Category Archives: Military

Buckle up the POTUS at SOTU Address and Parolees

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Who does a YouTube commercial about his last year as president?

Politico: President Barack Obama plugs his own State of the Union address in a video trailer the White House is releasing Wednesday afternoon as part of an effort to set expectations for the president’s speech next Tuesday, which unlike previous addresses won’t include a new legislative agenda.

Going into his final year as president, Obama plans to focus more on the big themes that have defined his presidency and eschew a laundry list of policy proposals His explanation: he’s got bigger things in mind than Congress, according to details shared with POLITICO.

“What I want to focus on in this State of the Union,” Obama says in the video the White House will release late Wednesday, is “not just the remarkable progress we’ve made, not just what I want to get done in the year ahead, but what we all need to do together in the years to come: The big things that will guarantee an even stronger, better, more prosperous America for our kids. That’s what’s on my mind.”

Standing in front of his desk in the Oval Office, Obama offers a broad preview of what he’ll say: where things were when he came in, and how much progress he’s led since.

Not mentioned: the Republican majorities in the House and Senate who would have stopped any legislative agenda from moving – especially in an election year- with the possible exceptions of the Trans Pacific Partnership and criminal justice reform.

In an email that will also be distributed on Wednesday, Obama chief-of-staff Denis McDonough echoes Obama’s more-optimistic-than-ever theme and lists some of what’s likely to be on Obama’s brag list: December’s budget agreement, the Iran nuclear deal, increased domestic oil production together with new environmental regulations, a peak in high school graduation rates and health insurance coverage, a drop in unemployment, crime and incarceration rates.

“What we have left to do is bigger than any one policy initiative or new bill in Congress. This is about who we are, where we’re headed, and what kind of country we want to be,” McDonough writes.

McDonough finishes with a plug for his new Twitter account, @Denis44, also inaugurated on Wednesday. His first tweet: “New Year’s Resolution: Join Twitter ✓And just in time for @POTUS’ final State of the Union,” with a link to the Obama video.

Oh, one more thing and it is a big one.

Obama Admin Boosting Staff for Massive Criminal Pardon Effort

Experts: End of presidency bid could free up to 20,000 convicted criminals

FreeBeacon: The Obama administration is seeking to significantly boost the number of staffers in the Department of Justice’s pardon office, leading some to speculate that the president is getting set for an end-of-administration effort to grant clemency to a range of criminals.

The Justice Department recently posted on its website a job listing seeking 16 lawyers for new spots in its Office of the Pardon Attorney, which codifies petitions for clemency and makes recommendations to the attorney general for clemency.

The new lawyers will assist “the President in the exercise of executive clemency,” according to the job description.

The department’s move to beef up staff in the pardon office has prompted speculation that President Obama will pursue a final term effort to grant clemency to a range of criminals, particularly drug offenders.

The Justice Department has been working for more than a year now on a new clemency initiative that outside organizations predict could free up to 20,000 convicted inmates from federal prisons. The effort has been described in news reports as “an unprecedented use of clemency power.”

The department says the new pardon office lawyers will work on this initiative and focus only on non-violent offenders.

“The Justice Department announced a new clemency initiative to encourage appropriate candidates to petition for executive clemency in order to have their sentences commuted by the President,” the job listing states. “The Initiative invites petitions for commutation of sentence from non-violent inmates who are serving a federal sentence, who by operation of law, likely would have received a substantially lower sentence if convicted of the same offense today.”

Thus far, “thousands of inmates” have filed petitions to have their sentences commuted and “more are likely to do so,” according to the Justice Department. “Evaluating these petitions for recommendations to the President is a high priority for the Justice Department.”

The attorneys will “review and evaluate petitions” submitted by prisoners and confer with Justice Department officials, as well as other administration agencies, to decide who meets the criteria to receive a pardon, according to the job description.

Government oversight organizations and experts are questioning the administration about the possibility that it could release those in the country illegally or those who have committed major drug offenses.

One congressional source familiar with the effort criticized Obama for abusing the presidential right to grant pardons.

“This fits perfectly with the administration’s two-term agenda of eroding the rule of law in America,” the source told the Washington Free Beacon. “While the president certainly has the constitutional power to pardon, I shudder thinking about how he plans to use it, given his determination to release dangerous criminals.”

Judicial Watch, a legal organization that has sought disclosure on the issue, petitioned the Justice Department in July through a Freedom of Information Act request to release all records discussing the clemency project.

Judicial Watch has predicted that the major clemency initiative “would empower President Obama to grant mass clemency to as many as 20,000 convicted felons now serving time for drug-related sentences.”

The clemency program is just one “part of the Obama administration’s effort to end alleged racial discrimination in drug-related sentences,” according to Judicial Watch.

Republican lawmakers also have expressed concern over the initiative.

Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, accused Obama at the time of “abusing his authority” under the Constitution to pardon prisoners.

“This is an example of the imperial presidency at its worst, and the American people have a right to know who is behind his errant usurpation of power,” Fitton said in a statement at the time.

