Made in Israel: Trump White House plagiarized Iran war manifesto from Israel-aligned think tank

Wyatt Reed and Max Blumenthal | The Grayzone

The Trump White House plagiarized its justification for attacking Iran from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, the main DC outfit promoting war with Tehran. The think tank was originally founded to "enhance Israel's image," and partners closely with the Israeli government.

The Trump Administration appeared to plagiarize its official justification for its war on Iran, copying almost word-for-word a document originally produced by the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), a pro-war think tank with close ties to Israeli intelligence which was originally founded to "enhance Israel's image."

The FDD document was authored by Tzvi Kahn, the former assistant director for policy and government affairs at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

A March 2, 2026 statement issued by the White House accusing Tehran of 44 instances of terrorism against American citizens is "virtually identical" to the list published by FDD in June 2025, analyst Stephen McIntyre noted Thursday.

While the White House did make superficial alterations to the text, they largely consisted of appending the label "Iran-backed" to every mention of groups like Hezbollah and Hamas. In the few instances where Trump administration officials bothered to make significant changes to the original FDD list, the edits were almost always made in service of "ratcheting up the underlying allegation," McIntyre concluded.

Among the most egregious examples was a 1996 attack on the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, which FDD originally said merely that Hezbollah al-Hejaz was "deemed responsible" for. In the White House version, however, the group's responsibility was "asserted as factual," explained McIntyre, noting that serious questions about the incident remain unanswered to this day. "Clinton's Defense Secretary William Perry subsequently wondered (along with many others) whether Khobar Towers should have been attributed to Al Qaeda," he wrote.

A 2009 investigation by journalist Gareth Porter based on interviews with over a dozen former CIA, FBI and Clinton administration officials demonstrated that the FBI's inquiry into the Khobar Towers attack was precooked to blame Iran, when Al Qaeda was mostly like the culprit. Porter found that Shia citizens of Saudi Arabia had been tortured into confessing to the crime by Saudi secret police.

Read more

Interview: Insider Sources Reporting MASSIVE Global Event Imminent

Armstrong Economics

The Yemen Tragedy Further Fueled by the West and Its Allies

Viktor Mikhin
New Eastern Outlook

A most sophisticated demagogy, blatant falsifying of facts, impudent interpretation of events with everything going upside down, these are the thoughts that come to one’s mind when one reads another forgery concocted in the West. We mean the statement addressed to Iran calling for the termination of the actions which are allegedly destabilizing the situation in the Persian Gulf. The statement was made by the governments of the US, the UK and their satellites: the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia, on June 24, as reported by the US Department of State press service. In this manifesto, contrary to the obvious facts, the signatories held Iran responsible for the escalation of the situation in Yemen and the attacks on the oil tankers on May 12 and June 13, urging the Islamic Republic to start searching for a diplomatic solution. The intensity of this demagogy, as the saying goes, is beyond the scale.

Let us however, in a quiet fashion and on the basis of the obvious facts, consider the situation in the Persian Gulf area and ask several questions. Did Iran or the poor Yemen suffering a score of internal problems, indeed attack Saudi Arabia? Did the Houthis indeed create a so-called Arab coalition which has consistently bombed the Saudi cities and villages killing the civilians? By no means. It was the Saudis, namely the Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud who took up the foreign policy responsibilities due to the old age and numerous diseases of his father, the King, and who gave the order sanctioning the rough intervention of Riyadh in internal affairs of the neighboring state of Yemen and the total bombing of the Yemen cities.

The leader of the Houthis and the President of the Supreme Revolutionary Committee (SRC) Mohammed Ali al-Houthi demanded the UN Secretary General to condemn the war crimes committed in Yemen. Among the crimes perpetrated by the coalition of the Arab countries (led by Saudi Arabia and supported by the countries of the West), the Houthi leader named the ruthless blockade of the Yemen people, the famine in the country, the ongoing air embargo, the blockade of the Red Sea ports, the mass murders (including those of children), the destruction of civil facilities targeted during the military attacks.

The UN strongly condemned the following Saudi air raid on the Yemen capital city of Sanaa which resulted in the death of many civilians, including five children; dozens of people were wounded. The head of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Henrietta Holsman Fore, speaking at the UN Security Council session, urged the international community to save the lives of the millions of Yemenite children. She emphasized that, since the beginning of the conflict in the country, according to official figures only, up to 10,000 children had been killed or wounded. According to the UN, the Saudi Air Force “aimed at the civilians systematically,” dropping bombs on hospitals, schools, weddings, funeral processions and even on the camps for the displaced persons escaping from bombing.

Read more

Saudi Arabia Lifts Travel Restrictions On Women

Zero Hedge

The gradual liberalization of Saudi Arabia's repressive laws and social mores continued on Thursday with WSJ reporting that Crown Prince MBS plans to drop restrictions barring women from traveling out of the country without a male guardian's permission. Though we suspect that this time, there will be no glowing NYT op-ed praising the young crown prince - the kingdom's de facto ruler - for his reformist tendencies and his respect for human rights.

