Islamic State Academies for Jihad and Bombmaking

Posted on January 6, 2016January 6, 2016 by Denise Simon

Footage of ISIS weapons lab shows construction of heat-seeking missiles, car bombs

FNC: New images of what is being called a “jihadi technical college” in the ISIS terror group’s de facto capital shows that the group is capable of producing key components for advanced weaponry, including surface-to-air missiles.

Footage of the weapons lab in Raqqa, Syria was obtained by Sky News and shows that ISIS scientists have managed to produce a homemade thermal battery for use in surface-to-air missile systems. That had previously been thought impossible for terror groups without any military infrastructure to accomplish.

Inside the ISIS weapons lab. (Sky News)

The footage shows that ISIS can recommission thousands of missiles prevously thought unusable and target passenger and military aircraft.

Sky News reports that terror groups had previously been able to build the weapons, but storing them and maintaining the thermal battery was difficult to do.

“What this video shows is that ISIS are leagues ahead of their terrorist predecessors,” Chris Hunter, a former bomb technician with the United Kingdom Special Forces, told Sky News. “Their advanced knowledge of weapons engineering, coupled with their seemingly limitless ability to reverse engineer and recondition weapons (which until now intelligence agencies had considered obsolete and beyond repair) kept me awake all night.”

Sky also reported that the ISIS “research and development” team has produced remote control cars to act as mobile bombs, complete with “drivers” — mannequins with self-regulating thermostats that produce the heat signature of humans, allowing the car bombs to evade sophisticated scanning machines that protect military and government buildings in the West.

The Sky report was based on eight hours of unedited training video that was seized by the Free Syria Army when it captured an ISIS trainer making his way toward Europe via Turkey.

An ISIS defector in Turkey told Sky News that a top secret training program was known about in Raqqa, his home town. He confirmed the program was designed to carry out attacks in Europe and further afield.

A mannequin used to “drive” a car rigged with explosives. (Sky News)

“If [attacks were] meant internally. they could send someone to set an explosive device or wire a car as they are able to do this [openly],” the defector said. “But doing such a program and documenting it was meant to target a large number of people and in more than one location.”

***

How ISIS Schools Little Boys to Be Suicide Bombers

As ISIS troops are decimated by airstrikes, children are trained systematically to replace them.

ISTANBUL — They call them the “cubs of the caliphate” and one of them, a French national who looked like a 12-year-old, was filmed last week shooting an accused spy in the forehead, then pumping additional rounds into his body.

In the execution video posted by the extremists a new militant song can be heard playing in the background: “We have come, we have come, we have come, as soldiers for God. We have marched, we have marched, we have marched, out of love for God. We know religion, we live by it; we build an edifice, we ascend it. We deny humiliation we have experienced; we put an end to idolatrous tyranny.”

He is not the first child soldier to be showcased by the jihadists carrying out executions in scenes that invoke the bestial madness of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. And likely he won’t be the last as the so-called Islamic State, widely known as ISIS, becomes ever more systematic recruiting and brainwashing any children it can get hold of, whether they’re the children foreign fighters brought along with them or local kids from Iraq and Syria.

Federal Prisons, Incubation Centers for Militant Islam

Posted on January 6, 2016January 6, 2016 by Denise Simon

Mandatory sentencing is a topic that the White House is manipulating with Judges across the country using the Justice Department to do it. This takes away sentencing that have been rendered and Obama lets prisoners out before the sentence is complete. The reason is prison over-crowding. While that is the case, Districts Attorneys even reduce charges all the time. Result is there are few consequences for violent criminal acts. What is worse, is what actually goes on in prison and who is at the core of radicalizing prisoners. It is important to know Islamic organizations in America have postured themselves to be the source of religious training and sessions with inmates. Then they later have their sentences commuted or get out early and the rest is a growing threat to our homeland.

Ripe for radicalization: Federal prisons ‘breeding ground’ for terrorists, say experts

FNC: America’s federal prisons have become a “breeding ground” for radical Islam, warn critics, who say imprisoned terrorists are more likely to spread their beliefs than renounce them.

