani, Democratic congressional leaders were notified immediately after the Iranian strikes.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi was meeting on Tuesday evening with senior Democrats about Mr. Trump’s impeachment trial when she was handed a note telling her of the Iranian attack on American forces in Iraq.
“We must ensure the safety of our servicemembers, including ending needless provocations from the administration and demanding that Iran cease its violence,” Ms. Pelosi tweeted.
“America & world cannot afford war.”
Reactions to the strikes diverged sharply on Capitol Hill, with Democrats condemning the series of events that led to the escalation, and Republicans pressing Mr. Trump to project military strength.
Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the chamber’s No. 2 Democrat, used Twitter to urge lawmakers to reassert Congress’s constitutional authority over matters of war and peace.
“The escalation of violence between Iran and the United States makes the constitutional responsibility of Congress to decide whether to declare war more important than ever,” Mr. Durbin tweeted.
Representative Michael Waltz, Republican of Florida, a former Army Green Beret who served in Afghanistan and worked in the Pentagon under President George W. Bush, said in a brief interview on Tuesday evening that he would reserve judgment about the strikes until more information became available.
But, Mr. Waltz said, “the president’s been very clear, as you should be in a deterrence posture: They will impose consequences and they’ll be directly on the Iranian regime.”
One of the bases that was struck on Tuesday, Al Asad Air Base, has long been a hub for American military operations in western Iraq; Danish troops have also been stationed there in recent years.
In 2017, as the American-led coalition built up the base for its campaign against the Islamic State, roughly 500 American military and civilian personnel were located there.
Units stationed there consisted of a shock trauma medical unit, a targeting cell, a Navy SEAL Special Operations task force and a company of Marines that served mostly as protection for the American side of the base.
The airfield serviced drones and reconnaissance aircraft.
After the physical defeat of the Islamic State’s so-called caliphate in 2019, some troops have left the base, but it still maintains a robust presence.
The other base that was struck, in Erbil in northern Iraq, has been a Special Operations hub to hundreds of American and other allied troops, logistics personnel and intelligence specialists throughout the fight against the Islamic State.
The base shares its borders with the city’s airport, which transport aircraft, gunships and reconnaissance planes have used as an anchor point for operations in both northern Iraq and deep into eastern Syria.
The Iranian missile attack came on a day that began with thousands of Iranians taking to the streets for General Suleimani’s funeral procession, a public mourning marred by a deadly stampede.
The head of Iran’s emergency medical services said 56 people had died and 213 were injured, the broadcaster IRIB reported on its website, as millions of people flooded the streets of Kerman to witness the procession.
Witnesses said on social media and on the BBC’s Persian service that the street leading to the funeral was too narrow to handle the crowd, and that some side streets had been closed off for security reasons, leaving those who were caught in the crush with no place to escape.
The overcrowding and the subsequent stampede in Kerman led the authorities to delay General Suleimani’s burial, the state news media reported.
But he was buried around midnight, as Iran prepared to launch missile attacks against American forces in retaliation for his death, said Hossein Soleimani, the editor in chief of the main Revolutionary Guards news website.
The general’s body had been flown to Kerman after a funeral service on Monday in Tehran, the capital, where there were even bigger crowds.
He had requested a burial in his hometown.
Alissa J. Rubin reported from Baghdad, Farnaz Fassihi from New York, Eric Schmitt from Washington and Vivian Yee from Beirut, Lebanon. Reporting was contributed by Helene Cooper, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, Catie Edmondson, Nicholas Fandos, Mark Mazzetti and Michael D. Shear from Washington; Maggie Haberman and Nilo Tabrizy from New York; and Megan Specia from London.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/ira ... li=BBnb7Kz
"Iran Fires on U.S. Forces at 2 Bases in Iraq, Calling It ‘Fierce Revenge’"
Alissa J. Rubin, Farnaz Fassihi, Eric Schmitt and Vivian Yee
8 JANUARY 2020
BAGHDAD — Iran attacked two bases in Iraq that house American troops with a barrage of missiles early Wednesday, Iranian official news media and United States officials said, fulfilling Tehran’s promise to retaliate for the killing of a top Iranian commander.
“The fierce revenge by the Revolutionary Guards has begun,” the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said in a statement on a Telegram messaging app channel.
Iraqi military officials said that Iran had fired 22 missiles at two military bases in Iraq where American troops are stationed.
United States officials initially said there were no immediate indications of American casualties, and senior Iraqi officials later said that there were no American or Iraqi casualties in the strikes.
After the strikes, President Trump, who has vowed a strong response to any Iranian attack on American targets, met at the White House with his top national security advisers, including Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to discuss possible retaliatory options.
On Twitter a few hours later, Mr. Trump struck an upbeat tone and promised to make a statement on Wednesday morning.
Some aides said they believed that Mr. Trump wanted to find a way to de-escalate the crisis.
“All is well!” he wrote.
“Missiles launched from Iran at two military bases located in Iraq."
"Assessment of casualties & damages taking place now."
"So far, so good!"
"We have the most powerful and well equipped military anywhere in the world, by far!”
Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, also seemed ready to stand down, for now.
“Iran took & concluded proportionate measures in self-defense,” Mr. Zarif tweeted.
“We do not seek escalation or war, but will defend ourselves against any aggression.”
The American killing of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, a hero at home but a terrorist to the United States government, has scaled into one of the most dangerous confrontations between the two countries in the four decades of animosity that have followed the Islamic Revolution.
Iran’s firing of ballistic missiles from inside its borders — not relying on rockets from Iranian-backed proxies — at two of the main military bases where many of the more than 5,000 American troops in Iraq are stationed was a significant escalation of force that threatened to ignite a widening conflict throughout the Middle East.
It was also a stark message from Tehran that it has the will and the ability to strike at American targets in neighboring Iraq.
“It is clear that these missiles were launched from Iran and targeted at least two Iraqi military bases hosting U.S. military and coalition personnel at Al Asad and Erbil,” Jonathan Hoffman, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, said in a statement.
Iranian news media reported the attacks hours after the remains of General Suleimani were returned to his hometown in Iran for burial amid a huge outpouring of grief and rage at the United States.
The funeral procession was so huge and unwieldy that more than 50 people died in a stampede, state news media reported, forcing a delay in the burial.
Iranian officials said the attacks began at 1:20 a.m. — the time General Suleimani was killed Friday by an American drone at the Baghdad International Airport.
Some Iranian officials posted images of their country’s flag on Twitter, in a pointed rejoinder to Mr. Trump, who tweeted an American flag after General Suleimani was killed.
Iran’s military planners had anticipated retaliatory strikes by the United States.
Key military, oil and energy sites were placed on high alert, and underground missile defense systems were prepared to counterattack, said a person familiar with the planning.
Iranian officials had been waiting for Mr. Trump to address the nation on Tuesday night, and when he did not do so, they suspected that the United States might wait to respond or not respond at all, the person said.
Two people close to the Revolutionary Guards said that if the United States did not strike, Iran would also de-escalate.
But if the United States did attack, then Iran was preparing for at least a limited conflict.
Reports from American intelligence agencies of an imminent attack from Iran had intensified throughout the day, and senior officials had said they were bracing for some kind of attack against American bases in Iraq or elsewhere in the Middle East.
Over the past two days, American military and intelligence officials had closely monitored the movements of Iran’s ballistic force units — the crown jewel of the country’s arsenal.
It was initially unclear whether the movements were a defensive dispersal or the preparations for a retaliatory attack.
But by midday Tuesday, top American officials said it had become clear that some kind of Iranian attack was coming.
As tensions mounted, the president’s top national security advisers began gathering in the White House Situation Room about 2 p.m. — about three and a half hours before the attacks.
Mr. Trump joined them after a previously scheduled meeting with the Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
Unlike after the American drone strike last week that killed General Suleimani, Democratic congressional leaders were notified immediately after the Iranian strikes.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi was meeting on Tuesday evening with senior Democrats about Mr. Trump’s impeachment trial when she was handed a note telling her of the Iranian attack on American forces in Iraq.
“We must ensure the safety of our servicemembers, including ending needless provocations from the administration and demanding that Iran cease its violence,” Ms. Pelosi tweeted.
“America & world cannot afford war.”
Reactions to the strikes diverged sharply on Capitol Hill, with Democrats condemning the series of events that led to the escalation, and Republicans pressing Mr. Trump to project military strength.
Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the chamber’s No. 2 Democrat, used Twitter to urge lawmakers to reassert Congress’s constitutional authority over matters of war and peace.
“The escalation of violence between Iran and the United States makes the constitutional responsibility of Congress to decide whether to declare war more important than ever,” Mr. Durbin tweeted.
Representative Michael Waltz, Republican of Florida, a former Army Green Beret who served in Afghanistan and worked in the Pentagon under President George W. Bush, said in a brief interview on Tuesday evening that he would reserve judgment about the strikes until more information became available.
But, Mr. Waltz said, “the president’s been very clear, as you should be in a deterrence posture: They will impose consequences and they’ll be directly on the Iranian regime.”
One of the bases that was struck on Tuesday, Al Asad Air Base, has long been a hub for American military operations in western Iraq; Danish troops have also been stationed there in recent years.
In 2017, as the American-led coalition built up the base for its campaign against the Islamic State, roughly 500 American military and civilian personnel were located there.
Units stationed there consisted of a shock trauma medical unit, a targeting cell, a Navy SEAL Special Operations task force and a company of Marines that served mostly as protection for the American side of the base.
The airfield serviced drones and reconnaissance aircraft.
After the physical defeat of the Islamic State’s so-called caliphate in 2019, some troops have left the base, but it still maintains a robust presence.
The other base that was struck, in Erbil in northern Iraq, has been a Special Operations hub to hundreds of American and other allied troops, logistics personnel and intelligence specialists throughout the fight against the Islamic State.
The base shares its borders with the city’s airport, which transport aircraft, gunships and reconnaissance planes have used as an anchor point for operations in both northern Iraq and deep into eastern Syria.
The Iranian missile attack came on a day that began with thousands of Iranians taking to the streets for General Suleimani’s funeral procession, a public mourning marred by a deadly stampede.
The head of Iran’s emergency medical services said 56 people had died and 213 were injured, the broadcaster IRIB reported on its website, as millions of people flooded the streets of Kerman to witness the procession.
Witnesses said on social media and on the BBC’s Persian service that the street leading to the funeral was too narrow to handle the crowd, and that some side streets had been closed off for security reasons, leaving those who were caught in the crush with no place to escape.
The overcrowding and the subsequent stampede in Kerman led the authorities to delay General Suleimani’s burial, the state news media reported.
But he was buried around midnight, as Iran prepared to launch missile attacks against American forces in retaliation for his death, said Hossein Soleimani, the editor in chief of the main Revolutionary Guards news website.
The general’s body had been flown to Kerman after a funeral service on Monday in Tehran, the capital, where there were even bigger crowds.
He had requested a burial in his hometown.
Alissa J. Rubin reported from Baghdad, Farnaz Fassihi from New York, Eric Schmitt from Washington and Vivian Yee from Beirut, Lebanon. Reporting was contributed by Helene Cooper, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, Catie Edmondson, Nicholas Fandos, Mark Mazzetti and Michael D. Shear from Washington; Maggie Haberman and Nilo Tabrizy from New York; and Megan Specia from London.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/ira ... li=BBnb7Kz
Re: THE MIDDLE EAST
Good Morning America
"US forces come under fire while on patrol in Syria"
GUY DAVIES and CONOR FINNEGAN
February 12, 2020
US forces come under fire while on patrol in Syria originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
American Coalition forces on patrol in Syria exchanged small arms fire with pro-Syrian regime gunmen at a checkpoint while on patrol in north eastern Syria, with the situation now de-escalated, according to a U.S. military spokesperson and a U.S. military source.