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for more information on the initiative.

 

Islamic State Academies for Jihad and Bombmaking

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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.

isis weapons lab 16A

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.

isis weapons lab 16C

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.

Escalation by N. Korea with Hydrogen Bomb Launch

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Seismic event in country’s northeast measures 5.1 on Richter scale

North Korea nuclear brief

– Around 10 nuclear warheads
– Conducted 3 tests
– Maximum missile range of 4,000 km
– Seeks range to reach US

Earthquake, possible nuclear test, in North Korea

WASHINGTON — North Korea declared on Tuesday that it had detonated its first hydrogen bomb.

North Korea Says It Has Detonated Its First Hydrogen Bomb

NYT: The assertion, if true, would dramatically escalate the nuclear challenge from one of the world’s most isolated and dangerous states.

In an announcement, North Korea said that the test had been a “complete success.” But it was difficult to tell whether the statement was true. North Korea has made repeated claims about its nuclear capabilities that outside analysts have greeted with skepticism.

“This is the self-defensive measure we have to take to defend our right to live in the face of the nuclear threats and blackmail by the United States and to guarantee the security of the Korean Peninsula,” a female North Korean announcer said, reading the statement on Central Television, the state-run network.

The North’s announcement came about an hour after detection devices around the world had picked up a 5.1 seismic event along the country’s northeast coast.

It may be weeks or longer before detectors sent aloft by the United States and other powers can determine what kind of test was conducted. Ned Price, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said in a statement that American officials “cannot confirm these claims at this time.”

But he said the White House expected “North Korea to abide by its international obligations and commitments.”

The tremors occurred at or near the Punggye-ri nuclear test site, where three previous tests have been conducted over the past nine years.

In recent weeks, the North’s aggressive young leader, Kim Jong-un, has boasted that the country has finally developed the technology to build a thermonuclear weapon — far more powerful than the low-yield devices tested first in 2006, then in different configurations months after President Obama took office in 2009 and again in 2013.

The North Korean announcement said the test had been personally ordered by Mr. Kim, only three days after he signed an order on Sunday for North Korean engineers to press ahead with the attempt.

The announcer added that for the North to give up its nuclear weapons while Washington’s “hostile policy” continued would be “as foolish as for a hunter to lay down his rifle while a ferocious wolf is charging at him.”

Satellite photographs analyzed by 38 North, a Washington research institute that follows the North’s nuclear activity closely, showed evidence of a new tunnel being dug in recent weeks.

Another test by itself would not be that remarkable. The North is believed to have enough plutonium for eight to 12 weapons, and several years ago it revealed a new program to enrich uranium, the other fuel for a nuclear weapon.

But if the North Korean claim about a hydrogen bomb is true, this test was of a different, and significantly more threatening, nature.

In recent weeks, Mr. Kim, believed to be in his early 30s and determined to accelerate the nuclear weapons program that his grandfather and his father promoted to give the broken country leverage and influence, boasted that North Korea had finally developed the technology to build a thermonuclear weapon.

When Mr. Kim first made the claim, in December, the White House expressed considerable skepticism, and several other experts say that the accomplishment would be a stretch, though not impossible.

Outside analysts took the claim as the latest of several hard-to-verify assertions that the isolated country has made about its nuclear capabilities. But some also said that although North Korea did not yet have H-bomb capability, it might be developing and preparing to test a boosted fission bomb, more powerful than a traditional nuclear weapon.

Weapon designers can easily boost the destructive power of an atom bomb by putting at its core a small amount of tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen.

Lee Sang-cheol, the top nonproliferation official at the South Korean Defense Ministry, told a forum in Seoul last month that although Mr. Kim’s hydrogen bomb boasts might be propaganda for his domestic audience, there was a “high likelihood” that North Korea might have been developing such a boosted fission weapon.

And according to a paper obtained by the South Korean news agency Yonhap last week, the Chemical, Biological and Radiological Command of the South Korean military “did not rule out the possibility” of a boosted fission bomb test by the North, although it added it “does not believe it is yet capable of directly testing hydrogen bombs.”

For the Obama administration, which only six months ago defused the Iranian nuclear threat with an agreement to limit its capabilities for at least a decade, the announcement rekindles another major nuclear challenge — one that the administration has never found a way to manage.

The North has refused to enter the kind of negotiations that Iran did. Unlike Iran, which denies it has interest in nuclear weapons, the North has forged ahead with tests and told the West and China it would never give them up.

Mr. Obama, determined not to give the country new concessions, has neither acknowledged that North Korea is now a nuclear power nor negotiated with it. The White House has said that it would only restart talks with the North if the goal — agreed to by all parties — was a “denuclearized Korean Peninsula.”

China has also failed in its efforts to reign in Mr. Kim. He has never been invited to Beijing since his father’s death, and Chinese officials are fairly open in their expressions of contempt for him. But they have not abandoned him, or cut off the aid that keeps the country afloat.