As law enforcement authorities lock up more home-grown terrorists, experts are warning the success could turn sour if jailhouse jihadists are allowed to infect fellow inmates. Prisons have long been criticized for a culture that can make some inmates more dangerous than when they entered, but the possibility that typical felons could become lone wolf terrorists upon earning parole is a disturbing new wrinkle.

“Over the years, our Federal prisons have become a breeding ground for radicalization.”

– Rep. Stephen Fincher, R-Tenn.

“If we continue to downplay the threat, we do so at our own peril,” said Patrick Dunleavy, author of “The Fertile Soil of Jihad: Terrorism’s Prison Connection.”

The aggressive recruitment of Americans by ISIS has resulted in a spike in domestic terror-related convictions. Some 71 people are imprisoned in the U.S. on ISIS-related charges, including 56 individuals arrested in 2015, the most terrorism arrests in a single year since September 2001, according to George Washington University’s Program on Extremism.

(Alton Nolen, who is accused of beheading a former co-worker at a food processing plant in Oklahoma, is believed to have converted to Islam while doing time.)

In addition, the FBI has said it is currently conducting more than 900 investigations into ISIS-linked radicalization, including cases in all 50 states.

There are hundreds more federal inmates serving time for terrorist activities related to other terror groups. An estimated 100 are scheduled for release in the next five years, according to the Congressional Research Service. Still more terror suspects could be transferred to U.S. prisons from Guantanamo Bay in the coming months.

Terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay could soon be transferred to U.S. prisons, where critics say they could influence other inmates. (Associated Press)

“We have never been faced with such a large number of terror inmates before,” said Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., during a recent Homeland Security Committee hearing on countering violent extremism in prison.

King and others say the federal Bureau of Prisons must do a better job of monitoring and, if necessary, isolating inmates who could radicalize others behind bars.

Dunleavy, a retired deputy inspector in the criminal intelligence unit of the New York Department of Correctional Services, said criminals have been radicalized in prisons for years, and predicted it will only get worse. He cited Chicago gang member Jose Padilla, who converted to radical Islam while doing time in jail in the 1980s, and was later accused of plotting to set off a radiological “dirty bomb” in the U.S. He is now serving a 21-year sentence for conspiring to commit acts of terror overseas.

More recently, ex-convict Alton Nolen was arrested in a September, 2014 attack at his former place of employment, a food processing plant in the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore. Nolen, who is awaiting trial, allegedly beheaded a 54-year-old female worker while yelling Islamic slogans. Dunleavy believes Nolen converted to Islam while serving time in an Oklahoma prison after attacking a police officer in 2010.

In between Padilla and Nolen, Dunleavy says there were “scores of others” who became radicalized in state and federal prisons, either by listening to fellow inmates or hearing sermons on contraband devices smuggled into prisons and shared.

Kevin James, who while serving time at Sacramento’s New Folsom Prison on robbery charges in 2004, founded his own jihadist movement and recruited fellow inmate Levar Washington to join his cause. Upon Washington’s release in 2005, he plotted to attack Los Angeles-area synagogues, the Israeli Consulate, the Los Angeles airport and U.S. military recruiting offices. James, remained in federal prison, where some critics fear he could be radicalizing more inmates to his cause.

Tens of thousands of federal prison inmates have converted to Islam while serving time, and many others have found other religions. Most do not subscribe to a violent interpretation of the faith, but it takes only a few to create a threat, according to Mark Hamm, a professor at Indiana State University who specializes in the field of prison radicalization.

“It is not the sheer number of prisoners following extremist interpretations of religious doctrines that poses a threat,” Hamm told FoxNews.com. “Rather, it is the potential for the single individual to become radicalized.”

Estimates of the number of terrorists behind bars could be too low because some could be serving time on weapons-related crimes, rather than terror-related. Those suspects are especially dangerous, Dunleavy said, because their involvement in terror plots may not be disclosed to prison officials who might otherwise be able to monitor them.

