Will the U.S.-Saudi Arabia Relationship Ever Reach a Breaking Point? - 1 views
-
Again and again, the unlikely partners would fall out—usually over the Arab-Israeli conflict, much later over the 9/11 attacks. But the fundamental bargain struck by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and then-King Ibn Saud in the waning days of World War II that consummated the U.S.-Saudi relationship 75 years ago would never break
-
lawmakers in oil states such as Texas, Louisiana, North Dakota, and Alaska accuse Saudi Arabia of waging “economic warfare” and have drafted legislation to immediately pull out U.S. troops and furl up a decades-old U.S. security umbrella that has protected the vulnerable Saudi state
-
many in Washington are coming to question the very fundamentals that have underpinned a very special bilateral relationship for 75 years—essentially, U.S. security to ensure the free flow of Saudi oil and Saudi support for U.S. designs in the Middle East
- ...25 more annotations...
UN warns of 'ecological disaster' in Houthi-controlled Red Sea area | Arab News - 0 views
-
UN human rights experts have demanded access to an abandoned oil tanker off the coast of Yemen that say poses a risk of causing an “ecological catastrophe” in the Red Sea. The tanker, FSO Safer, lies in waters controlled by the Iran-backed Houthis near the port of Hodeidah, where it currently holds an estimated 1.1 million barrels of oil. The ship, launched in 1976, is decaying rapidly after being abandoned in 2015 when its engine room flooded with seawater.
-
relevant permits from local authorities in the Houthi-controlled area have not been granted
-
“It is vital that a UN technical team be permitted to board the FSO Safer if we are to have any hope of preventing the threat of a spill that could be four times worse than the historic Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska in 1989,” said Marcos Orellana, UN special rapporteur on toxics and human rights.
- ...2 more annotations...
Romanian port struggles to handle flow of Ukrainian grain | AP News - 0 views
-
With Ukraine’s seaports blockaded or captured by Russian forces, neighboring Romania’s Black Sea port of Constanta has emerged as a main conduit for the war-torn country’s grain exports amid a growing world food crisis.It’s Romania’s biggest port, home to Europe’s fastest-loading grain terminal, and has processed nearly a million tons of grain from Ukraine — one of the world’s biggest exporters of wheat and corn — since the Feb. 24 invasion.But port operators say that maintaining, let alone increasing, the volume they handle could soon be impossible without concerted European Union support and investment.
-
Constanta’s proximity by land to Ukraine, and by sea to the Suez Canal, make it the best current route for Ukrainian agricultural exports. Other alternatives include road and rail shipments across Ukraine’s western border into Poland and its Baltic Sea ports.
-
U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization projects up to 181 million people in 41 countries could face food crisis or worse levels of hunger this year in connection with the Ukraine war.
- ...2 more annotations...
Turkey, Romania work to defuse sea mines possibly floating from Ukraine - The Washingto... - 0 views
-
Turkey and Romania have scrambled in recent days to neutralize potentially explosive mines amid concerns that the weapons may be drifting across the Black Sea from Ukraine’s shores toward neighboring countries.
-
Turkey’s government had said previously that it was in contact with both Moscow and Kyiv about the weapons, but did not specify which side, if either, was responsible for the mines
-
Russia’s intelligence service, the FSB, claimed on March 19 that poor weather had caused more than 400 naval mines to become disconnected from the cables that were anchoring them, and warned that the mines were “drifting freely in the western part of the Black Sea,” which includes the territorial waters of Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey.
- ...5 more annotations...
Iran: Israel out to sidetrack UN with ship claim - 0 views
-
Tehran says Tel Aviv spread 'false' claims about seizing a ship with Iranian ammunition to sway attention away from the Goldstone report on Israeli war crimes.
-
As the UN general assembly was busy reviewing the Goldstone report, Israel's UN mission submitted a letter to the Security Council accusing Iran of violating Resolution 1701, which was issued to stop Tel Aviv's 2006 offensive against Lebanon. Iran's responded to the allegation by reminding the Zionist regime that Tel Aviv has breached "not one but several" UN Security Council resolutions, including that very same motion.
Al Jazeera English - Middle East - Syria and Iran deny arms boat claim - 0 views
-
Syria has denied that a cargo ship loaded with hundreds of tonnes of weapons seized by Israel, was transporting Iranian arms to Syria.
-
"All the cargo certificates are stamped at the ports of origin, and this one was stamped at an Iranian port."
-
The weapons were "a drop in the ocean" of arms being shipped to Hezbollah, Ben-Yehuda said.
- ...2 more annotations...
Iran's Revolutionary Guards plan to upgrade speed boats with stealth technology | Reuters - 0 views
-
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Monday they plan to upgrade their speed boats in the Gulf with radar-evading stealth technology and new missile launchers as tensions rise between Tehran and Washington in the vital oil shipping route.