The incident, which killed at least one Syrian and left an American with minor injuries, marks one of the most direct confrontations in the war-torn country between U.S. troops and President Bashar al-Assad's forces.
But it comes after Russian forces, backing Assad in his push to retake the country by force after nine years of war, have become increasingly aggressive with U.S. troops, according to a top U.S. diplomat.
Syria's northwest has seen a dangerous uptick in violence in recent months as Assad and Russian warplanes launched another assault into the last rebel stronghold, Idlib province, where jihadist groups and Syrian rebels are both backed by Turkey, which has deployed its own forces and clashed with the Syrian regime.
The U.S. troops were on patrol near Qamishli, by the Turkish-Syrian border, when they encountered the pro-regime checkpoint on Wednesday.
"After Coalition troops issued a series of warnings and de-escalation attempts, the patrol came under small arms fire from unknown individuals," Operation Inherent Resolve spokesperson Col. Myles B. Caggins III said in a statement.
"In self-defense, Coalition troops returned fire."
"The situation was de-escalated and is under investigation."
A military source told ABC News the patrol received fire from what they believed was a Syrian regime checkpoint, and that coalition forces returned fire as they attempted to leave.
The group then surrounded the convoy and took pictures of their vehicles, before another exchange of fire, the source said.
The U.S. also deployed low-flying F-15 fighter jets -- which did not engage in combat, but conducted a show of force -- as well as on-the-ground flares and flashbang grenades, the source added.
The coalition patrol has since returned to their base.
The group who opened fire on the U.S. were regime-supporting locals.
Syrian state media reported that a Syrian civilian was killed by U.S. troops in the exchange, according to the Associated Press.
The exchange of fire highlights the tense and complex situation for the remaining U.S. forces in northeastern Syria where Russian and Syrian government forces occupy various checkpoints.
Ambassador James Jeffrey, the U.S. special envoy for Syria engagement, said Russian forces had become increasingly "aggressive" toward U.S. troops out on patrol, calling "upon the Russians to adhere fully to the de-confliction agreements we’ve made with them."
President Donald Trump moved to pull U.S. troops out of the country in the fall, prompting a wave of bipartisan backlash in Washington that had led to him reversing course.
Instead, some troops left the region, but about 500 service members were left behind to protect key oil fields, according to Trump.
Coalition troops also continue to conduct missions against Islamic State in Syria, where the terror group has pockets of fighters looking to reconstitute.
Fighting in the war-torn country has intensified in recent weeks as regime forces, backed by Iranian proxies and Russian air power, have closed in on reclaiming Idlib.
More than half a million Syrians are believed to have been displaced by the conflict in the last two months, and U.S. officials are concerned about a refugee crisis.
To complicate the situation further, the assault on Idlib has seen Russian-backed Syrian forces clash with Turkish forces and Turkish-backed militias, who have crossed into various points in northern Syria as part of military incursion against the Kurds and set up 12 observation posts as part of a ceasefire deal with Moscow that has steadily fallen apart.
At least 12 Turkish soldiers have been killed by Syrian regime elements, while Turkey's Defense Ministry said Wednesday that its forces killed 55 pro-Syrian government forces in Idlib.
Jeffrey, who last week said the U.S. offered assistance to Turkey, met with Turkish officials Wednesday in Ankara, including President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's top adviser Ibrahim Kalin.
Erdogan vowed on Tuesday that the Assad regime would pay a "very heavy price" for the offensive into Idlib and the death of Turkish soldiers -- adding in a speech to his political party Wednesday that Turkey will push Syrian forces back out of Idlib and "do what is necessary via land and air without hesitation," according to Turkish state media.
But while the U.S. has vocalized support for Turkey and stepped up its condemnation of the Syrian and Russian assault on Idlib, national security adviser Robert O'Brien said Tuesday that U.S. won't act as the "world's policeman."
"What are we supposed to do to stop that?" he said at the Atlantic Council Tuesday.
"We're supposed to parachute in as a global policeman and hold up a stop sign and say, 'Stop this Turkey, stop this Russia, stop this Iran, stop this Syria'?"
That seemed to undermine Jeffrey's message last Wednesday when he told reporters in Washington the administration was "looking at the various things we can do" to halt the offensive, including more sanctions on the regime and its supporters.
ABC News's James Longman contributed to this report from Syria.
https://www.yahoo.com/gma/us-forces-com ... ories.html
"US forces come under fire while on patrol in Syria"
GUY DAVIES and CONOR FINNEGAN
February 12, 2020
US forces come under fire while on patrol in Syria originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
American Coalition forces on patrol in Syria exchanged small arms fire with pro-Syrian regime gunmen at a checkpoint while on patrol in north eastern Syria, with the situation now de-escalated, according to a U.S. military spokesperson and a U.S. military source.
The incident, which killed at least one Syrian and left an American with minor injuries, marks one of the most direct confrontations in the war-torn country between U.S. troops and President Bashar al-Assad's forces.
But it comes after Russian forces, backing Assad in his push to retake the country by force after nine years of war, have become increasingly aggressive with U.S. troops, according to a top U.S. diplomat.
Syria's northwest has seen a dangerous uptick in violence in recent months as Assad and Russian warplanes launched another assault into the last rebel stronghold, Idlib province, where jihadist groups and Syrian rebels are both backed by Turkey, which has deployed its own forces and clashed with the Syrian regime.
The U.S. troops were on patrol near Qamishli, by the Turkish-Syrian border, when they encountered the pro-regime checkpoint on Wednesday.
"After Coalition troops issued a series of warnings and de-escalation attempts, the patrol came under small arms fire from unknown individuals," Operation Inherent Resolve spokesperson Col. Myles B. Caggins III said in a statement.
"In self-defense, Coalition troops returned fire."
"The situation was de-escalated and is under investigation."
A military source told ABC News the patrol received fire from what they believed was a Syrian regime checkpoint, and that coalition forces returned fire as they attempted to leave.
The group then surrounded the convoy and took pictures of their vehicles, before another exchange of fire, the source said.
The U.S. also deployed low-flying F-15 fighter jets -- which did not engage in combat, but conducted a show of force -- as well as on-the-ground flares and flashbang grenades, the source added.
The coalition patrol has since returned to their base.
The group who opened fire on the U.S. were regime-supporting locals.
Syrian state media reported that a Syrian civilian was killed by U.S. troops in the exchange, according to the Associated Press.
The exchange of fire highlights the tense and complex situation for the remaining U.S. forces in northeastern Syria where Russian and Syrian government forces occupy various checkpoints.
Ambassador James Jeffrey, the U.S. special envoy for Syria engagement, said Russian forces had become increasingly "aggressive" toward U.S. troops out on patrol, calling "upon the Russians to adhere fully to the de-confliction agreements we’ve made with them."
President Donald Trump moved to pull U.S. troops out of the country in the fall, prompting a wave of bipartisan backlash in Washington that had led to him reversing course.
Instead, some troops left the region, but about 500 service members were left behind to protect key oil fields, according to Trump.
Coalition troops also continue to conduct missions against Islamic State in Syria, where the terror group has pockets of fighters looking to reconstitute.
Fighting in the war-torn country has intensified in recent weeks as regime forces, backed by Iranian proxies and Russian air power, have closed in on reclaiming Idlib.
More than half a million Syrians are believed to have been displaced by the conflict in the last two months, and U.S. officials are concerned about a refugee crisis.
To complicate the situation further, the assault on Idlib has seen Russian-backed Syrian forces clash with Turkish forces and Turkish-backed militias, who have crossed into various points in northern Syria as part of military incursion against the Kurds and set up 12 observation posts as part of a ceasefire deal with Moscow that has steadily fallen apart.
At least 12 Turkish soldiers have been killed by Syrian regime elements, while Turkey's Defense Ministry said Wednesday that its forces killed 55 pro-Syrian government forces in Idlib.
Jeffrey, who last week said the U.S. offered assistance to Turkey, met with Turkish officials Wednesday in Ankara, including President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's top adviser Ibrahim Kalin.
Erdogan vowed on Tuesday that the Assad regime would pay a "very heavy price" for the offensive into Idlib and the death of Turkish soldiers -- adding in a speech to his political party Wednesday that Turkey will push Syrian forces back out of Idlib and "do what is necessary via land and air without hesitation," according to Turkish state media.
But while the U.S. has vocalized support for Turkey and stepped up its condemnation of the Syrian and Russian assault on Idlib, national security adviser Robert O'Brien said Tuesday that U.S. won't act as the "world's policeman."
"What are we supposed to do to stop that?" he said at the Atlantic Council Tuesday.
"We're supposed to parachute in as a global policeman and hold up a stop sign and say, 'Stop this Turkey, stop this Russia, stop this Iran, stop this Syria'?"
That seemed to undermine Jeffrey's message last Wednesday when he told reporters in Washington the administration was "looking at the various things we can do" to halt the offensive, including more sanctions on the regime and its supporters.
ABC News's James Longman contributed to this report from Syria.
https://www.yahoo.com/gma/us-forces-com ... ories.html
Re: THE MIDDLE EAST
MARKETWATCH
"Airstrike in northern Syria kills at least 22 Turkish soldiers"
By Associated Press
Published: Feb 27, 2020 6:05 p.m. ET
BEIRUT — Nearly two dozen Turkish soldiers were killed in an airstrike by Syrian government forces in northeast Syria, a Turkish official said Friday.
The deaths mark a serious escalation in the direct conflict between Turkish and Russia-backed Syrian forces that has been waged since early February.
Rahmi Dogan, the governor of Turkey’s Hatay province bordering Syria’s Idlib region, said 22 troops were killed and others were seriously wounded in the attack late Thursday.
In addition to three Turkish soldiers killed in Idlib earlier Thursday, the casualties mark the largest death toll for Turkey in a single day since Ankara first intervened in Syria in 2016.
At least 43 have now been killed in Idlib since the start of February.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was holding an emergency security meeting in Ankara, state-run Anadolu news agency reported.
Meanwhile Turkish Foreign Minister Mevult Cavusoglu spoke to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg by telephone.
The airstrike came after a Russian delegation spent two days in Ankara for talks with Turkish officials on the situation in Idlib, where a Syrian government offensive has sent hundreds of thousands of civilians fleeing towards the Turkish border.
The offensive has also engulfed a many of the 12 military observation posts Turkey has in Idlib.
The airstrike came after Turkey-backed Syrian opposition fighters retook a strategic northwestern town from government forces on Thursday, opposition activists said, cutting a key highway just days after the government reopened it for the first time since 2012.
Despite losing the town of Saraqeb, Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces made major gains to the south.
Assad now controls almost the entire southern part of Idlib province after capturing more than 20 villages Thursday, state media and opposition activists said.
It’s part of a weekslong campaign backed by Russian air power into Syria’s last rebel stronghold.
Violence in Idlib province also left three more Turkish soldiers dead, according to Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, raising the number of Turkish troops killed in Syria this month to 21.
Thousands of Turkish soldiers are deployed inside rebel-controlled areas of Idlib province, which is dominated by al-Qaida-linked militants.