As far back as 2010, well before ISIS was formed, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee issued a report that identified three dozen U.S. citizens who had converted to Islam while in U.S. prisons, and then traveled to Yemen to train at Al Qaeda camps upon being released.

According to the FBI, radicalized inmates are of concern for a number of reasons, including the possibility they could urge other prisoners to attend radical mosques upon their release from prison; could pose a risk to prison security inciting violence; and could pass on skills used in terrorism activities.

King, who has had several hearings on Islamic radicalization, said lapses in how prisoners are monitored and how religious service providers are vetted continue despite numerous oversight reports.

In June, the federal Bureau of Prisons disclosed in a letter to Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, that it failed to complete a background check on a religious services contractor who had a well-documented past of advocating violence against critics of Islamic extremism.

While monitoring prisoners is potentially more difficult, lawmakers believe the government could at least minimize the risk of radical clerics being invited into prisons to proselytize – and radicalize.

“Over the years, our Federal prisons have become a breeding ground for radicalization,” said Rep. Stephen Fincher, R-Tenn., who introduced a measure that would compel the BOP to study prison radicalization and beef up background checks for clergy and other workers allowed access to inmates. “By allowing volunteers to enter the system without first having to undergo a comprehensive background check, some of the most vulnerable members of society have become susceptible to radicalization.”

Putin/Iran Support Assad and Children Eat Leaves and Die

Posted on January 5, 2016January 5, 2016 by Denise Simon

War criminal charges for Assad, the Iranian Mullahs or even Putin? Nah….but why not? Where is the United Nations Human Rights Council, heck where is Samantha Power or Barack Obama? (rhetorical)

Obama’s redline?

A fact-finding mission of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has found indications that some people in Syria were exposed to sarin gas, according to a report to the UN.

The findings were presented in the latest monthly report on Syria from chief of the OPCW Ahmet Uzumcu.

According to the report, the mission to Syria was looking into charges by the Syrian government that chemical weapons were used in 11 instances. The report did not specify when the alleged chemical attacks occurred.

“In one instance, analysis of some blood samples indicates that individuals were at some point exposed to sarin or a sarin-like substance. Further investigation would be necessary to determine when or under what circumstances such exposure might have occurred,” Uzumcu was quoted as saying by Reuters. Much more here.

‘Children Are Eating Leaves Off The Trees’: The Nightmare of The Siege of Madaya, Syria

ViceNews: In the early hours of Sunday morning, a pregnant woman and her daughter tried to sneak out of Madaya, a mountain village perched in the snow-capped peaks of southwestern Syria.

As they reached the southern edge of town, someone tripped over a landmine, and the loud blast alerted a nearby Hezbollah checkpoint of their escape. The fighters opened fire, and between the explosion and the barrage, both mother and daughter died.

Desperate escape attempts like this one — which was reported by the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, and confirmed to VICE News by local residents — have become more and more common in Madaya, a village of 40,000 that’s been under siege since July by a combination of Syrian forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and his ally, the Lebanese militia Hezbollah.

In the past month alone, 31 residents have died from starvation, or in attempts to run the Hezbollah-manned blockade that encircles the town. A report compiled by the Syrian-American Medical Society and made available to VICE News found that a kilogram (two pounds)of flour now retails for around $100, while the average Syrian makes less than $200 each month.

“I had strawberry leaves for dinner today,” Rajai, a 26-year old English and math teacher in Madaya, told VICE News by phone, asking that his name be withheld for security reasons. “I haven’t had a real meal in three months.” Since the siege began in July, he’s lost 50 pounds. “Kids are eating leaves off the trees, and the very old and very young are dying,” he said.

As the death toll mounted in December, residents of Madaya began posting desperate pleas on social media, along with disturbing images, reminiscent of Nazi concentration camps.

In a picture dated January 3, a group of young men hold a poster in English pleading with the UN and the Pope to do something to lift the siege.

According to Rajai, the Assad regime is punishing his hometown for its participation in the Syrian uprising in 2011. When peaceful protesters took to the streets in the nearby city of Zabadani in April 2011, Rajai joined in. “We wanted to clean this country of Assad,” he said. He was arrested and tortured. Now, after five years of civil war, his outlook is bleak.

