Important Takeaways:
- Members of the so-called Five Eyes spy alliance, as well as Israeli and Saudi officials, fear the identities of foreign assets could inadvertently be shared with Moscow.
- The allies, including Israel, Saudi Arabia and members of the so-called Five Eyes spy alliance of English-speaking democracies, are examining how to possibly revise current protocols for sharing intelligence to take the Trump administration’s warming relations with Russia into account, the sources said
- “Those discussions are already happening,” said a source with direct knowledge of the discussions.
- No decision or action has been taken, however, the sources said.
- Asked about allies’ possibly limiting what they share with the United States, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council said President Donald Trump is “clear-eyed” about America’s adversaries.
- “The U.S. has unrivaled intelligence capabilities which is exactly why intelligence sharing initiatives such as the Five Eyes exist,” spokesman Brian Hughes said in an email.
- “President Trump is clear-eyed on all threats our adversaries pose to our national security and he will work with any ally or partner who understands the dangerous world inherited after the disastrous Biden years,” he added. “On Biden’s watch, we had the war in Ukraine, the surrender in Afghanistan, and the slaughter of the innocents on October 7th.”
- Publicly, longtime U.S. allies downplayed the issue. The United Kingdom, the most important U.S. intelligence partner, said it had no plans to reduce intelligence cooperation with the United States.
- The Canada Security Intelligence Service said in a statement that it has strong relationships with numerous U.S. agencies that are “long-standing and resilient.
- An Israeli official also praised its alliance with the U.S., saying “Cooperation between Israel and the United States on every level, including the sharing of crucial intelligence data, is as strong and solid as ever.”
- Officials from New Zealand, Australia and Saudi Arabia did not respond to requests for comment.
- Some officials in allied countries, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence matters, played down the idea that Trump’s policies on Russia would disrupt information sharing that dates back decades
Read the original article by clicking here.
Important Takeaways:
- Diplomats from the United States and Russia met and spoke at the U.S. consul general’s residence in Istanbul, Turkey for over six hours on Thursday, the latest meeting between the countries in a bid to normalize diplomatic relations before moving on to the larger matter of finding a solution to the Ukraine War. The discussions were said to have been focused on allowing the two countries to return to being able to properly operate embassies in each other’s’ nations.
- An agreement was reached to hold further meetings although when and where was not stated.
- Thursday’s talk followed another in-person meeting between Russian and American delegations in Saudi Arabia last week, the first such meeting between the nations in years, and a phone call between President Donald Trump and President Vladimir Putin before that. An ambition of these talks is to get diplomatic relations between the states to a point where the two leaders are able to meet in-person to negotiate an end to the Ukraine War, but no meaningful progress on that has been made public.
- One facet of talks so far has been grumbling from Europe and Ukraine in particular about their not having been invited to these talks. While U.S. diplomats have been mollifying, pointing out these first meetings are specifically about American-Russian relations and Europe and Ukraine will have a seat at the table when relevant in the future, Russia’s Putin was more direct, warning European leaders not to attempt to undermine the process.
Read the original article by clicking here.
Important Takeaways:
- Arab leaders will gather in Saudi Arabia on Friday to counter US President Donald Trump’s plan for American control of Gaza and the expulsion of its inhabitants, diplomatic and government sources said.
- The plan stirred rare unity among Arab states which roundly rejected the idea, but they could still disagree over who will govern the enclave and who will pay for reconstruction.
- Meeting with Trump in Washington on February 11, Jordan’s King Abdullah II said Egypt would present a plan for a way forward.
- The Saudi source said the talks would discuss “a version of the Egyptian plan” the king mentioned.
- Friday’s summit was originally planned for Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Jordan. However, it has been expanded to include the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries and the Palestinian Authority.
- Egypt has not yet announced its counter-initiative, but Egyptian former diplomat Mohamed Hegazy described a plan “in three technical phases over a period of three to five years.”
- The last phase would include “launching a political track to implement the two-state solution and so that there is… an incentive for a sustainable truce.”
- However, even if all these obstacles are overcome, the proposal is likely to be rejected out of hand by Israel, whose government has consistently ruled out any Palestinian Authority role in managing Gaza after the war.
Read the original article by clicking here.
Important Takeaways:
- A Trump administration team led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio sat down for four hours with senior representatives of Russian President Vladimir Putin in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in the first such meeting since Russia deepened an invasion of Ukraine that launched the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War II.
- Neither Ukraine nor any European actor was invited to the talks
- “This is the start of a long process,” Rubio told reporters after the meeting.
- The two sides agreed on a “consultation mechanism to address irritants to our bilateral relationship,” the State Department said.
- They also agreed to appoint “high-level teams to begin working on a path to ending the conflict in Ukraine as soon as possible in a way that is enduring, sustainable, and acceptable to all sides.”
- President Trump, for whom foreign policy is largely transactional, has said he “just wants the killing to stop” at any cost.
- Tuesday’s meeting was a follow-up to Trump’s telephone conversation with Putin last week. Trump essentially ceded to Putin’s main demands: Ukraine will have to give up territory seized illegally by Russia, and must give up its goal of joining NATO.
Read the original article by clicking here.
Important Takeaways:
- Palestinians’ War on Israel and US Senators’ Delusional ‘Two-State Solution’
- Less than 48 hours after 20 US Democratic Senators urged President Joe Biden to push for the establishment of a Palestinian state as part of a normalization agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia, Iran’s Palestinian terror proxies launched a massive attack on Israel, killing more than 700 Israeli men, women and children, and wounding thousands more. An unknown number of Israelis (estimated at more than 100), including infants, toddlers and an elderly Holocaust survivor in a wheelchair, have also been kidnapped and taken to the Gaza Strip.