Turkey’s U.N. Ambassador Feridun Sinirlioglu told the Security Council on Thursday that Turkey was committed to upholding a fragile cease-fire agreement that Turkey and Russia reached on Idlib in 2018.
The Syrian government troops’ “deliberate attacks on our forces has been a turning point."
"We are now determined more than ever to preserve Idlib’s de-escalation status.”
Syria’s Defense Ministry said insurgents were using Turkey-supplied portable surface-to-air missiles to attack Syrian and Russian aircraft.
It did not elaborate.
Earlier this month, Turkish-backed opposition fighters shot down two helicopter gunships belonging to the Syrian military.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitoring group, said opposition fighters seized the town of Saraqeb after intense bombardment by Turkish troops.
Turkey and Russia support opposite sides in Syria’s brutal civil war, with Ankara backing the opposition and Moscow backing Assad.
Saraqeb’s loss is a big setback for Assad.
It sits on the strategic M5 highway linking the northern city of Aleppo with the capital, Damascus.
Syrian troops recaptured the last rebel-controlled section of the M5 earlier this month.
Officials had hailed the reopening of the motorway as a major victory in the nine-year conflict.
The Syrian government’s military campaign to recapture Idlib province has triggered a humanitarian catastrophe and the war’s largest single wave of displacement.
According to the United Nations, almost 950,000 civilians have been displaced since early December, and more than 300 have been killed.
Most have fled farther north to safer areas near the Turkish border, overwhelming camps already crowded with refugees in cold winter weather.
From inside Saraqeb, activist Taher al-Omar said the town is now under opposition control.
He posted a video with a fighter saying the government forces “ran away like rats.”
The Observatory said more than 60 fighters were killed on both sides since Wednesday, adding that government forces launched a counteroffensive later Thursday under the cover of Russian airstrikes to try retake the town.
Syrian state media reported intense clashes near Saraqeb, saying insurgents sent suicide car bombs and that Turkish forces bombarded the area.
It said a small group of insurgents reached the highway to score a “propaganda stunt,” adding that “Syrian troops are dealing with them.”
State TV later Thursday confirmed that insurgents have cut the highway, adding that fighting is ongoing in the area.
The Observatory also reported on the more than 20 villages captured Thursday by the government.
It added that Syrian troops have now besieged another Turkish observation post in an area known as Sheer Maghar.
The government-controlled Syrian Central Military Media said government forces advancing from northern parts of Hama province met Thursday with forces moving from southern Idlib, bringing wide areas under Syrian army control.
If government forces now turn north, they can eventually reach another major highway known as the M4 that links Syria’s coastal region with the country’s west.
Assad has vowed to retake all of Syria.
Assad’s forces have captured dozens of villages over the past few days, including major rebel strongholds.
However, Erdogan said Thursday that, “The situation in Idlib has turned in our favor.”
Speaking at the opening of a political academy in the capital, Ankara, he said the Syrian government had sustained “huge” losses.
Turkey’s Defense Ministry on Thursday said two Turkish soldiers were killed in Syria in an air attack the previous day, and that two others were wounded.
The Observatory reported that Syrian government warplanes struck a Turkish military post in the Jabal al-Zawiya region on Thursday, killing three soldiers and wounding others.
In his speech, Erdogan referred to “three martyrs.”
However, he offset these casualties against the losses of Syrian government forces.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/airst ... latestnews
"Airstrike in northern Syria kills at least 22 Turkish soldiers"
By Associated Press
Published: Feb 27, 2020 6:05 p.m. ET
BEIRUT — Nearly two dozen Turkish soldiers were killed in an airstrike by Syrian government forces in northeast Syria, a Turkish official said Friday.
The deaths mark a serious escalation in the direct conflict between Turkish and Russia-backed Syrian forces that has been waged since early February.
Rahmi Dogan, the governor of Turkey’s Hatay province bordering Syria’s Idlib region, said 22 troops were killed and others were seriously wounded in the attack late Thursday.
In addition to three Turkish soldiers killed in Idlib earlier Thursday, the casualties mark the largest death toll for Turkey in a single day since Ankara first intervened in Syria in 2016.
At least 43 have now been killed in Idlib since the start of February.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was holding an emergency security meeting in Ankara, state-run Anadolu news agency reported.
Meanwhile Turkish Foreign Minister Mevult Cavusoglu spoke to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg by telephone.
The airstrike came after a Russian delegation spent two days in Ankara for talks with Turkish officials on the situation in Idlib, where a Syrian government offensive has sent hundreds of thousands of civilians fleeing towards the Turkish border.
The offensive has also engulfed a many of the 12 military observation posts Turkey has in Idlib.
The airstrike came after Turkey-backed Syrian opposition fighters retook a strategic northwestern town from government forces on Thursday, opposition activists said, cutting a key highway just days after the government reopened it for the first time since 2012.
Despite losing the town of Saraqeb, Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces made major gains to the south.
Assad now controls almost the entire southern part of Idlib province after capturing more than 20 villages Thursday, state media and opposition activists said.
It’s part of a weekslong campaign backed by Russian air power into Syria’s last rebel stronghold.
Violence in Idlib province also left three more Turkish soldiers dead, according to Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, raising the number of Turkish troops killed in Syria this month to 21.
Thousands of Turkish soldiers are deployed inside rebel-controlled areas of Idlib province, which is dominated by al-Qaida-linked militants.
Turkey’s U.N. Ambassador Feridun Sinirlioglu told the Security Council on Thursday that Turkey was committed to upholding a fragile cease-fire agreement that Turkey and Russia reached on Idlib in 2018.
The Syrian government troops’ “deliberate attacks on our forces has been a turning point."
"We are now determined more than ever to preserve Idlib’s de-escalation status.”
Syria’s Defense Ministry said insurgents were using Turkey-supplied portable surface-to-air missiles to attack Syrian and Russian aircraft.
It did not elaborate.
Earlier this month, Turkish-backed opposition fighters shot down two helicopter gunships belonging to the Syrian military.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitoring group, said opposition fighters seized the town of Saraqeb after intense bombardment by Turkish troops.
Turkey and Russia support opposite sides in Syria’s brutal civil war, with Ankara backing the opposition and Moscow backing Assad.
Saraqeb’s loss is a big setback for Assad.
It sits on the strategic M5 highway linking the northern city of Aleppo with the capital, Damascus.
Syrian troops recaptured the last rebel-controlled section of the M5 earlier this month.
Officials had hailed the reopening of the motorway as a major victory in the nine-year conflict.
The Syrian government’s military campaign to recapture Idlib province has triggered a humanitarian catastrophe and the war’s largest single wave of displacement.
According to the United Nations, almost 950,000 civilians have been displaced since early December, and more than 300 have been killed.
Most have fled farther north to safer areas near the Turkish border, overwhelming camps already crowded with refugees in cold winter weather.
From inside Saraqeb, activist Taher al-Omar said the town is now under opposition control.
He posted a video with a fighter saying the government forces “ran away like rats.”
The Observatory said more than 60 fighters were killed on both sides since Wednesday, adding that government forces launched a counteroffensive later Thursday under the cover of Russian airstrikes to try retake the town.
Syrian state media reported intense clashes near Saraqeb, saying insurgents sent suicide car bombs and that Turkish forces bombarded the area.
It said a small group of insurgents reached the highway to score a “propaganda stunt,” adding that “Syrian troops are dealing with them.”
State TV later Thursday confirmed that insurgents have cut the highway, adding that fighting is ongoing in the area.
The Observatory also reported on the more than 20 villages captured Thursday by the government.
It added that Syrian troops have now besieged another Turkish observation post in an area known as Sheer Maghar.
The government-controlled Syrian Central Military Media said government forces advancing from northern parts of Hama province met Thursday with forces moving from southern Idlib, bringing wide areas under Syrian army control.
If government forces now turn north, they can eventually reach another major highway known as the M4 that links Syria’s coastal region with the country’s west.
Assad has vowed to retake all of Syria.
Assad’s forces have captured dozens of villages over the past few days, including major rebel strongholds.
However, Erdogan said Thursday that, “The situation in Idlib has turned in our favor.”
Speaking at the opening of a political academy in the capital, Ankara, he said the Syrian government had sustained “huge” losses.
Turkey’s Defense Ministry on Thursday said two Turkish soldiers were killed in Syria in an air attack the previous day, and that two others were wounded.
The Observatory reported that Syrian government warplanes struck a Turkish military post in the Jabal al-Zawiya region on Thursday, killing three soldiers and wounding others.
In his speech, Erdogan referred to “three martyrs.”
However, he offset these casualties against the losses of Syrian government forces.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/airst ... latestnews
Re: THE MIDDLE EAST
THE LAS VEGAS SUN
"Syria says U.S. forces clash with Syrian troops, killing 1"
Published Monday, Aug. 17, 2020 | 8 a.m.
DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — U.S. forces clashed with Syrian troops in the northeast on Monday, killing at least one soldier and wounding two others, state media said, while the U.S. military said it responded to small arms fire near a Syrian checkpoint.
Tensions have been rising in northeastern Syria in recent months as the Syrian military has cut off American access to several areas.
State news agency SANA quoted an unnamed Syrian military official as saying a U.S. helicopter gunship attacked an army checkpoint in the village of Tal Dahab, near the town of Qamishli, at around 9:45 a.m. (0645 GMT).
The official said a Syrian soldier was killed and two others were wounded.
SANA said the Syrian army prevented an American convoy from passing through.
The U.S. military said a joint force made up of U.S.-led coalition forces and allied Syrian Kurdish-led fighters encountered a Syrian army checkpoint after carrying out a patrol against the Islamic State group.
It said they were granted safe passage.
It said the patrol then came under small arms fire from the vicinity of the checkpoint and returned fire.
There were no casualties among U.S.-led coalition forces or the Kurdish-led fighters, the statement said.
It denied a helicopter gunship attacked the Syrian army checkpoint.
Hundreds of U.S. troops are stationed in northeastern Syria, working with their local partners from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces to combat the Islamic State group.
Elsewhere in Syria, a Turkish military vehicle was “slightly damaged” during an attack Monday on Turkish troops who were on a joint patrol with Russian counterparts in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province, Turkey’s military said.
Turkey and Russia have been conducting joint patrols of the region as part of a cease-fire agreement they reached in March.
Russia is a close ally of the Syrian government, while Turkey supports the armed Syrian opposition.
The attack occurred during the 25th such patrol, the military reported in a statement posted on Twitter.
The statement said Turkish troops had responded to the attack and that an operation was continuing.
____
Associated Press write Suzan Fraser contributed to this report from Ankara, Turkey.
https://lasvegassun.com/news/2020/aug/1 ... oops-kill/
"Syria says U.S. forces clash with Syrian troops, killing 1"
Published Monday, Aug. 17, 2020 | 8 a.m.
DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — U.S. forces clashed with Syrian troops in the northeast on Monday, killing at least one soldier and wounding two others, state media said, while the U.S. military said it responded to small arms fire near a Syrian checkpoint.
Tensions have been rising in northeastern Syria in recent months as the Syrian military has cut off American access to several areas.
State news agency SANA quoted an unnamed Syrian military official as saying a U.S. helicopter gunship attacked an army checkpoint in the village of Tal Dahab, near the town of Qamishli, at around 9:45 a.m. (0645 GMT).
The official said a Syrian soldier was killed and two others were wounded.
SANA said the Syrian army prevented an American convoy from passing through.