“In the early days of the revolution, we used to say no one could be made to feel hungry or afraid,” he said. “But now we know we were wrong.”

Madaya lies on a strategically key line in Syria’s ballooning multi-front, multi-party civil war. The town is nestled within the Qalamoun mountain range, alongside the Lebanese border, less than 30 miles (50 km) from the capital Damascus. Stamping out unrest in Qalamoun, said Joshua Landis, the head of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma and editor of the blog Syria Comment, is key to the regime’s survival. “If rebels there broke out, they’d have a straight corridor to Damascus,” he said.

In the early years of the revolution, many of the mountain villages along the Lebanese border sided against the Assad regime, throwing in their lot with the expanding constellation of rebels who took up arms across the country.

As the revolution grew more violent, the Syrian-Lebanese border became a key route for arms smugglers, who were funneling weapons dangerously close to the Syrian capital. Assad and his Iranian, Russian, and Lebanese allies made securing that border zone a top priority — more pressing even than retaking northern territory from groups like the Islamic State and al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front.

So with the help of the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, Assad has been brutally crushing restive zones along the mountain range by setting sieges reminiscent of medieval warfare. Besides checkpoints and minefields, the regime and its allies employ brutal blockades that prevent food or water from reaching the isolated towns. “They are starving people into submission,” Landis said. “It’s a very old tactic.”

In September, Hezbollah moved into the town of Zabadani, just two miles (three km) north of Madaya, and the town’s only real lifeline to the outside world. A few beleaguered rebel fighters were allowed safe passage out thanks to a deal brokered by Turkey and Iran.

As Hezbollah stormed the city, it forced people it considered hostile to move to Madaya, a tactic residents say was designed to separate out pro-regime and anti-regime civilians. Loay, a 28-year old student in Zabadani, was forced to relocate to Madaya with his mother when Hezbollah took over his town. “They said: go to Madaya,” he told VICE News by phone. “There you will die, from starvation.”

In Madaya, he said, it’s like “another world.” “Everyone,” he added, “is starving.”

Loay’s mother Umm Mohamad, 52, also hasn’t had a meal in months. “My only dream is to have a piece of bread,” she said.

Syrian human rights groups are watching Madaya with horror. “They are making it into a big prison and suffocating the area,” Dr. Ammar Ghanem, a Syrian physician who grew up in the area, told VICE News. A member of the Syrian-American Medical Society’s board, Ghanem still has family stuck inside, and has been monitoring the humanitarian situation from afar. “The regime want people to die there,” he said.

Medical services in the town are meager. “They have no supplies, and no training — one of their only doctors is a veterinarian who is now operating on humans,” Ghanem said. “We would like to send in supplies, but of course, we cannot get through the blockade.”

The United Nations has struggled to get any aid into the besieged town. In October, it managed to secure safe passage for a shipment of biscuits to Madaya and Zabadani. But the food turned out to be expired.

Over the past three months, the Assad regime has prevented any additional shipments, essentially signing death warrants for dozens of children and elderly civilians in the coldest months of the winter.

But there are also very practical reasons for the siege. Hezbollah is trying to trade the civilians in Madaya for the well-being of Shiite civilians under siege by rebel forces in the northern cities of Kafrayya and Fua. “It’s a negotiating ploy,” Landis said. “Basically Hezbollah is taking hostages.” Indeed, in September, members of Ahrar al-Sham, the militant Sunni group that’s blockading the Shiite villages, began negotiating with the Syrian regime to simultaneously lift both sieges. Though the negotiators were able to arrange for the safe passage of some fighters from Zabadani, so far, the deal has yet to bear fruit for the embattled civilians.

Though the siege undoubtedly takes a humanitarian toll, multiple residents in Madaya told VICE News that fighters with Ahrar al-Sham are present in the town. The group fights with Al-Qaeda in the north of Syria. But Landis, the Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma, stresses that the men who joined Ahrar in Madaya are most likely not ideologues. “They are fighting for their lives,” he said. “They’ll make alliances with whoever they think will save them.”