It won't happen right away: WSJ says the kingdom plans to end the ban some time this year. The plan would end guardianship laws relating to travel for men and women over 18 years old. As it stands, women of any age, and men under 21, must have a guardian's permission to travel internationally. Soon, that won't be the case.

Read more

‘Irrational & unlawful’: UK govt dealt landmark defeat over arms sales to Saudi Arabia

RT

In a legal challenge brought by anti-arms trade campaigners, three of the UK’s top judges concluded that it was “irrational and unlawful” of the government to allow arms sales to Saudi Arabia without making proper checks. 

The UK Court of Appeal has ruled that the British government has “made no attempt” to assess whether Riyadh had breached international humanitarian law in the Yemen war.

… the process of decision-making by the Government was wrong in law in one significant respect.

However, the judges said that their ruling does not mean that UK arms export licences to Saudi Arabia have to be suspended immediately.

See also: UK report on ‘human rights’ forgets to mention Saudi Arabia in section on Yemen war

Saudi Arabia to Execute 18-year-old for Allegedly “Sowing Sedition”

Comment: And people prefer to have a hissy fit over Trump?

------------------

Almanar.com

Saudi Arabia is seeking the death penalty for an 18-year-old it detained in 2014 for protesting on his bicycle as a 10-year-old.

It would make him the fourth teenager to be executed this year.

Murtaja Qureiris was retrospectively arrested by Saudi police in 2014 for allegedly staging a number of protests during the country’s Arab Spring movement in 2011.

Saudi prosecutors claim that Qureiris’ alleged activities encouraged the “sowing of sedition” and made him part of “an extremist terror group,” which warranted the death penalty. Qureiris denies those charges.

Read more

Tulsi Gabbard: War With Iran 'Better Serves The Interests' of 'Netanyahu and Saudi Arabia' Than U.S.

Chris Menahan
Information Liberation

Democratic 2020 presidential candidate Rep Tulsi Gabbard spoke out against launching a war with Iran on Tucker Carlson's show Thursday and warned the consequences could be "devastating" for America.

From Fox News:

"I know where this path leads us and I'm concerned because the American people don't seem to be prepared for how devastating and costly such a war would be," Gabbard said Thursday during an appearance on Fox News' "Tucker Carlson Tonight."

[...] "So, what we are facing is, essentially, a war that has no frontlines, total chaos, engulfs the whole region, is not contained within Iran or Iraq but would extend to Syria and Lebanon and Israel across the region, setting us up in a situation where, in Iraq, we lost over 4,000 of my brothers and sisters in uniform," Gabbard said. "A war with Iran would take far more American lives, it would cost more civilian lives across the region."

Read more

Will the US ever be held accountable for its war crimes?

Jean Perier
New Eastern Outlook

For more than a decade, the United States has been steadily increasing the scale of its illegal military operations across the Middle East, resulting in hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths.

Eighteen years ago, the US invaded Afghanistan under the pretext of ousting the Taliban who allegedly granted sanctuary to Al-Qaeda. According to a study released by Brown University, more than 140,000 Afghan militants and civilians have died in the fight.

Since December 2001, the United States has been conducting various operations in Somali, and even today the Pentagon carries out both air strikes and ground operations, accompanied by a constant toll of civilian lives.

Back in 2003, Washington launched Operation Iraq Freedom to strip Saddam Hussein of WMDs he didn't even have and to convert Iraq into a «democracy», plunging this country into a state of perpetual chaos guaranteeing that it will remain a Western bastion in the Arab and Islamic World for years to come.

Eight years ago, the US succeeded in destabilizing Libya, when US warplanes attacked the troops of Libya's most successful ruler to date - Muammar Gaddafi. Back then, Washington took every step to ensure his government would be ousted and and its key leaders murdered. The Libyan conflict has since produced tens of thousands of dead. In 2016, Barack Obama said that Libya was probably the "worst mistake" of his presidency.

The seven years of war in Syria resulted in a death toll of half a million Syrian nationals. Here, American troops are stationed illegally to fight ISIS and "indigenous ground forces." The strange wording that Washington uses in its official rhetoric is no coincidence, since more than on one occasion US armed forces have opened fire on both Syrian government troops and civilians, with no official rationale ever being given to explain this brutality.

In Yemen, the United States has been backing Saudi Arabia's efforts to put an end to the Houthi rebellion for three years. Washington carries on supplying Saudi authorities with high-precision weapons, combat aircraft and intelligence. This war has already triggered the largest humanitarian catastrophe of the 21st century, with 20 million people finding themselves on the brink of starvation. 

Read more

Student slated to attend Western Michigan University beheaded in Saudi Arabia

David Jesse
Detroit Free Press
via sott.net

A Saudi Arabian man who was arrested as a teenager as he was getting ready to fly to America to begin his studies at Western Michigan University was beheaded by the government Tuesday, according to a report from an official press agency.