With the test conducted Tuesday night — Wednesday in North Korea — three of the North’s four explosions will have occurred during Mr. Obama’s time in office.

Combined with the North’s gradually increasing missile technology, its nuclear program poses a growing threat to the region — though it is still not clear the North knows how to mount a nuclear weapon on one of its missiles.

The test is bound to figure in the American presidential campaign, where several candidates have already cited the North’s nuclear experimentation as evidence of American weakness — though they have not prescribed alternative strategies for choking off the program.

The United States did not develop its first thermonuclear weapons — commonly known as hydrogen bombs — until 1952, seven years after the first and only use of nuclear weapons in wartime, the weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Russia, China and other powers soon followed suit.

Iran unveils second underground missile site

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Oh, wonder if the Obama will give Tehran an Academy award for Iran’s theatrics, behavior and violations.

DUBAI (Reuters) – Iran unveiled a new underground missile depot on Tuesday with state television showing Emad precision-guided missiles in store which the United States says can take a nuclear warhead and violate a 2010 U.N. Security Council resolution.

The defiant move to publicize Iran’s missile program seemed certain to irk the United States as it plans to dismantle nearly all sanctions on Iran under a breakthrough nuclear agreement.

Tasnim news agency and state television video said the underground facility, situated in mountains and run by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, was inaugurated by the speaker of parliament, Ali Larijani. Release of one-minute video followed footage of another underground missile depot last October.

The United States says the Emad, which Iran tested in October, would be capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and U.S. officials say Washington will respond to the Emad tests with fresh sanctions against Iranian individuals and businesses linked to the program.

 

Iran’s boasting about its missile capabilities are a challenge for U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration as the United States and European Union plan to dismantle nearly all international sanctions against Tehran under the nuclear deal reached in July.

Iran has abided by the main terms of the nuclear deal, which require it to give up material that world powers feared could be used to make an atomic weapon and accept other restrictions on its nuclear program.

But President Hassan Rouhani ordered his defense minister last week to expand the missile program.

The Iranian missiles under development boast much improved accuracy over the current generation, which experts say is likely to improve their effectiveness with conventional warheads.

The Revolutionary Guards’ second-in-command, Brigadier General Hossein Salami, said last Friday that Iran’s depots and underground facilities are so full that they do not know how to store their new missiles.

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Iranian-Saudi Tensions May Distract Iran’s Efforts to Attack Israel

InvestigativeProject: The dramatic escalation in the Iranian-Saudi Arabian rivalry poses critical potential ramifications for Israeli national security, according to the former head of Israel’s National Security Council, Yaakov Amidror.

Amidror – also formerly the head of Israeli military intelligence – told the Jerusalem Post that he expects the Iranian-Saudi crisis to prolong the Syrian civil war, leading both sides to increase support for their respective proxies in that country.

Such a scenario can intensify Israeli concerns of unpredictable and radical terrorist organizations consolidating bases of operations on the Jewish state’s northern borders.

However, other analysts view Syrian fragmentation as a strategic benefit – at least temporarily removing Syria as a conventional military threat and forcing Iranian proxies, including Hizballah, to divert resources and manpower to the Syrian front instead of conducting major attacks against Israel.

According to this perspective, Iran will also be more preoccupied with confronting Saudi Arabia in other regional theaters – including Bahrain, Yemen, and Iraq.

“That doesn’t meant they won’t do anything [toward Israel]. This doesn’t mean, for instance, that this will influence Hezbollah [backed by Iran] not to carry out revenge attacks against Israel. But it means that whenever there is something, there will be someone in Iran who will say that they have other problems to think about; we will not be the only issue they will be focusing on,” Amidror said.

This assessment supports other analyses that believe Hizballah failed to effectively retaliate to Israel’s reported assassination of arch-terrorist Samir Kuntar. On Monday, Hizballah detonated a large explosive on the Israel-Lebanon border, targeting two military vehicles. Israel said it suffered no casualties. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) followed with artillery fire against Hizballah targets in Lebanon, but limited its response to avoid escalating tensions.

The relatively weak show of force from Hizballah suggests that the terrorist organization continues to be bogged down in the Syrian civil war, unwilling and incapable of seriously challenging Israel at the moment. Fighting in Syria has cost Hizballah as much as a quarter of its fighters, Israeli military affairs journalist Yossi Melman points out.

Those losses “neutralized the Shi’ite-Lebanese organization’s ability to act against Israel,” he writes. At the least, it makes the prospect of opening a second front with Israel less appealing. Hizballah still enjoys an arsenal of more than 100,000 rockets it can fire at Israel when it opts for a confrontation.

Even though Hizballah and other Iranian proxies continue to enhance their presence in the Golan Heights for the purposes of targeting Israel, recent Iranian-Saudi tensions will likely force terrorist organizations at Iran’s behest to focus more of their efforts and resources on other fronts beyond the Jewish state.

 

Saudi Arabia’s Anti-Iran Coalition Growing

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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.

****

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.