As the siege grinds on, civilians are increasingly losing hope, and fear their plight will always be in the shadow of the war up north against the Islamic State. “Sure, people may read about us if you write something,” Rajaai, the teacher, told VICE News. “But when they finish reading, they’ll forget us.”

Saudi Arabia’s Anti-Iran Coalition Growing

Posted on January 5, 2016January 5, 2016 by Denise Simon

Any kind of peace accords and efforts to deal with Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Afghanistan due to broken relationships in the Middle East is not for the most part impossible until at least late 2017. Estimations of terror matrix trends rising is impossible to predict but it is for sure likely in the region.

While the U.S. State Department under John Kerry and the Obama White House are still working to support the Iranian nuclear deal, the real result is Iran’s growing influence and power in the region. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States have had enough and are taking aggressive action. Finally…

Saudi Arabia paid the larger part of the expenses to Pakistan to acquire nuclear weapons with the option at obtaining a minimum of 10. Further, the U.S. maintains the U.S. Navy Fifth Fleet I Bahrain, which is a Shiite majority. The Fifth fleet is designed to operate and maintain the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean.

Bahrain has been a worry for the U.S. Navy going back to at least 2011 over Shiite uprisings which is still a major headache after the recent and escalating conflicted relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

New Saudi-Iran crisis threatens wider escalation

Reuters: The last time Saudi Arabia broke off ties with Iran, after its embassy in Tehran was stormed by protesters in 1988, it took a swing in the regional power balance in the form of Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait to heal the rift.

It is hard to see how any lesser development could resolve the region’s most bitter rivalry, which has underpinned wars and political tussles across the Middle East as Riyadh and Tehran backed opposing sides.

Riyadh’s expulsion of Iran’s envoy after another storming of its Tehran embassy, this time in response to the Saudi execution of Shi’ite Muslim cleric Nimr al-Nimr, raised the heat again, making the region’s underlying conflict even harder to resolve.

At the heart of the new crisis is Saudi Arabia’s growing willingness to confront Iran and its allies militarily since King Salman took power a year ago, say diplomats, choosing with his son, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, to abandon years of backroom politics.

Last year, Riyadh began a war in Yemen to stop an Iran-allied militia seizing power in its southern neighbor and boosted support to Syrian rebels against Tehran’s ally President Bashar al-Assad. Its execution of Nimr, while mainly driven by domestic politics, was also part of that open confrontation with Iran, according to political analysts.

The interventions followed years of Riyadh complaining about what it regarded as unchecked Iranian aggression in the region. It has pointed to Iran’s support for Shi’ite militias and accused the country of smuggling arms to groups in Gulf countries – which Iran denies.

“We will not allow Iran to destabilize our region. We will not allow Iran to do harm to our citizens or those of our allies and so we will react,” Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told Reuters on Monday, signaling Riyadh would not back down.

The Saudi decisions in Syria and Yemen were also partly a response to Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers, which lifted sanctions on Tehran, theoretically giving it more money and political room to pursue its regional activities.

The new crisis has had the effect of hardening a wider confrontation between the loose-knit coalitions of allies each can call upon in the region; some of Riyadh’s allies also cut diplomatic ties with Tehran after the embassy attack, while Iran’s warned of repercussions.

That chain reaction may now complicate complex political talks over the formation of a government in Lebanon, efforts to bring Syria’s warring parties to talks, stalled negotiations to end Yemen’s civil war and Riyadh’s rapprochement with Baghdad.

SIMMERING MISTRUST

Until the 1960s and 70s, Saudi Arabia and Iran were uneasy allies regarded as the “twin pillars” of Washington’s strategy to curb Soviet influence in the Gulf. Sectarianism was muted.

But rich on its new oil wealth, Saudi Arabia began to propagate its rigid Salafi interpretation of Sunni Islam which regards Shi’ism as heretical, in mosques around the region. And, after its 1979 revolution, Iran adopted – and exported – the doctrine of Velayat-e Faqih, which says ultimate temporal power among Shi’ites should reside with its own supreme leader.