-
Ending a long absence of U.S. aircraft carriers in the region, the USS John C. Stennis entered the Gulf last week, and was shadowed by the Revolutionary Guards’ speed boats.
-
Iran says it has been developing its own stealth technology for fighter jets and vessels, but the prototypes it has unveiled in recent years have mostly been met with derision by defense experts.
- ...2 more annotations...
UAE and the Horn of Africa: A Tale of Two Ports - 0 views
-
On February 22, Djibouti seized control of the Doraleh Container Terminal from its joint owner and operator, the Dubai-based DP World. The seizure was not wholly unexpected and was the culmination of Djibouti's deteriorating bilateral ties with the United Arab Emirates and a lost legal battle with DP World to renegotiate the terms of the port concession that gave it a 33 percent equity stake in 2006. The London Court of International Arbitration Tribunal ruled against Djibouti's claims, lodged in 2014, that DP World paid bribes in order to secure the 30-year concession
-
Doraleh opened in 2009 and is the only container terminal in the Horn of Africa able to handle 15,000-ton container ships. It quickly became the most important entrepot for the region's largest country and economy, Ethiopia, which was rendered landlocked by Eritrea's independence in 1993. Ethiopia receives around 97 percent of its imports through Doraleh — around 70 percent of the port's activity — in what has become an unacceptable strategic reliance on a neighbor
-
the increasingly complex dynamics animating the geopolitics, and the more localized politics, being shaped by the competition among aspiring regional powers of the Middle East — particularly Gulf Arab states and Turkey — and China for influence in the Horn of Africa
- ...11 more annotations...
Curb Your Enthusiasm - Foreign Policy - 0 views
-
optimism is raging about the potential energy bounty lying underneath the eastern Mediterranean Sea. But energy development could as easily become a casualty as the cure for the region’s tortured geopolitics
-
Lebanon and Israel are at daggers drawn over new plans for exploration in offshore gas fields in disputed waters, and Hezbollah is using the energy dispute to ratchet up rhetoric against Israel. And this month, a Turkish naval ship intercepted an exploration vessel working in waters off Cyrus, threatening to escalate tensions between the Greek and Turkish halves of the divided island.
-
Israel’s first two gas fields are running at full speed, and two more could see investment decisions this year, notes Nikos Tsafos, an energy expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Meanwhile, Egypt brought the Zohr field, its own mammoth gas discovery, online in record time, which promises to ease a cash crunch in Cairo aggravated by importing pricey gas.
- ...6 more annotations...
Trump threatens a new war with Iran as the coronavirus spreads through the military. - 0 views
-
The outbreak spreading on the USS Theodore Roosevelt, one of the Navy’s 11 aircraft carriers, reveals yet another victim of the coronavirus pandemic: the American military’s ability to patrol the world’s oceans and deter or fight wars.
-
Warships and submarines, even more than cruise ships, are breeding grounds for viruses. Crew members are packed into narrow confines, working and sleeping within inches of one another.
-
amid this crisis, the Trump administration has ordered U.S. military commanders to prepare a campaign to destroy Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, as part of an overall effort—spearheaded by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and national security adviser Robert O’Brien—to weaken the regime in Tehran
- ...5 more annotations...
Iran decries 'cowardly attack' on oil tanker off Saudi coast | Iran News | Al Jazeera - 0 views
-
The National Iranian Tanker Company (NITC), which owns the Sabiti, said its hull was hit by two separate explosions off the Saudi port of Jeddah. But the state-owned company denied reports the attack had originated from Saudi soil.
-
"Piracy and mischief on international waterways aimed at making commercial shipping insecure will not go unanswered," said Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran's top security body
-
The tanker is heading for Persian Gulf waters and we hope it will enter Iranian waters safely," Mehr quoted an unnamed official as saying. "The cargo leakage has stopped."
- ...1 more annotation...
The Islamic State Isn't Behind Syria's Amphetamine Trade, But the Regime Could Be - 0 views
-
Scientists first produced Captagon, the brand name of the drug fenethylline, in the 1960s to treat depression and children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Two decades later, the World Health Organization banned the substance due its high potential for addiction, abuse, and other adverse health effects. But counterfeit Captagon—which is sometimes just a cocktail of amphetamines with no fenethylline—remains in demand on the black market in the Middle East.
-
pills intercepted in Salerno arrived on three ships from Latakia, a Syrian port, and Italian police quickly announced that the Islamic State was responsible for their production and shipment—allegedly to fund its global terrorism operations.
-
Global media outlets disseminated the information provided by the Italian police without questioning it, replicating misinformation without considering how a scattered group of Islamic State members could pull off such an operation—but the truth is, they probably didn’t
- ...10 more annotations...
‹ Previous
21 - 40 of 100
Next ›
Last »
Showing 20▼ items per page