The U.S. military said a joint force made up of U.S.-led coalition forces and allied Syrian Kurdish-led fighters encountered a Syrian army checkpoint after carrying out a patrol against the Islamic State group.
It said they were granted safe passage.
It said the patrol then came under small arms fire from the vicinity of the checkpoint and returned fire.
There were no casualties among U.S.-led coalition forces or the Kurdish-led fighters, the statement said.
It denied a helicopter gunship attacked the Syrian army checkpoint.
Hundreds of U.S. troops are stationed in northeastern Syria, working with their local partners from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces to combat the Islamic State group.
Elsewhere in Syria, a Turkish military vehicle was “slightly damaged” during an attack Monday on Turkish troops who were on a joint patrol with Russian counterparts in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province, Turkey’s military said.
Turkey and Russia have been conducting joint patrols of the region as part of a cease-fire agreement they reached in March.
Russia is a close ally of the Syrian government, while Turkey supports the armed Syrian opposition.
The attack occurred during the 25th such patrol, the military reported in a statement posted on Twitter.
The statement said Turkish troops had responded to the attack and that an operation was continuing.
____
Associated Press write Suzan Fraser contributed to this report from Ankara, Turkey.
https://lasvegassun.com/news/2020/aug/1 ... oops-kill/
Re: THE MIDDLE EAST
NEWSWEEK
"U.S. Military 'Under Multiple Rocket Attack' in Syria after Strikes, Fires Back"
Tom O'Connor
29 JUNE 2021
U.S. forces in Syria came under attack by multiple launch rocket systems in the wake of a series of airstrikes targeting suspected Iran-backed militias along the country's border with Syria, prompting troops to return fire.
"At approx. 7:44 PM local time, U.S. Forces in Syria were attacked by multiple rockets," U.S.-led coalition spokesperson Army Colonel Wayne Marotto said in an initial statement Monday.
"There are no injuries and damage is being assessed."
"We will provide updates when we have more information."
In a follow-up message, he said the U.S. military had retaliated.
"Update: U.S. Forces in Syria, while under multiple rocket attack, acted in self- defense and conducted counter-battery artillery fire at rocket launching positions," Marotto said.
The exchange comes a day after the Pentagon conducted what Press Secretary John Kirby called "defensive precision air strikes against facilities used by Iran-backed militia groups in the Iraq-Syria border region."
"The targets were selected because these facilities are utilized by Iran-backed militias that are engaged in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) attacks against U.S. personnel and facilities in Iraq," Kirby said.
"Specifically, the U.S. strikes targeted operational and weapons storage facilities at two locations in Syria and one location in Iraq, both of which lie close to the border between those countries."
He identified two of the groups targeted as Kataib Hezbollah and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada, two Iraqi factions operation as part of the pro-Iran "Axis of Resistance."
Kirby said the strikes demonstrated how Biden "has been clear that he will act to protect U.S. personnel."
"Given the ongoing series of attacks by Iran-backed groups targeting U.S. interests in Iraq, the President directed further military action to disrupt and deter such attacks," Kirby said.
"We are in Iraq at the invitation of the Government of Iraq for the sole purpose of assisting the Iraqi Security Forces in their efforts to defeat ISIS."
"The United States took necessary, appropriate, and deliberate action designed to limit the risk of escalation — but also to send a clear and unambiguous deterrent message."
He argued that the U.S. was justified in taking action under international law "pursuant to its right of self-defense," and, on the domestic level, cited the White House's Article II authority granted in the wake of 9/11 to pursue designated terrorist organizations.
The Syrian Foreign Ministry condemned the recent airstrikes, which appeared to target the eastern areas of Al-Hury, Qasabat and As Sakik.
"The Syrian Arab Republic condemns the blatant U.S. aggression on the Syrian-Iraqi border region and considers it a flagrant violation of the sanctity of Syrian and Iraqi lands," the ministry said in a statement Monday.
"Syria renews its call to the U.S. administration to respect the unity of the land and people of Syria and Iraq and to stop these attacks on the independence of the two countries immediately."
The strikes were also condemned by Iraq despite the partnership between the two countries.
"The Ministerial Council for National Security expressed its strong condemnation and censure of the American bombing that targeted a site on our border with Syria," according to a statement sent to Newsweek on Monday by Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi's office, "stressing that this attack represents a flagrant violation of Iraqi sovereignty, which is rejected by all international laws and covenants."
The council stated that it "is studying resorting to all available legal options to prevent the recurrence of such attacks that violate Iraq's airspace and territory, in addition to conducting a comprehensive investigation into the circumstances of the accident and its causes, and working to prevent it from recurring in the future."
The council also "affirmed that the government has continuous sessions of dialogue with the American side, which have reached advanced stages and to the level of discussing the logistical details of the withdrawal of combat forces from Iraq, the details of which will be announced later."
The Iraqi Foreign Ministry also condemned the strikes in a statement sent to Newsweek, as did the Defense Ministry and military Security Media Cell in separate messages shared that same day.
In Syria, the U.S. is considered an occupying force by the government, which is backed by both Iran and Russia in a decade-long civil war in which the U.S. once offered assistance to rebel forces.
Since 2015, the U.S. has allied with a largely Kurdish force known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, whose main focus is the defeat of the Islamic State militant group (ISIS).
Attempts to reconcile the differences between the Syrian government and Syrian Democratic Forces have yet to produce results, however, and tensions remain, especially as local and regional groups supported by Iran also in the anti-ISIS fight maintain a presence near U.S. lines of control.
These U.S. positions are largely based near oil and gas fields, prompting further criticism from Damascus and its allies, who accused Washington of stealing the country's natural resources and violating its sovereignty.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/middleea ... d=msedgntp
"U.S. Military 'Under Multiple Rocket Attack' in Syria after Strikes, Fires Back"
Tom O'Connor
29 JUNE 2021
U.S. forces in Syria came under attack by multiple launch rocket systems in the wake of a series of airstrikes targeting suspected Iran-backed militias along the country's border with Syria, prompting troops to return fire.
"At approx. 7:44 PM local time, U.S. Forces in Syria were attacked by multiple rockets," U.S.-led coalition spokesperson Army Colonel Wayne Marotto said in an initial statement Monday.
"There are no injuries and damage is being assessed."
"We will provide updates when we have more information."
In a follow-up message, he said the U.S. military had retaliated.
"Update: U.S. Forces in Syria, while under multiple rocket attack, acted in self- defense and conducted counter-battery artillery fire at rocket launching positions," Marotto said.
The exchange comes a day after the Pentagon conducted what Press Secretary John Kirby called "defensive precision air strikes against facilities used by Iran-backed militia groups in the Iraq-Syria border region."
"The targets were selected because these facilities are utilized by Iran-backed militias that are engaged in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) attacks against U.S. personnel and facilities in Iraq," Kirby said.
"Specifically, the U.S. strikes targeted operational and weapons storage facilities at two locations in Syria and one location in Iraq, both of which lie close to the border between those countries."
He identified two of the groups targeted as Kataib Hezbollah and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada, two Iraqi factions operation as part of the pro-Iran "Axis of Resistance."
Kirby said the strikes demonstrated how Biden "has been clear that he will act to protect U.S. personnel."
"Given the ongoing series of attacks by Iran-backed groups targeting U.S. interests in Iraq, the President directed further military action to disrupt and deter such attacks," Kirby said.
"We are in Iraq at the invitation of the Government of Iraq for the sole purpose of assisting the Iraqi Security Forces in their efforts to defeat ISIS."
"The United States took necessary, appropriate, and deliberate action designed to limit the risk of escalation — but also to send a clear and unambiguous deterrent message."
He argued that the U.S. was justified in taking action under international law "pursuant to its right of self-defense," and, on the domestic level, cited the White House's Article II authority granted in the wake of 9/11 to pursue designated terrorist organizations.
The Syrian Foreign Ministry condemned the recent airstrikes, which appeared to target the eastern areas of Al-Hury, Qasabat and As Sakik.
"The Syrian Arab Republic condemns the blatant U.S. aggression on the Syrian-Iraqi border region and considers it a flagrant violation of the sanctity of Syrian and Iraqi lands," the ministry said in a statement Monday.
"Syria renews its call to the U.S. administration to respect the unity of the land and people of Syria and Iraq and to stop these attacks on the independence of the two countries immediately."
The strikes were also condemned by Iraq despite the partnership between the two countries.
"The Ministerial Council for National Security expressed its strong condemnation and censure of the American bombing that targeted a site on our border with Syria," according to a statement sent to Newsweek on Monday by Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi's office, "stressing that this attack represents a flagrant violation of Iraqi sovereignty, which is rejected by all international laws and covenants."
The council stated that it "is studying resorting to all available legal options to prevent the recurrence of such attacks that violate Iraq's airspace and territory, in addition to conducting a comprehensive investigation into the circumstances of the accident and its causes, and working to prevent it from recurring in the future."
The council also "affirmed that the government has continuous sessions of dialogue with the American side, which have reached advanced stages and to the level of discussing the logistical details of the withdrawal of combat forces from Iraq, the details of which will be announced later."
The Iraqi Foreign Ministry also condemned the strikes in a statement sent to Newsweek, as did the Defense Ministry and military Security Media Cell in separate messages shared that same day.
In Syria, the U.S. is considered an occupying force by the government, which is backed by both Iran and Russia in a decade-long civil war in which the U.S. once offered assistance to rebel forces.
Since 2015, the U.S. has allied with a largely Kurdish force known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, whose main focus is the defeat of the Islamic State militant group (ISIS).
Attempts to reconcile the differences between the Syrian government and Syrian Democratic Forces have yet to produce results, however, and tensions remain, especially as local and regional groups supported by Iran also in the anti-ISIS fight maintain a presence near U.S. lines of control.
These U.S. positions are largely based near oil and gas fields, prompting further criticism from Damascus and its allies, who accused Washington of stealing the country's natural resources and violating its sovereignty.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/middleea ... d=msedgntp
Re: THE MIDDLE EAST
Vox.com
"Biden distanced himself from Saudi Arabia — until gas prices got bad"
Jonathan Guyer
21 JUNE 2022
As the average national gas price topped $5 a gallon, the White House formally announced that President Joe Biden, in a significant policy turnaround, would be traveling to Saudi Arabia.
On the campaign trail, Biden had called the oil-rich kingdom a “pariah” in response to US intelligence groups’ conclusion that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz ordered the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
Though the US relationship with Saudi Arabia teetered along in the background, Biden had resisted directly meeting MBS.
But July 13-16, he’ll travel to the Middle East.
He’ll visit the Saudi city of Jeddah and meet about 10 Arab heads of state and travel to Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory.
Biden’s decision to go to Saudi Arabia in July as part of his first Middle East trip as president reveals the tensions at the heart of his foreign policy.
So far, there have been two foreign policy bumper stickers of his administration.
The first: putting human rights at the center of foreign policy.
As the US has put its diplomatic power into supporting Ukraine, Biden and his team lately have framed the issue more as supporting democracies versus autocracies.
The second bumper sticker is a foreign policy for the middle class, which feels like the international counterpart to Build Back Better.
The idea, which Biden had put forth when campaigning, is that foreign policy is too often divorced from the daily lives of Americans in the heartland, and that what the US does abroad should work for them.
But making the case of a foreign policy for the middle class is tough when Biden’s signature foreign policy initiative — supporting Ukraine in Russia’s war of aggression, partly by levying sanctions on Russia’s energy exports and more — has exacerbated a volatile economic situation for middle- and working-class Americans.