That growing ideological divide set up a simmering mistrust that was soon matched by a geopolitical rivalry that has driven their fractious relations for the subsequent 37 years.

After Iran’s 1980-88 war with Iraq, when Saddam invaded, it developed a strategy of “forward defense”, seeking to use ties with Arab Shi’ites to build militias and political parties that could stop new enemies emerging and give it deterrent capability through proxy forces.

Riyadh regarded Tehran’s cultivation of Shi’ite groups with intense suspicion, fearing it would foment revolution in Saudi-allied states and destabilize the region.

It broke ties in 1988 when a diplomat died in the storming of its Tehran embassy following tensions over the death of hundreds of Iranian pilgrims in clashes with Saudi police during the haj. But when Saddam invaded Kuwait, Tehran and Riyadh set aside their hostility to make common cause against a shared enemy.

The toppling of Saddam in 2003 upturned the regional power balance, however, as Iran used its ties to the country’s large Shi’ite community to gain sway in Baghdad, pitting Riyadh and Tehran more openly against each other – a pattern repeated in Yemen and Syria after the “Arab Spring” uprisings.

Meanwhile, Iraq’s civil war had poured fuel on growing sectarian tensions as al Qaeda, which follows an extreme form of Salafism, sent suicide bombers against Shi’ite civilians, prompting murderous retaliation from Iran-linked militias.

FURTHER ESCALATION

Now there is some scope for further escalation, both in the various Middle East theaters where Iran and Saudi Arabia back opposing forces, and diplomatically as Riyadh taps Arab and Muslim channels to try to isolate Tehran, according to analysts.

“Since 1979 the two countries have fought numerous proxy conflicts throughout the Middle East and often exchange threats and insults. But they’ve stopped short of direct conflict and eventually agreed to a cold reconciliation,” said Karim Sadjadpour, senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Middle East program.

But he said that Iran might seek to stoke unrest among Saudi Arabia and Bahrain’s Shi’ite communities.

Renewed protests among Saudi and Bahraini Shi’ites since the execution of Nimr, along with the bombing of two Sunni mosques in Iraq, may be regarded by Riyadh as evidence of Iranian incitement.

Riyadh has itself pushed allies to cut ties with Iran and pressed Muslim bodies like the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation to condemn the storming of the embassy. Theoretically, it could also ramp up support for Syrian rebel groups.

All-out conflict is something that even hawks in Saudi Arabia and Iran would likely try to avoid. However, the new escalation between the region’s main enemies shows how events can sometimes pre-empt strategic plans.

After the execution of Nimr, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard elite military force said a “harsh revenge” would strike Saudi’s ruling Al-Saud family in the near future.

“The Revolutionary Guard is part of the Iranian government and their threats should be taken seriously because they control militia in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen and I would not be surprised if they use it to act against the Saudis,” said Abdulaziz al-Sager, head of Jeddah-based Gulf Research Centre.

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Where do the rest of the countries stand?

AP- SAUDI ARABIA — The kingdom severed ties to Iran after attacks on two of its diplomatic posts following its execution of a Shiite cleric last weekend; it also later cancelled all flights between the two nations.

IRAN — Since the attack on the diplomatic posts, Iran says it has made arrests and has criticized the violent protesters. However on Tuesday, President Hassan Rouhani took a slightly harder line, saying Saudi Arabia’s move to sever ties with his country couldn’t “cover its crime” of executing Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr.

COUNTRIES BACKING SAUDI ARABIA:

BAHRAIN — The tiny, Shiite-majority island kingdom off the Saudi coast, which long has relied on Saudi Arabia for support of its Sunni rulers, was the first to cut ties with Iran. Bahraini officials repeatedly have accused Iran of training militants and attempting to smuggle arms into the country, which hosts the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet.

SUDAN — The African nation cut its diplomatic ties to Iran and gave Iranian diplomats two weeks to leave the country. Sudan once tilted toward Iran, but has been looking to Saudi Arabia for aid since the secession of oil-rich South Sudan in 2011.

