JERUSALEM, Israel – Saudi Arabia’s former intelligence chief blasted the Palestinian leadership for their foreign policy “failures” and outright rejection of the UAE-Israel peace deal in a scathing 40-minute interview that aired on Saudi television Monday.
“This low level of discourse is not what we expect from officials who seek to gain global support for their cause. Their transgression against the Gulf States’ leadership with this reprehensible discourse is entirely unacceptable,” former intel chief and US ambassador Bandar bin Sultan told Al-Arabiya TV.
Palestinian leaders strongly condemned Israel’s normalization with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain and warned other Arab states against formalizing ties with Israel. Bin Sultan accused the Palestinians of undermining their cause by missing critical opportunities to make forge ties with Israel and form their own independent state.
Iran like Turkey consistently supports Azerbaijan, the fourth Shiite Islamic majority nation in the world, while refraining from roundly condemning Christian Armenia, at a time that the two Caucasian nations are locked in fierce combat over the Nagorno Karabakh enclave. The fighting this week escalated to reciprocal attacks on their major cities.
Iran, whose supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is an ethnic Azeri, is home to four Azeri-speaking northwestern provinces, to which some separatist extremists refer as “South Azerbaijan.” Encouraging them could spark secessionist movements among Iran’s other minority groups. So while Iranian officials have voiced support for Azerbaijan’s integrity – Nagorno Karabakh was internationally recognized as part of its territory although the majority of it population are Armenian Christians – they did not echo Azeri lawmakers in Tehran, who this week accused Armenia of forming “an evil Islamophobic trio in the region” with Israel and the United States. Condemning Armenia as the aggressor would present Tehran with another problem: its clandestine supply of arms to Azerbaijan’s enemy. Video footage of Iranian arms trucks in Karabakh last April evoked strong denials in Tehran as being “utterly false,” after raising hackles in Baku. In the current outbreak, Iran was accused of allowing the transit of Russian arms to Armenia through its East Azerbaijan Province. This prompted another denial. Iran and Armenia are moreover long trade partners, and Tehran looks after important Armenian churches in the Azeri northwest.
Caught in the middle, Tehran has not surprisingly joined US, Russian and French calls for a ceasefire in the hostilities which erupted last month.
Those hostilities intensified this week, Nagorno-Karabakh claimed to have destroyed Azerbaijan’s military airport in Ganja, a city of 300,000 after its own town of Stepanakert was hit by enemy missiles. Both reported heavy casualties including many civilians.
Russia is a traditional ally of Armenia and maintains a large military base in that country.
Azerbaijan acknowledged using Israel-made drones in the fighting, with “devastating effect.” According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Israel sold Azerbaijan some $825 million worth of weapons between 2006 and 2019. Those exports included drones, loitering munitions, anti-tank missiles, and a surface-to-air missile system.
Azerbaijan’s ties with Israel are another factor in Tehran’s preference for a truce in the conflict. Iran certainly does not want to see Israel’s influence taking root near its borders.
The secretary of state said the Obama administration did not grasp the threat posed by China
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says the Chinese Communist Party represents the most significant outside threat to the United States.
“The greatest external threat that the United States faces over the medium and long term is the threat by the regime in China today, the Chinese Communist Party lead by General Secretary Xi Jinping,” Pompeo said during an interview Sunday on Fox News with conservative commentator Mark Levin.
Pompeo also said that the Obama administration did not grasp the threat posed by the Asian superpower.
Pray today for the integrity of the elections. Pray against those who would try to cheat, ballot harvest and influence the election in anyway.
Heavenly Father we come before you and ask for a free and fair election in November. We come against any entity or person who tries to cheat. Lord let only those who are educated and legally able to vote be allowed to cast a ballot. Lord Jesus put your men and women in office. Lord we want to be on your side, not try to influence you to be on our side. Father let us line up with the Word of God and vote Biblical Values in Jesus Name. Let God arise and His enemies be scattered!! Amen.
Great job Sen. Scott, our election needs to be done as soon as possible after the polls close. The longer it drags on the more the probability of fraud comes into play. Quick, accurate, and fair. Virus is over, vote in person.
A former scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory where U.S. nuclear weapons are designed was sentenced to probation and a fine for lying to an Energy Department counterspy operation about his recruitment by the Chinese government.
Turab Lookman, 68, of Santa Fe, New Mexico could have been imprisoned but instead was given five years’ probation and fined $75,000 for hiding his application to join China’s “Thousand Talents” program to recruit foreign scientists.
Mr. Lookman was indicted in May 2019 on three counts of lying about the recruitment effort.
He was charged with not revealing on a 2017 security questionnaire that he had been asked by a Chinese agent to join the talent recruitment program. A year later, he denied when asked by a Los Alamos counterintelligence official if he had been recruited by China for work with a university or other academic post. A third count involved lying to another federal investigator about the recruitment.
In January, Mr. Lookman pleaded guilty to one count of lying about his contacts with China. Two other charges were dropped. He could have faced up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
A new lawsuit, filed by the Attorney General of the U.S. Virgin Islands, Denise George, demands that flight logs from Jeffrey Epstein’s four helicopters and three planes be made public, sparking “panic” among the late socialite’s famous friends, according to reports from the U.K.’s Mirror and Daily Mail.
A war is brewing between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Turkey and Pakistan vowed to stand by Muslim Azerbaijan in what appears to become a war between Christianity and Islam on European soil.
usan Sandler, the daughter of billionaire banking giants Herb and Marion Sandler, announced Monday that she is investing $200 million in “racial justice groups” as part of an effort to build a liberal infrastructure in states “undergoing rapid demographic change” such as Texas, Florida, and Georgia. The move from Sandler, a longtime donor to Democratic candidates and groups, is the start of a transition away from the short-term world of supporting campaigns to a long-term effort at building power, according to the Times.
The source of Sandler’s cash injection is her parents’ subprime mortgage company, Golden West Financial Corp., which was sold to Wachovia Bank in 2006 for a reported $25 billion. The couple built its fortune by offering millions of adjustable-rate mortgage loans to individuals, many of whom couldn’t afford them and eventually defaulted on their homes.
While the Sandlers came away with billions of dollars, many blame the loans they offered for causing the burst of the U.S. housing bubble and resulting financial crisis of 2007. The defaulted loans cost Wachovia billions of dollars, forcing it to merge with Wells Fargo, which eventually agreed to pay a $50 million settlement to borrowers who were misled by the Sandlers.
Christian Conservative Coalition 