It’s in this Middle East trip that these two taglines collide, as Biden will advocate for the US middle class in Saudi Arabia by focusing on energy policy (and regional security), thereby not centering human rights or democracy.
“Look, human rights is always a part of the conversation in our foreign engagements,” a senior administration official said at a recent briefing.
That’s a much softer message than putting human rights at the center.
Biden is not the first American president who has struggled to balance competing interests and values in the Middle East, but his two slogans uniquely capture this tension.
The problem is: If Biden’s Saudi Arabia visit might only incrementally lower gas prices, will it benefit the middle class?
The central tension of Biden’s foreign policy
The rollout of the trip has hardly shown any excitement on the president’s part to make amends with MBS.
It was reported on June 2, and then the visit was pushed off a month, and only confirmed last week, with officials reluctant to say whether Biden would sit down with MBS (though the Saudi embassy did confirm it).
On Friday, Biden said, “I’m not going to meet with MBS."
"I’m going to an international meeting, and he’s going to be part of it.”
The president’s team has conveyed that human rights remains on the agenda.
As White House spokesperson John Kirby said, “I can just tell you that — that his foreign policy is really rooted in values — values like freedom of the press; values like human rights, civil rights.”
There seem to be conflicting goals among Biden’s slogans and his top hires, and perhaps for Biden himself.
The president may be the most resistant to meeting MBS.
He said that his presidency “should stand for something,” when privately renouncing a prospective meeting with MBS in recent weeks, according to Politico, in what seemed like an Aaron Sorkin scene.
Biden’s unscripted comments in the past have also given a window into his thinking.
At a Harvard Q&A in 2014, he chastised Arab and Muslim countries the US partners with for compounding the civil war in Syria; he blamed Saudi Arabia, among others, for contributing to violent extremism there.
“Our biggest problem was our allies,” Biden said.
When asked about how human rights considerations affect the US approach to Saudi Arabia, he said, “I could go on and on and on.”
His “pariah” comment and condemnation of Saudi Arabia at Democratic presidential debates also reflected more off-the-cuff remarks.
In short, “centering human rights” seemed to be not just a reaction to President Donald Trump’s coziness with dictators, but also a reflection of Biden’s gut feeling about democracies delivering better for people.
But Biden, on the campaign trail and in office, also talked adamantly about creating a foreign policy for the middle class.
To add substance to the slogan, his advisers in 2020 released a think tank report that outlined the economic and trade implications of foreign policy that would “work” for the middle class.
Its key recommendations are widely supported, albeit vague, like pursuing trade policies that create jobs, rebuilding relationships with allies, and protecting supply chains and people alike from inevitable economic shifts.
There was little discussion of fossil fuel policy, though, except for a call to transition to renewable and green energy sources.
Now, with gas prices as high as they are, contributing to worsening inflation, that blueprint is being put to the test.
Domestically, “Biden’s drilling policies have nothing to do with gas prices,” as Vox’s Rebecca Leber explained.
Internationally, the sanctions on Russia, along with surging post-pandemic demand, have contributed to the high price of global crude oil.
Since imposing the sanctions, the White House has accelerated its energy diplomacy with countries like Venezuela and others.
The Biden White House is emphasizing the president’s commitment to human rights, while planning a trip to Jeddah with Arab leaders that looks like the opposite of the Summit for Democracy Biden hosted in December.
Some observers, like Khalid Aljabri, a Saudi entrepreneur and physician, think the administration can do both.
“Despite being a victim of MBS and my family suffering on a daily basis from his ruthless campaign of intimidation” — Aljabri’s father is a former Saudi intelligence leader whom MBS has targeted, and Aljabri’s siblings are jailed in Saudi Arabia on spurious charges — “I still want to help the US relationship,” he told me.
“I don’t think this is a fight of interest versus human rights."
"I think they’re intertwined.”
This tension is also reflected in the personnel Biden has hired.
“Candidate Biden said stuff that he did not even implement in his choice of the people who are going to manage this relationship,” Yasmine Farouk, a researcher at the Carnegie Endowment of International Peace, told me.
Most Biden appointees agree that, on Saudi Arabia, “we should preserve this partnership and make it better, instead of having them as enemies or, you know, keeping in distance with them.”
The White House’s Middle East coordinator Brett McGurk, who has described himself as “a friend of Saudi Arabia,” epitomizes that worldview.
“Look, I’ve worked with MBS, and he actually is someone who you can reason with,” McGurk said in 2019, when he was in the private sector.
It was almost a year after MBS, the CIA had determined, had ordered the assassination and dismemberment of Khashoggi.
In recent months, McGurk and energy envoy Amos Hochstein have been shuttling to Saudi Arabia.
It’s a contrast to other administration officials’ views.
USAID Administrator Samantha Power delivered a talk billed as focused on “strengthening democracy and reversing the rise of authoritarianism across the world,” this week.
“Look, on the Saudi trip, you know ... we have significant concerns about human rights."
"I think President Biden has been clear about that, will be clear about that,” she said.
Though Biden in his first month did release the US intelligence report showing MBS’s responsibility for the Khashoggi murder and other authoritarian acts, human rights watchdogs say that not enough has been done to hold MBS accountable, like directly sanctioning him.
A group of NGOs called on Biden to establish preconditions for the trip, including releasing political prisoners documented by the State Department, ending travel bans and other surveillance tactics, a moratorium on executions, and improving women’s rights.
A former State Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that human rights is just one item on a long list of issues.
“I don’t see it being the make or break issue that, frankly, it has never been,” the official said.
Saudi oil isn’t going to make a huge difference for Americans
When the decision to travel to Saudi Arabia was first reported earlier in June, the trip was framed as about finding any way possible to lower oil prices while the US leads a charge against Russia, a major oil producer.
But energy experts say that even with Saudi Arabia’s spare capacity and influence among other oil-producing countries in the region, there is no tap that can be quickly turned on.
“If any Americans are paying close attention to this, they couldn’t be faulted for thinking that President Biden is going to go to Saudi Arabia and then the next day, gas prices are going to come down,” Amy Hawthorne, of the Project on Middle East Democracy, said.
But, she and others said, that’s not how oil prices work.
Gas prices are high for two main reasons: issues with refineries’ capacity (which is low) and the price of crude oil (which is high due to demand surging during the relative Covid-19 recovery and supply dropping as less Russian oil enters the market).
“The root cause is not about Saudi Arabia,” said Karen Young, an energy expert at the Middle East Institute.
“But I think the administration is sort of focused on Saudi Arabia as a lever.”
Saudi Arabia could make a gradual adjustment to the global supply.
As a leader within the oil-producing group OPEC+ (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, plus Russia), Saudi Arabia could push to ramp up oil production, but the group’s spare capacity is limited.
Young says that Saudi Arabia probably could boost it an additional 2 million barrels a day.
“It doesn’t necessarily do much to change where prices are,” she said.
Still, Biden seeks to do everything to lower prices.
“It’s clear that this president — like just about every other president out there — wants to be understood by the American public as doing as much as he can to put pump prices in a downward motion,” said Jonathan Elkind, a former senior Obama Energy Department official who’s now at Columbia University.
Oil prices relate to factors that neither the US nor Saudi Arabia has individual control over, Elkind reiterated.
But he added that Saudi producing more could make an incremental difference, and “you put enough increments together, and all of a sudden, you’ve got a sizable impact.”
If not oil, what is the purpose of the Mideast trip?
This week, Biden’s team has presented the trip as something different — perhaps more ambitious on Middle East policy and less ambitious on energy.
As the senior official briefed the press on the trip, the list of what would be accomplished got long: “expanding regional, economic, and security cooperation, including new and promising infrastructure and climate initiatives, as well as deterring threats from Iran, advancing human rights, and ensuring global energy and food security.”
The best prospect for success on the trip is in consolidating the Yemen ceasefire that has held for almost three months.
US diplomat Tim Lenderking quietly negotiated the deal, after seven years of the Saudi-led coalition bombing the country.
The US is in some ways a party to the conflict.
The Department of Defense has “administered at least $54.6 billion of military support to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) from fiscal years 2015 through 2021,” according to a newly released Government Accountability Office report.
Biden last year said the US would stop supporting “offensive operations” in Yemen, though the suffering from US weapons continues.
Peace in Yemen is critical, but it doesn’t require a presidential visit.
There are a number of other goals the administration might pursue.
Going to Saudi Arabia to assuage the concerns of the kingdom and other Arab states about a nuclear agreement with Iran may be a worthwhile endeavor — except that Iran and the countries negotiating with it, including the US, appear far from reviving the deal.
Biden may try to get Arab states more committed to sanctioning Russia; Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and others have been reluctant to pick a side in the conflict.
And Israeli security will, at least implicitly, be baked into Biden’s meeting with Arab leaders as his team seeks to build on the Trump administration’s normalization agreements between Israel and Arab states.
(The Israel and Palestine stops will have their own issues and pitfalls.)
One possible outcome of the trip would be a move toward rebuilding an institutional relationship with Saudi Arabia.
While the kingdom was conservative in all senses of the word before MBS, it did have a more consultative governing process and less restrictive political environment, and the US maintained normal relations with the royal family’s government.
The Biden administration has resisted deepening relations with MBS so far.
Biden also didn’t quickly dispatch a US ambassador to Saudi Arabia.
The nomination hearing for his choice, Michael Ratney, was held last week, and Biden announced his nomination more than a year after taking office.
Aljabri thinks the White House and National Security Council are playing too big of a role in engaging Saudi Arabia’s leadership and the US government should work more closely with Riyadh through established forums.
That would look less like National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan meeting with MBS, or McGurk managing high-level relationships, and more like engagement up and down the Saudi system.
“Trying to rekindle the institution-to-institution partnerships between high-level officials, and taking MBS out of the equation is the way forward,” Aljabri said.
Still, more engagement risks empowering MBS.
He is more of a Saddam Hussein-like leader than a benign dictator, critics warn, and he may not be a trustworthy partner.
Bruce Riedel, a former intelligence official who has worked extensively in the Middle East, described MBS as a rogue leader who, in an unprecedented fashion, has jailed members of the royal family to consolidate his power.
“The result of this is a recklessness that has been truly astounding,” he told me.
“To me, it’s an unnecessary visit that is not likely to enhance the president’s poll numbers,” said Riedel, who is now a Brookings Institution fellow.
“In fact, it’s likely to diminish them, because when you get to the first of August, and the price at the gas station is still $5 a gallon, people are going to be pretty disappointed: ‘So we went to Saudi Arabia, what is the payoff for me?’”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/bi ... 3a1bfea2d4
"Biden distanced himself from Saudi Arabia — until gas prices got bad"
Jonathan Guyer
21 JUNE 2022
As the average national gas price topped $5 a gallon, the White House formally announced that President Joe Biden, in a significant policy turnaround, would be traveling to Saudi Arabia.
On the campaign trail, Biden had called the oil-rich kingdom a “pariah” in response to US intelligence groups’ conclusion that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz ordered the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
Though the US relationship with Saudi Arabia teetered along in the background, Biden had resisted directly meeting MBS.
But July 13-16, he’ll travel to the Middle East.
He’ll visit the Saudi city of Jeddah and meet about 10 Arab heads of state and travel to Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory.
Biden’s decision to go to Saudi Arabia in July as part of his first Middle East trip as president reveals the tensions at the heart of his foreign policy.