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES — The oil-rich country of seven emirates says it will reduce the number of diplomats in Iran, recall its ambassador and focus only on business relations. While backing Saudi Arabia, it may have chosen to reduce — rather than completely sever ties — because of a long trading history with Iran.

KUWAIT — The oil-rich country is recalling of its ambassador from Tehran, but it isn’t immediately clear how Kuwaiti-Iranian diplomatic ties will be affected. Tiny Kuwait is home to both Shiites and Sunnis living in peace and has the most free-wheeling political system among all Gulf nations.

JORDAN: Overwhelmingly Sunni Jordan is a close ally of Saudi Arabia in the region and a beneficiary of Gulf aid. Jordan’s government spokesman, Mohammed Momani, has condemned the attack on the Saudi Embassy in Iran.

THE MEDIATOR:

OMAN — The sultanate has long historical ties to Iran and served as the base for secret talks between Iranian and U.S. officials that jump-started the deal reached between Iran and world powers over the Islamic Republic’s contested nuclear program.

THOSE BACKING IRAN:

LEBANESE HEZBOLLAH MOVEMENT — Hezbollah was founded in 1982 with the help of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards after Israel invaded Lebanon. The group is one the main Iran-backed factions in the region.

SYRIA’S EMBATTLED PRESIDENT BASHAR ASSAD — Iran has been one of the biggest supporters of Syria since the 1980s and has stood by Assad’s government in his country’s grinding civil war. Saudi Arabia has been one of the biggest benefactors of those trying to overthrow him.

IRAQ’S SHIITE-LED GOVERNMENT IN BAGHDAD — Even as Iraq is embroiled in a major war against the militant Islamic State group, al-Nimr’s execution sparked outrage among the country’s majority Shiites who have taken to the streets in Baghdad and the south, calling for an end to ties with Saudi Arabia. The Shiite-led government has warmed Riyadh that such executions “would lead to nothing but more destruction.”

OTHER REGIONAL ACTORS:

ISRAEL — Israel considers Iran to be its greatest regional threat because of its nuclear program, its arsenal of long-range missiles, its support of anti-Israel militant groups and its repeated threats to destroy it. While Israel has no direct ties to Saudi Arabia either, the countries have come closer because of a shared concern over Iran’s growing influence.

THE PALESTINIANS — The Palestinian Authority issued a statement after the execution of al-Nimr saying that it stands alongside the Saudis in their fight against “terrorism.” The Saudis are the largest donor to the Palestinian Authority in the Arab world, providing them some $200 million annually. The PA, and the Fatah faction that leads it, has had a strained relationship with Iran because of its support of its rival, Hamas.

YEMEN — The Arab world’s poorest country is torn by a civil war pitting its internationally recognized government, backed by a Saudi-led coalition, against Shiite rebels known as Houthis, who are supported by Iran.

THOSE URGING CAUTION:

THE UNITED NATIONS — U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has urged Saudi Arabia and Iran to support peace efforts in Syria and Yemen and avoid escalating tensions.

EUROPEAN UNION: The 28-nation bloc, which opposes the death penalty, criticized Saudi Arabia’s mass executions and said al-Nimr’s case undermined freedom of expression and basic political rights in the kingdom. Since tensions flared between Iran and Saudi Arabia, the EU foreign policy chief has had phone contact with both sides, fearing an escalation would further destabilize the whole region.

THE UNITED STATES — The White House has urged Saudi Arabia and Iran to not let their dispute derail efforts to end the Syrian civil war, while President Barack Obama’s administration also hopes to see the Iranian nuclear deal through.

UNITED KINGDOM — Britain and Iran reopened their respective embassies in 2015, four years after hard-line protesters stormed the British embassy in Tehran. Saudi Arabia is a key diplomatic and economic ally of Britain, though Middle East Minister Tobias Ellwood said Britain told the kingdom about its “disappointment at the mass executions.”

TURKEY — Turkey has urged both Saudi Arabia and Iran to ease tensions, saying the Middle East region is “already like a powder keg” and cannot withstand a new crisis.