- The two groups [Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad] do not recognize the Oslo Accords that were signed between the PLO and Israel in 1993-1995, and they are opposed to the establishment of a Palestinian state only in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. The only solution they believe in is one that would see Israel replaced with an Islamic state.
- Instead of condemning the Palestinians for transforming the Gaza Strip into a base for Jihad against Israel, the Senators who signed the letter are asking the Biden Administration to give the Palestinians another state in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. Like the Gaza Strip, the new Palestinian state will also be quickly transformed into an Iran-backed terror entity and a base for pursuing the Jihad against Israel.
- In their letter, [the Senators] make no mention of the tens of thousands of rockets fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel over the past two decades
- The Senators also failed to mention the wave of Palestinian terrorism that Israel has been facing over the past two years in the West Bank
- The Senators further ignore Abbas’s “Pay-for-Slay” program that rewards terrorists and their families, as well as the Palestinians’ ongoing campaign of incitement to violence
- The Palestinians [in 2005] were given, with no conditions, the entire Gaza Strip. They replied by launching tens of thousands of rockets into Israel. These are inconvenient facts that the 20 Democratic Senators, who appear to be shockingly uninformed, do not want to acknowledge.
Read the original article by clicking here.
Important Takeaways:
- FBN’s, Energy Analyst Flynn: We Can’t Do Anything About Saudi, Russian Oil Cuts Because SPR Is Drained
- FOX Business Contributor and Price Futures Group Senior Account Executive Phil Flynn stated that consumers will feel the rise in crude oil prices in the wake of Saudi Arabia and Russia extending production cuts, and noted that due to the low levels in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve due to releases from the reserve, “there’s not anything that we can do about” Saudi Arabia and Russia “trying to stick it to the United States” by slashing oil production.
- Host Bret Baier asked, “[C]rude oil prices rising above $87 for the first time since November ’22. The last time oil neared $90, the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve had 250 million more barrels of crude oil than it does. And if you look at the last three months, it’s a steady rise here. So, consumers are feeling it, right?”
- Flynn responded, “They’re going to be feeling it, and probably more than ever. And it’s great that you pointed out the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, because the releases from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, Bret, gave the market this false sense of confidence that everything was okay in the global oil market. By releasing that oil, though, they artificially lowered prices. They discouraged investment. So, U.S. oil production is starting to plateau at a time [when] it normally would be rising to meet demand. That’s not happening. That’s leaving a void. And now, Saudi Arabia and Russia are taking advantage of this, trying to stick it to the United States by cutting production, and there’s not anything that we can do about it.”
Read the original article by clicking here.
Important Takeaways:
- A Saudi court has sentenced a man to death over his posts on X, formerly known as Twitter, and his activity on YouTube, the latest in a widening crackdown on dissent in the kingdom that has drawn international criticism.
- “Al-Ghamdi’s death sentence over tweets is extremely horrific but stands in line with the Saudi authorities’ escalating crackdown,”
- The sentences appear part of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s wider effort to stamp out any defiance in the kingdom as he pursues massive building projects and other diplomatic deals to raise his profile globally.
Read the original article by clicking here.
Important Takeaways:
- Saudi Arabia to extend voluntary 1 million barrel per day crude oil production cut into September
- Heavyweight oil producer Saudi Arabia will extend a 1 million barrel per day voluntary crude output cut into September, in the third month of such declines, the state-owned Saudi Press Agency said Thursday.
- “In effect, the Kingdom’s production for the month of September 2023 will be approximately 9 million barrels per day,” it said, citing a source from the Saudi Ministry of Energy.
- The 1 million barrel per day cut, which was also implemented in July and August, “can be extended or extended and deepened,” SPA said.
Read the original article by clicking here.
Revelations 6:3-4 “when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” 4 And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.
Important Takeaways:
- Despite the White House’s rhetoric about supporting global democracy, the U.S. sold weapons in 2022 to 57 percent of the world’s authoritarian regimes.
- The Biden administration has helped increase the military power of a large number of authoritarian countries.
- According to their data, a total of 142 countries and territories bought weapons from the U.S. in 2022, for a total of $85 billion in bilateral sales.
- Russia’s invasion of Ukraine didn’t occur until five months into fiscal year 2022, and much of the assistance from the United States to Ukraine took the form of grants (not sales) and the transfer of materiel from Pentagon stockpiles through the presidential drawdown authority.
- While Biden signaled early on that his arms sales policy would be based primarily on strategic and human rights considerations, not just economic interests, he broke from that policy not too long after entering office by approving weapons sales to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and other authoritarian regimes
Read the original article by clicking here.
Revelations 18:23:’For the merchants were the great men of the earth; for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived.’
Important Takeaways:
- Saudi Arabia Is Open To Discuss Non-Dollar Oil Trade Settlements
- In Davos, Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Finance Mohammed Al-Jadaan surprised the world’s oil industry by saying that they are open to the possibility of conducting oil trade in a currency other than the US dollar.
- “There are no issues with discussing how we settle our trade arrangements, whether it is in the US dollar, whether it is the euro, whether it is the Saudi riyal,” he said. This is another blow to the dominance of the dollar in world trade.
- However, Saudi Arabia is willing to deepen its strategic cooperation in oil trade with China, the world’s largest crude oil importer.
- Last month, China and Saudi Arabia agreed to expand crude oil trade as they upgraded their relations to a strategic partnership during the visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping in the Saudi capital Riyadh.
- China, for its part, plans to make its own currency, the yuan, more prominent in international oil trade.
- During a visit to Saudi Arabia last month, Xi Jinping pledged to ramp up efforts to promote the use of the yuan in energy deals, suggesting at a summit in the Saudi capital that the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries should make full use of the Shanghai Petroleum and Natural Gas Exchange to carry out its trade settlements in yuan.
Read the original article by clicking here.