So far, there have been two foreign policy bumper stickers of his administration.
The first: putting human rights at the center of foreign policy.
As the US has put its diplomatic power into supporting Ukraine, Biden and his team lately have framed the issue more as supporting democracies versus autocracies.
The second bumper sticker is a foreign policy for the middle class, which feels like the international counterpart to Build Back Better.
The idea, which Biden had put forth when campaigning, is that foreign policy is too often divorced from the daily lives of Americans in the heartland, and that what the US does abroad should work for them.
But making the case of a foreign policy for the middle class is tough when Biden’s signature foreign policy initiative — supporting Ukraine in Russia’s war of aggression, partly by levying sanctions on Russia’s energy exports and more — has exacerbated a volatile economic situation for middle- and working-class Americans.
It’s in this Middle East trip that these two taglines collide, as Biden will advocate for the US middle class in Saudi Arabia by focusing on energy policy (and regional security), thereby not centering human rights or democracy.
“Look, human rights is always a part of the conversation in our foreign engagements,” a senior administration official said at a recent briefing.
That’s a much softer message than putting human rights at the center.
Biden is not the first American president who has struggled to balance competing interests and values in the Middle East, but his two slogans uniquely capture this tension.
The problem is: If Biden’s Saudi Arabia visit might only incrementally lower gas prices, will it benefit the middle class?
The central tension of Biden’s foreign policy
The rollout of the trip has hardly shown any excitement on the president’s part to make amends with MBS.
It was reported on June 2, and then the visit was pushed off a month, and only confirmed last week, with officials reluctant to say whether Biden would sit down with MBS (though the Saudi embassy did confirm it).
On Friday, Biden said, “I’m not going to meet with MBS."
"I’m going to an international meeting, and he’s going to be part of it.”
The president’s team has conveyed that human rights remains on the agenda.
As White House spokesperson John Kirby said, “I can just tell you that — that his foreign policy is really rooted in values — values like freedom of the press; values like human rights, civil rights.”
There seem to be conflicting goals among Biden’s slogans and his top hires, and perhaps for Biden himself.
The president may be the most resistant to meeting MBS.
He said that his presidency “should stand for something,” when privately renouncing a prospective meeting with MBS in recent weeks, according to Politico, in what seemed like an Aaron Sorkin scene.
Biden’s unscripted comments in the past have also given a window into his thinking.
At a Harvard Q&A in 2014, he chastised Arab and Muslim countries the US partners with for compounding the civil war in Syria; he blamed Saudi Arabia, among others, for contributing to violent extremism there.
“Our biggest problem was our allies,” Biden said.
When asked about how human rights considerations affect the US approach to Saudi Arabia, he said, “I could go on and on and on.”
His “pariah” comment and condemnation of Saudi Arabia at Democratic presidential debates also reflected more off-the-cuff remarks.
In short, “centering human rights” seemed to be not just a reaction to President Donald Trump’s coziness with dictators, but also a reflection of Biden’s gut feeling about democracies delivering better for people.
But Biden, on the campaign trail and in office, also talked adamantly about creating a foreign policy for the middle class.
To add substance to the slogan, his advisers in 2020 released a think tank report that outlined the economic and trade implications of foreign policy that would “work” for the middle class.
Its key recommendations are widely supported, albeit vague, like pursuing trade policies that create jobs, rebuilding relationships with allies, and protecting supply chains and people alike from inevitable economic shifts.
There was little discussion of fossil fuel policy, though, except for a call to transition to renewable and green energy sources.
Now, with gas prices as high as they are, contributing to worsening inflation, that blueprint is being put to the test.
Domestically, “Biden’s drilling policies have nothing to do with gas prices,” as Vox’s Rebecca Leber explained.
Internationally, the sanctions on Russia, along with surging post-pandemic demand, have contributed to the high price of global crude oil.
Since imposing the sanctions, the White House has accelerated its energy diplomacy with countries like Venezuela and others.
The Biden White House is emphasizing the president’s commitment to human rights, while planning a trip to Jeddah with Arab leaders that looks like the opposite of the Summit for Democracy Biden hosted in December.
Some observers, like Khalid Aljabri, a Saudi entrepreneur and physician, think the administration can do both.
“Despite being a victim of MBS and my family suffering on a daily basis from his ruthless campaign of intimidation” — Aljabri’s father is a former Saudi intelligence leader whom MBS has targeted, and Aljabri’s siblings are jailed in Saudi Arabia on spurious charges — “I still want to help the US relationship,” he told me.
“I don’t think this is a fight of interest versus human rights."
"I think they’re intertwined.”
This tension is also reflected in the personnel Biden has hired.
“Candidate Biden said stuff that he did not even implement in his choice of the people who are going to manage this relationship,” Yasmine Farouk, a researcher at the Carnegie Endowment of International Peace, told me.
Most Biden appointees agree that, on Saudi Arabia, “we should preserve this partnership and make it better, instead of having them as enemies or, you know, keeping in distance with them.”
The White House’s Middle East coordinator Brett McGurk, who has described himself as “a friend of Saudi Arabia,” epitomizes that worldview.
“Look, I’ve worked with MBS, and he actually is someone who you can reason with,” McGurk said in 2019, when he was in the private sector.
It was almost a year after MBS, the CIA had determined, had ordered the assassination and dismemberment of Khashoggi.
In recent months, McGurk and energy envoy Amos Hochstein have been shuttling to Saudi Arabia.
It’s a contrast to other administration officials’ views.
USAID Administrator Samantha Power delivered a talk billed as focused on “strengthening democracy and reversing the rise of authoritarianism across the world,” this week.
“Look, on the Saudi trip, you know ... we have significant concerns about human rights."
"I think President Biden has been clear about that, will be clear about that,” she said.
Though Biden in his first month did release the US intelligence report showing MBS’s responsibility for the Khashoggi murder and other authoritarian acts, human rights watchdogs say that not enough has been done to hold MBS accountable, like directly sanctioning him.
A group of NGOs called on Biden to establish preconditions for the trip, including releasing political prisoners documented by the State Department, ending travel bans and other surveillance tactics, a moratorium on executions, and improving women’s rights.
A former State Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that human rights is just one item on a long list of issues.
“I don’t see it being the make or break issue that, frankly, it has never been,” the official said.
Saudi oil isn’t going to make a huge difference for Americans
When the decision to travel to Saudi Arabia was first reported earlier in June, the trip was framed as about finding any way possible to lower oil prices while the US leads a charge against Russia, a major oil producer.
But energy experts say that even with Saudi Arabia’s spare capacity and influence among other oil-producing countries in the region, there is no tap that can be quickly turned on.
“If any Americans are paying close attention to this, they couldn’t be faulted for thinking that President Biden is going to go to Saudi Arabia and then the next day, gas prices are going to come down,” Amy Hawthorne, of the Project on Middle East Democracy, said.
But, she and others said, that’s not how oil prices work.
Gas prices are high for two main reasons: issues with refineries’ capacity (which is low) and the price of crude oil (which is high due to demand surging during the relative Covid-19 recovery and supply dropping as less Russian oil enters the market).
“The root cause is not about Saudi Arabia,” said Karen Young, an energy expert at the Middle East Institute.
“But I think the administration is sort of focused on Saudi Arabia as a lever.”
Saudi Arabia could make a gradual adjustment to the global supply.
As a leader within the oil-producing group OPEC+ (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, plus Russia), Saudi Arabia could push to ramp up oil production, but the group’s spare capacity is limited.
Young says that Saudi Arabia probably could boost it an additional 2 million barrels a day.
“It doesn’t necessarily do much to change where prices are,” she said.
Still, Biden seeks to do everything to lower prices.
“It’s clear that this president — like just about every other president out there — wants to be understood by the American public as doing as much as he can to put pump prices in a downward motion,” said Jonathan Elkind, a former senior Obama Energy Department official who’s now at Columbia University.
Oil prices relate to factors that neither the US nor Saudi Arabia has individual control over, Elkind reiterated.
But he added that Saudi producing more could make an incremental difference, and “you put enough increments together, and all of a sudden, you’ve got a sizable impact.”
If not oil, what is the purpose of the Mideast trip?
This week, Biden’s team has presented the trip as something different — perhaps more ambitious on Middle East policy and less ambitious on energy.
As the senior official briefed the press on the trip, the list of what would be accomplished got long: “expanding regional, economic, and security cooperation, including new and promising infrastructure and climate initiatives, as well as deterring threats from Iran, advancing human rights, and ensuring global energy and food security.”
The best prospect for success on the trip is in consolidating the Yemen ceasefire that has held for almost three months.
US diplomat Tim Lenderking quietly negotiated the deal, after seven years of the Saudi-led coalition bombing the country.
The US is in some ways a party to the conflict.
The Department of Defense has “administered at least $54.6 billion of military support to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) from fiscal years 2015 through 2021,” according to a newly released Government Accountability Office report.
Biden last year said the US would stop supporting “offensive operations” in Yemen, though the suffering from US weapons continues.
Peace in Yemen is critical, but it doesn’t require a presidential visit.
There are a number of other goals the administration might pursue.
Going to Saudi Arabia to assuage the concerns of the kingdom and other Arab states about a nuclear agreement with Iran may be a worthwhile endeavor — except that Iran and the countries negotiating with it, including the US, appear far from reviving the deal.
Biden may try to get Arab states more committed to sanctioning Russia; Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and others have been reluctant to pick a side in the conflict.
And Israeli security will, at least implicitly, be baked into Biden’s meeting with Arab leaders as his team seeks to build on the Trump administration’s normalization agreements between Israel and Arab states.
(The Israel and Palestine stops will have their own issues and pitfalls.)
One possible outcome of the trip would be a move toward rebuilding an institutional relationship with Saudi Arabia.
While the kingdom was conservative in all senses of the word before MBS, it did have a more consultative governing process and less restrictive political environment, and the US maintained normal relations with the royal family’s government.
The Biden administration has resisted deepening relations with MBS so far.
Biden also didn’t quickly dispatch a US ambassador to Saudi Arabia.
The nomination hearing for his choice, Michael Ratney, was held last week, and Biden announced his nomination more than a year after taking office.
Aljabri thinks the White House and National Security Council are playing too big of a role in engaging Saudi Arabia’s leadership and the US government should work more closely with Riyadh through established forums.
That would look less like National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan meeting with MBS, or McGurk managing high-level relationships, and more like engagement up and down the Saudi system.
“Trying to rekindle the institution-to-institution partnerships between high-level officials, and taking MBS out of the equation is the way forward,” Aljabri said.
Still, more engagement risks empowering MBS.
He is more of a Saddam Hussein-like leader than a benign dictator, critics warn, and he may not be a trustworthy partner.
Bruce Riedel, a former intelligence official who has worked extensively in the Middle East, described MBS as a rogue leader who, in an unprecedented fashion, has jailed members of the royal family to consolidate his power.
“The result of this is a recklessness that has been truly astounding,” he told me.
“To me, it’s an unnecessary visit that is not likely to enhance the president’s poll numbers,” said Riedel, who is now a Brookings Institution fellow.