GERMANY — Berlin has called on Saudi Arabia and Iran to work to mend their diplomatic ties, while condemning both the mass executions in the kingdom and the storming of the Saudi missions in Iran.

RUSSIA — State news agency RIA Novosti quoted an unnamed senior diplomat as saying Moscow is ready to act as a mediator between Iran and Saudi Arabia. It’s unclear whether Russian officials have made a formal offer to work with the two nations.

Saudi Foreign Lobby Hooked with Hillary/Podesta

Posted on January 5, 2016January 5, 2016 by Denise Simon

This is the time when foreign governments are ratcheting up their respective lobby operations in the United States, we are in a major election cycle. Not only will ad agencies hired by countries like Saudi Arabia but they will work to troll and re-tool attitudes and propaganda.

This began as noted at least last Fall and there will be a higher, more robust objective that will fund those in Washington DC and those hoping to have domestic influence in DC in 2016.

Hillary and her top campaign architect, John Podesta are the core designers and recipients of foreign influence.

Saudi Arabia Continues Hiring Spree of American Lobbyists, Public Relations Experts

Intercept: Saudi Arabia is in the market for a better reputation in Washington, D.C.

In September alone, foreign lobbying disclosure documents show the Saudi government signing deals with PR powerhouse Edelman and lobbying leviathan the Podesta Group, according to recent disclosures.

Edelman, the largest privately owned public relations agency in the world, is known for helping clients win favorable media coverage on mainstream outlets. The Podesta Group is a lobbying firm founded by Tony Podesta, a major fundraiser for the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign.

The new signings are the latest in a year-long hiring spree by the Persian Gulf state as it further builds up its already formidable political arsenal inside the Beltway. The Saudi Arabian Royal Embassy did not respond to a request for comment.

In March, the Saudi Royal Embassy retained two influential lobbying firms, DLA Piper and Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman. DLA Piper, for instance, employs a small army of former government officials, including retired U.S. Sens. Saxby Chambliss and George Mitchell. Also in March, the embassy retained two firms that specialize in analyzing big data for political clients, Targeted Victory and Zignal Labs.

Saudi Arabia’s political operation already includes former Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., who chairs one of the largest Republican Super PACs in the country, as well as the public relations firm MSLGROUP/Qorvis, and Saudi Aramco, the state-owned oil company that funds several influential American political groups, including the American Petroleum Institute. Aramco’s U.S. subsidiary, Saudi Refining, is a registered agent of the Saudi government. The government also finances a number of think tanks and universities, and has made contributions to prominent American nonprofits, including the Clinton Foundation.

The Podesta Group contract is with the Center for Studies and Media Affairs at the Saudi Royal Court. The contract, filed in the Justice Department’s foreign lobbying database, says that the firm will provide “public relations” work for the center.

“It is our company policy not to comment further on our work for clients beyond what is required by law and to direct reporters and other interested parties to our clients for any additional information,” said Missi Tessier, a spokesperson for the Podesta Group, when reached for more information about the relationship.

Edelman’s contract calls for the firm to “engage with opinion influencers, establish media engagement opportunities for [sic] principal, and assist in opinion editorial placement” on behalf of the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority.

The Saudi regime is currently facing yet another public relations crisis as the Kingdom moves to execute Ali Mohammed al-Nimr, the young nephew of a government critic.

The nation also faces international outcry over the widespread killing of civilians in Yemen. Since March, Saudi Arabia has led a coalition that includes the U.S., U.K., Egypt and several Persian Gulf nations to support the Yemeni government in its war against the Houthi rebels. The Saudi-led coalition has repeatedly attacked schools, hospitals, and other civilian targets, including recent reports of a wedding party that was bombed, killing over 100 people.

Last week, I spoke to a number of lawmakers about Saudi human rights abuses, but found them extremely reluctant to criticize the Kingdom. Disclosures reveal that the lobbying firms that have worked for Saudi Arabia for years communicate frequently with senior members of Congress. Beyond entrenched military and economic ties between Saudi Arabia and the United States, the Kingdom appears to be working to maintain its political clout.