“In fact, it’s likely to diminish them, because when you get to the first of August, and the price at the gas station is still $5 a gallon, people are going to be pretty disappointed: ‘So we went to Saudi Arabia, what is the payoff for me?’”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/bi ... 3a1bfea2d4
Re: THE MIDDLE EAST
REUTERS
"U.S. not expecting Saudi Arabia to immediately boost oil output"
By Jarrett Renshaw, Maha El Dahan and Aziz El Yaakoubi
July 15, 2022
Summary
* Comments come ahead of Biden visit to kingdom
* Saudi Arabia, UAE hold bulk of spare capacity within OPEC
* U.S. eager for more oil to ease high cost of gasoline, inflation
JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia, July 15 (Reuters) - The United States does not expect Saudi Arabia to immediately boost oil output and awaits the outcome of an OPEC+ meeting on Aug. 3, the U.S. national security adviser said on Friday, lowering expectations as U.S. President Joe Biden visits the kingdom.
"I don't think you should expect a particular announcement here bilaterally because we believe any further action taken to ensure that there is sufficient energy to protect the health of the global economy, it will be done in the context of OPEC+," Jake Sullivan said.
Earlier on Friday, a U.S. official had also told Reuters that Washington was not expecting any immediate output rise as a result of the visit.
Biden landed in Jeddah on Friday on a trip that is designed to reset the U.S. relationship with the kingdom and during which energy supply, human rights and security cooperation are on the agenda.
The U.S. could secure a commitment that OPEC+ will boost production in the months ahead, which could send a signal to the market that supplies are coming if necessary.
Saudi Arabia, alongside the United Arab Emirates, holds the bulk of spare capacity within the OPEC+ group, an alliance between the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and other exporters, notably Russia.
Soon after his landing, Biden met and shook hands with the Saudi king and held a meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and other ministers, including energy minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman.
But the kingdom has repeatedly indicated it would not act unilaterally.
OIL AROUND $100
Brent crude prices are trading around $100 a barrel, having fallen from a 14-year high of $139.13 in March as investors weigh the impact on demand of COVID-19 lockdowns in top importer China and recession fears.
"Saudi Arabia prefers to manage the market through the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allied producers (OPEC+), not through unilateral moves," Ben Cahill, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote in an analyst note.
"Saudi energy minister Abdulaziz bin Salman has consistently emphasized the importance of OPEC+ cohesion, including a central role for Russia," he said.
Anwar Gargash, diplomatic advisor to UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, also said on Friday his country wanted a more stable oil market and that it would abide by OPEC+ decisions.
"The UAE is very much pro supporting and following U.S. discussions with Saudi Arabia on oil because we are part of the greater OPEC group, OPEC+, so we would very much like to see more stability in the market and ability to produce more and we are going to follow where the group will follow," he said.
The U.S. is eager to see Saudi Arabia and its OPEC partners pump more oil to help bring down the high cost of gasoline and ease the highest U.S. inflation in four decades.
"The decision to increase oil production is subject to several factors and considerations and does not depend on a U.S. request," Abdulaziz Sager, Chairman of the Riyadh-based Gulf Research Center, said.
"There are technical, political and economic complications related to that decision."
Spare capacity within OPEC is running low, with most producers pumping at maximum capacity.
It is unclear how much extra Saudi Arabia could bring to the market and how quickly.
Biden said at the end of June that he would not ask Saudi leaders directly to increase oil production.
Instead, he would continue to make the case that all Gulf states should raise oil output.
OPEC+ decided last month to increase output targets by 648,000 barrels per day (bpd) in August, ending record production cuts that it implemented at the height of the pandemic to counter collapsing demand.
Reporting By Jarrett Renshaw, Maha El Dahan and Aziz El Yakoubi; additional reporting by John Irish in Paris and Ahmad Ghaddar in London; Editing by Kirsten Donovan, Philippa Fletcher and Barbara Lewis
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy ... 022-07-15/
"U.S. not expecting Saudi Arabia to immediately boost oil output"
By Jarrett Renshaw, Maha El Dahan and Aziz El Yaakoubi
July 15, 2022
Summary
* Comments come ahead of Biden visit to kingdom
* Saudi Arabia, UAE hold bulk of spare capacity within OPEC
* U.S. eager for more oil to ease high cost of gasoline, inflation
JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia, July 15 (Reuters) - The United States does not expect Saudi Arabia to immediately boost oil output and awaits the outcome of an OPEC+ meeting on Aug. 3, the U.S. national security adviser said on Friday, lowering expectations as U.S. President Joe Biden visits the kingdom.
"I don't think you should expect a particular announcement here bilaterally because we believe any further action taken to ensure that there is sufficient energy to protect the health of the global economy, it will be done in the context of OPEC+," Jake Sullivan said.
Earlier on Friday, a U.S. official had also told Reuters that Washington was not expecting any immediate output rise as a result of the visit.
Biden landed in Jeddah on Friday on a trip that is designed to reset the U.S. relationship with the kingdom and during which energy supply, human rights and security cooperation are on the agenda.
The U.S. could secure a commitment that OPEC+ will boost production in the months ahead, which could send a signal to the market that supplies are coming if necessary.
Saudi Arabia, alongside the United Arab Emirates, holds the bulk of spare capacity within the OPEC+ group, an alliance between the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and other exporters, notably Russia.
Soon after his landing, Biden met and shook hands with the Saudi king and held a meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and other ministers, including energy minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman.
But the kingdom has repeatedly indicated it would not act unilaterally.
OIL AROUND $100
Brent crude prices are trading around $100 a barrel, having fallen from a 14-year high of $139.13 in March as investors weigh the impact on demand of COVID-19 lockdowns in top importer China and recession fears.
"Saudi Arabia prefers to manage the market through the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allied producers (OPEC+), not through unilateral moves," Ben Cahill, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote in an analyst note.
"Saudi energy minister Abdulaziz bin Salman has consistently emphasized the importance of OPEC+ cohesion, including a central role for Russia," he said.
Anwar Gargash, diplomatic advisor to UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, also said on Friday his country wanted a more stable oil market and that it would abide by OPEC+ decisions.
"The UAE is very much pro supporting and following U.S. discussions with Saudi Arabia on oil because we are part of the greater OPEC group, OPEC+, so we would very much like to see more stability in the market and ability to produce more and we are going to follow where the group will follow," he said.
The U.S. is eager to see Saudi Arabia and its OPEC partners pump more oil to help bring down the high cost of gasoline and ease the highest U.S. inflation in four decades.
"The decision to increase oil production is subject to several factors and considerations and does not depend on a U.S. request," Abdulaziz Sager, Chairman of the Riyadh-based Gulf Research Center, said.
"There are technical, political and economic complications related to that decision."
Spare capacity within OPEC is running low, with most producers pumping at maximum capacity.
It is unclear how much extra Saudi Arabia could bring to the market and how quickly.
Biden said at the end of June that he would not ask Saudi leaders directly to increase oil production.
Instead, he would continue to make the case that all Gulf states should raise oil output.
OPEC+ decided last month to increase output targets by 648,000 barrels per day (bpd) in August, ending record production cuts that it implemented at the height of the pandemic to counter collapsing demand.
Reporting By Jarrett Renshaw, Maha El Dahan and Aziz El Yakoubi; additional reporting by John Irish in Paris and Ahmad Ghaddar in London; Editing by Kirsten Donovan, Philippa Fletcher and Barbara Lewis
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy ... 022-07-15/
Re: THE MIDDLE EAST
HUFFPOST
"Joe Biden Tried To Spin His Saudi Arabia Trip — And It Was A Total Mess"
Akbar Shahid Ahmed
14 JULY 2022
Before President Joe Biden left for the Middle East this week, he and his team spent weeks trying to publicly and privately defend the most controversial part of his trip: his visit to Saudi Arabia.
With the Saudi stopover imminent ― Biden arrives in the kingdom on Friday ― that effort looks like a clear failure.
Within the administration, skeptical national security staffers see the Saudi stint as hypocritical and unlikely to boost American interests ― with some calling it a “Summit for Autocracy” in a pointed reference to Biden’s “Summit for Democracy” last December, according to one U.S. official.
White House outreach to human rights groups and progressive activists left multiple recipients doubtful that Biden would do anything to rein in alarming Saudi repression.
And on Capitol Hill, many of Biden’s fellow Democrats believe he is set to be played by the kingdom and its de facto ruler, Crown Prince Muhammed bin Salman.
Key lawmakers working on global affairs are concerned about “how little the administration is getting in return for an open-armed, public embrace of MBS,” said a senior congressional aide, using a common nickname for the prince.
Most experts agree the visit will be far more beneficial for the Saudis than the United States; Riyadh is unlikely to offer Biden meaningful help on his priorities, like lowering global oil prices and limiting the Middle East influence of China and Russia, they say.
On Saturday, Biden acknowledged the broad wariness about his plan by taking the rare step of issuing a preemptive justification for the visit.
In a Washington Post opinion piece, the president argued that he is promoting peace and uniting American partners in the region and said he “reversed the blank-check policy” toward the crown prince of his predecessor Donald Trump by publicly tying the prince to Jamal Khashoggi’s murder and sanctioning several Saudis.
But Biden’s examples of progress toward peace — in Yemen and between Israel and the Palestinians — represent pauses in conflict rather than lasting resolutions to deep fundamental tensions.
Meanwhile, U.S.-friendly nations from Israel to squabbling Gulf Arab states have drawn closer to each other for their own reasons, including their desire to act independently of American choices, and officials and watchdog groups believe Biden’s limited actions against Khashoggi’s killers were not enough to deter future abuses.
In a Monday rebuttal to Biden’s piece, Washington Post publisher Fred Ryan accused the president of an “about-face” from his campaign trail promises of justice for Khashoggi, a contributor to the paper, and said the administration’s approach would “erode our moral authority and breed anti-American resentment.”
The Biden administration’s closed-door sales pitch has not had much success either.
On June 17, White House human rights official Rob Berschinski set up a meeting with representatives of civil society organizations working on Saudi issues to discuss the visit.
“It felt like a box-checking exercise to indicate that they had consulted with the human rights community,” one attendee of the event told HuffPost.
Another person present said officials repeated the administration’s public narrative that the president would raise concerns about specific Saudi dissidents and the kingdom’s overall limits on basic freedoms.
Both attendees spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid angering the administration.
“They were wanting to focus it on this micro issue of individual cases [of people targeted by the Saudi government]."
"... It’s very convenient: They can say, ‘Oh, yes, this was raised privately,’ while doing their best to secure U.S. hegemony, U.S. arms sales and defense for Israel at great risk,” said the first attendee.
The attendee noted when they expressed concern about reports of new U.S. security commitments to the Saudis, the United Arab Emirates and Israel that could draw Washington deeper into regional conflicts, officials at the event dismissed the idea as simply a rumor.
Private discussions with the administration are also worsening frustration about the trip in Congress, the congressional aide told HuffPost.
Multiple officials have conveyed that Biden may abandon his policy of denying offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia to encourage peace in Yemen, where the Saudis have since 2015 run a military campaign that has been accused of hundreds of war crimes, the aide continued.
Saudi officials have pushed for the move in multiple meetings, Reuters reported on July 11.
The shift could mean the U.S. would again supply the Saudis with bombs like those they have used to kill civilians ― and could be followed by a flood of new arms deals for Riyadh, in an echo of the Trump era.
Last month, the Government Accountability Office said the Defense and State departments have not fully accounted for how U.S.-made weapons sold to the Saudis and the United Arab Emirates have hurt regular Yemenis.
To most Democrats, who have in recent years prioritized peace in Yemen and limiting U.S. involvement in the country’s civil war, such a change “would be misguided,” the aide said.
As Biden worked through the first leg of his trip, in Israel, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) channeled the abiding questions among the president’s allies about his next stop in a Foreign Policy piece published July 13.
“Over and over again, the Saudi government acts in ways that are directly contrary to U.S. security interests, and over and over again, the United States just looks the other way,” Murphy wrote.
“If this trip is going to be worth it, the United States needs Saudi Arabia to make real commitments to improve its human rights record, provide justice for political dissenters and their families, and end the war in Yemen."
"… Biden should make clear that without real commitments on these key issues, the United States’ willingness to continue as Saudi Arabia’s security partner is at risk.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/jo ... 18359af7a7
"Joe Biden Tried To Spin His Saudi Arabia Trip — And It Was A Total Mess"
Akbar Shahid Ahmed
14 JULY 2022
Before President Joe Biden left for the Middle East this week, he and his team spent weeks trying to publicly and privately defend the most controversial part of his trip: his visit to Saudi Arabia.
With the Saudi stopover imminent ― Biden arrives in the kingdom on Friday ― that effort looks like a clear failure.
Within the administration, skeptical national security staffers see the Saudi stint as hypocritical and unlikely to boost American interests ― with some calling it a “Summit for Autocracy” in a pointed reference to Biden’s “Summit for Democracy” last December, according to one U.S. official.
White House outreach to human rights groups and progressive activists left multiple recipients doubtful that Biden would do anything to rein in alarming Saudi repression.
And on Capitol Hill, many of Biden’s fellow Democrats believe he is set to be played by the kingdom and its de facto ruler, Crown Prince Muhammed bin Salman.
Key lawmakers working on global affairs are concerned about “how little the administration is getting in return for an open-armed, public embrace of MBS,” said a senior congressional aide, using a common nickname for the prince.
Most experts agree the visit will be far more beneficial for the Saudis than the United States; Riyadh is unlikely to offer Biden meaningful help on his priorities, like lowering global oil prices and limiting the Middle East influence of China and Russia, they say.
On Saturday, Biden acknowledged the broad wariness about his plan by taking the rare step of issuing a preemptive justification for the visit.
In a Washington Post opinion piece, the president argued that he is promoting peace and uniting American partners in the region and said he “reversed the blank-check policy” toward the crown prince of his predecessor Donald Trump by publicly tying the prince to Jamal Khashoggi’s murder and sanctioning several Saudis.
But Biden’s examples of progress toward peace — in Yemen and between Israel and the Palestinians — represent pauses in conflict rather than lasting resolutions to deep fundamental tensions.
Meanwhile, U.S.-friendly nations from Israel to squabbling Gulf Arab states have drawn closer to each other for their own reasons, including their desire to act independently of American choices, and officials and watchdog groups believe Biden’s limited actions against Khashoggi’s killers were not enough to deter future abuses.
In a Monday rebuttal to Biden’s piece, Washington Post publisher Fred Ryan accused the president of an “about-face” from his campaign trail promises of justice for Khashoggi, a contributor to the paper, and said the administration’s approach would “erode our moral authority and breed anti-American resentment.”
The Biden administration’s closed-door sales pitch has not had much success either.
On June 17, White House human rights official Rob Berschinski set up a meeting with representatives of civil society organizations working on Saudi issues to discuss the visit.
“It felt like a box-checking exercise to indicate that they had consulted with the human rights community,” one attendee of the event told HuffPost.
Another person present said officials repeated the administration’s public narrative that the president would raise concerns about specific Saudi dissidents and the kingdom’s overall limits on basic freedoms.
Both attendees spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid angering the administration.
“They were wanting to focus it on this micro issue of individual cases [of people targeted by the Saudi government]."
"... It’s very convenient: They can say, ‘Oh, yes, this was raised privately,’ while doing their best to secure U.S. hegemony, U.S. arms sales and defense for Israel at great risk,” said the first attendee.
The attendee noted when they expressed concern about reports of new U.S. security commitments to the Saudis, the United Arab Emirates and Israel that could draw Washington deeper into regional conflicts, officials at the event dismissed the idea as simply a rumor.
Private discussions with the administration are also worsening frustration about the trip in Congress, the congressional aide told HuffPost.
Multiple officials have conveyed that Biden may abandon his policy of denying offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia to encourage peace in Yemen, where the Saudis have since 2015 run a military campaign that has been accused of hundreds of war crimes, the aide continued.
Saudi officials have pushed for the move in multiple meetings, Reuters reported on July 11.
The shift could mean the U.S. would again supply the Saudis with bombs like those they have used to kill civilians ― and could be followed by a flood of new arms deals for Riyadh, in an echo of the Trump era.
Last month, the Government Accountability Office said the Defense and State departments have not fully accounted for how U.S.-made weapons sold to the Saudis and the United Arab Emirates have hurt regular Yemenis.
To most Democrats, who have in recent years prioritized peace in Yemen and limiting U.S. involvement in the country’s civil war, such a change “would be misguided,” the aide said.
As Biden worked through the first leg of his trip, in Israel, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) channeled the abiding questions among the president’s allies about his next stop in a Foreign Policy piece published July 13.
“Over and over again, the Saudi government acts in ways that are directly contrary to U.S. security interests, and over and over again, the United States just looks the other way,” Murphy wrote.
“If this trip is going to be worth it, the United States needs Saudi Arabia to make real commitments to improve its human rights record, provide justice for political dissenters and their families, and end the war in Yemen."
"… Biden should make clear that without real commitments on these key issues, the United States’ willingness to continue as Saudi Arabia’s security partner is at risk.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/jo ... 18359af7a7
Re: THE MIDDLE EAST
THE INDEPENDENT
"MBS fired back at Biden with US controversies after confrontation over Khashoggi’s murder, says report"
Rachel Sharp
16 JULY 2022
Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman fired back at Joe Biden with America’s own controversies when the US president confronted him over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, it has been revealed.
A source familiar with Friday’s controversial meeting between the two leaders told CNN that the crown prince, known as MBS, responded by bringing up the death of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and incidents where US soldiers abused prisoners at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib detention centre.
The source said that MBS told Mr Biden that the two incidents reflected badly on the US.
Abu Akleh was shot and killed in May while covering an Israeli military operation in the West Bank.
The US has come under fire for its response to her death, with the journalist’s family and Palestinian authorities urging American officials to hold Israel to account.
On Friday, Mr Biden visited the West Bank alongside Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas where he insisted that the US was committed to getting “full and transparent accounting” of her killing.
MBS also referenced the US military’s abuse of prisoners during the start of America’s invasion of Iraq.
Back in 2004, graphic photos emerged from the Abu Ghraib prison showing US military personnel torturing and sexually abusing Iraqi prisoners who they had captured and were holding there.
The photos eventually led to the conviction of 11 US soldiers.
The Saudi crown prince raised the two controversies after Mr Biden told him he believes he is responsible for ordering the murder of Khashoggi – something that US intelligence has concluded.
On 2 October 2018, Jamal Khashoggi – a Washington Post journalist and outspoken critic of the Saudi government – was murdered inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul by a team of intelligence operatives with ties to MBS.
Khashoggi’s body was then brutally dismembered with a bone saw.
The Saudi Arabian government initially denied any involvement in the killing before going on to claim that the operatives killed him accidentally while trying to extradite him to Saudi Arabia.
MBS continues to deny all responsibility for the brutal slaying, doubling down on his innocence when he came face to face with Mr Biden on Friday.
Following the meeting, Mr Biden told reporters that he had pressed MBS about Khashoggi’s “outrageous” murder.
“I made my view crystal clear... for an American president to be silent on an issue of human rights is inconsistent with who we are and with who I am,” he said.
The Biden administration has been forced to defend his decision to visit Saudi Arabia and meet MBS, particularly given Mr Biden’s statements during his 2020 White House run that he would make Saudi Arabia a “pariah”.
The president sparked further backlash when he greeted MBS with a friendly fist-bump at the start of Friday’s meeting.
Mr Biden met with several Middle East leaders during his four-day trip to the region which was in part aimed at reaching agreements with oil-rich nations and, ultimately, easing the pain on Americans caused by the current sky-high gas prices.
During the visit, it also emerged that an American lawyer, who had previously defended Khashoggi, was detained in the UAE on Thursday while travelling to Istanbul for a family wedding.
Human rights group Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) said Mr Ghafoor is being held in a detention facility in Abu Dhabi on charges related to an in absentia conviction for money-laundering.
The US citizen and civil rights attorney from Virginia who previously worked as an attorney for Khashoggi, had no prior knowledge of any conviction, DAWN said.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/mb ... 6a5d74495c
"MBS fired back at Biden with US controversies after confrontation over Khashoggi’s murder, says report"
Rachel Sharp
16 JULY 2022
Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman fired back at Joe Biden with America’s own controversies when the US president confronted him over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, it has been revealed.
A source familiar with Friday’s controversial meeting between the two leaders told CNN that the crown prince, known as MBS, responded by bringing up the death of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and incidents where US soldiers abused prisoners at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib detention centre.
The source said that MBS told Mr Biden that the two incidents reflected badly on the US.
Abu Akleh was shot and killed in May while covering an Israeli military operation in the West Bank.
The US has come under fire for its response to her death, with the journalist’s family and Palestinian authorities urging American officials to hold Israel to account.
On Friday, Mr Biden visited the West Bank alongside Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas where he insisted that the US was committed to getting “full and transparent accounting” of her killing.
MBS also referenced the US military’s abuse of prisoners during the start of America’s invasion of Iraq.
Back in 2004, graphic photos emerged from the Abu Ghraib prison showing US military personnel torturing and sexually abusing Iraqi prisoners who they had captured and were holding there.
The photos eventually led to the conviction of 11 US soldiers.
The Saudi crown prince raised the two controversies after Mr Biden told him he believes he is responsible for ordering the murder of Khashoggi – something that US intelligence has concluded.
On 2 October 2018, Jamal Khashoggi – a Washington Post journalist and outspoken critic of the Saudi government – was murdered inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul by a team of intelligence operatives with ties to MBS.
Khashoggi’s body was then brutally dismembered with a bone saw.
The Saudi Arabian government initially denied any involvement in the killing before going on to claim that the operatives killed him accidentally while trying to extradite him to Saudi Arabia.
MBS continues to deny all responsibility for the brutal slaying, doubling down on his innocence when he came face to face with Mr Biden on Friday.
Following the meeting, Mr Biden told reporters that he had pressed MBS about Khashoggi’s “outrageous” murder.
“I made my view crystal clear... for an American president to be silent on an issue of human rights is inconsistent with who we are and with who I am,” he said.
The Biden administration has been forced to defend his decision to visit Saudi Arabia and meet MBS, particularly given Mr Biden’s statements during his 2020 White House run that he would make Saudi Arabia a “pariah”.
The president sparked further backlash when he greeted MBS with a friendly fist-bump at the start of Friday’s meeting.
Mr Biden met with several Middle East leaders during his four-day trip to the region which was in part aimed at reaching agreements with oil-rich nations and, ultimately, easing the pain on Americans caused by the current sky-high gas prices.
During the visit, it also emerged that an American lawyer, who had previously defended Khashoggi, was detained in the UAE on Thursday while travelling to Istanbul for a family wedding.
Human rights group Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) said Mr Ghafoor is being held in a detention facility in Abu Dhabi on charges related to an in absentia conviction for money-laundering.
The US citizen and civil rights attorney from Virginia who previously worked as an attorney for Khashoggi, had no prior knowledge of any conviction, DAWN said.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/mb ... 6a5d74495c