Mujtaba al-Sweikat was 17 when he was detained at King Fahd International Airport in 2012. Earlier that year, Al-Sweikat allegedly attended a pro-democracy rally in the midst of the Arab Spring, which led to his arrest. He was intending to visit Western Michigan, where he had been accepted as a student, the university confirmed to the Free Press in 2017.

More than 35 people, including al-Sweikat, were listed on a release from the Saudi Press Agency, announcing the killings.

Sweikat was charged with armed disobedience against the king, as well as attacking, shooting and injuring security forces, civilians and passersby. He was also accused of destroying public property, causing chaos and disrupting the peace, by participating in a terrorist cell, to make and deliver Molotov cocktails.      

During his time in custody, Sweikat was severely beaten all over his body, including the soles of his feet, and convicted on the basis of a confession extracted through torture, according to Reprieve, an international human rights group that has offices in New York and London and operates with partners around the world.

After his arrest, he was not allowed to contact anybody for three days, and his family were not allowed to visit him for three months, during which time he was kept in solitary confinement, according to Reprieve.

Congresswoman Debbie Dingell, D-Dearborn, expressed her concern over the killing.

Read more 

See also: UK slams Saudi beheadings, but arms sales for Riyadh's Yemen war still go on

Jeremy Hunt is lying about Britain’s role in Yemen

Stop The War Coalition

In a recent Politico article Jeremy Hunt, foreign secretary, has defended the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia and The UAE. Arms that are often used in perpetuating Yemen’s civil war. Hunt claims the UK-Saudi relationship ‘Helps us influence their leaders’ toward peaceful resolution. In reality, Britain’s supply of arms only feeds the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

The multi Billion pound Al Yamamah (The Dove) arms deal provides Saudi Arabia with 25% of its arms imports for use fighting Houthi forces in Yemen. As the second largest arms supplier to the Saudi led coalition Britain is culpable in its infamous war crimes. Such atrocities have included bombing a wedding party killing 20 civilians; bombing a funeral killing 140 civilians and wounding 600 more; and even an air attack on a school bus leaving 40 Yemeni children dead. British firm BAE systems provides the typhoon jets used for this type of air to surface attacks. No wonder that the UK wouldn’t back a UN investigation into Saudi war crimes.

Tens of thousands of Yemenis have been killed in the conflict, and millions more displaced. Combined with mass starvation and a cholera epidemic Yemen is now the site of the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. 

Read more

Death of Free Speech: Criticizing Israel Will Land You in Prison

Kurt Nimmo

Soon, this blog will be illegal.

No, I’m not selling drugs or peddling child pornography. I write about America’s wars and the primary objective of those illegal and immoral wars—to make Israel the hegemon of the Middle East along with Saudi Arabia. All US foreign policy in that region centers on those two nations.

The following may soon be classified as hate speech and anti-semitism (as increasingly criticism of the Jewish state and its Zionist political ideology are considered crimes). 

Jewish neocons found their way into the Reagan administration and later the Bush Junior White House and Pentagon. Huddled under the wing of Vice President Dick Cheney, they plotted to attack and destroy Israel’s enemies. Neocon ideologues strategized and published papers on these manufactured wars, most notably a paper presented to then Israeli president Bibi Netanyahu. It called for taking out Iraq and Syria. Israeli academics have written on this subject for decades. The nation’s early leaders engineered border provocations and false flag attacks (the Lavon Affair) to destabilize the region. Southern Lebanon is considered a valuable asset primarily for its water resources (e.g. “Operation Litani”) and the Golan Heights in Syria was occupied for its strategic value. 

Israel, of course, is unable to destroy its enemies, so that task is left to America and its neocons. The American people were lied into a war on Iraq. Both Israel and the US knew Saddam Hussein didn’t have the capability to threaten Israel militarily. Beyond its oil, Iraq held little strategic value for the US and its corporatocracy. However, it did have the ability to cause trouble, especially in regard to the Palestinians. 

Syria’s relationship with its Lebanese neighbor and its stubborn refusal to simply handover the occupied Golan to the Israelis is also a problem. It was one of several objectives behind a manufactured color revolution in Syria under the aegis of the “Arab Spring,” an objective that has thus far resulted in the murder of around 600,000 Syrians. 

The Bush era neocons (including John Bolton, now national security adviser, and Elliot Abrams, a key Bush coconspirator) had an ambitious laundry list of nations to be destroyed—Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and importantly Iran, the only serious challenger to Israel. The Obama administration added Libya and began covert operations in Africa. 

Trump took the baton from Obama after he told us he wasn’t into “nation-building” and was a populist “America First” noninterventionist. The American people were lied to again, but then this is now normal behavior. 

After 9/11 and years of aggressive war propaganda, it is now common for the American people to believe these lies. Meanwhile, endless diversion in the form of super-hyper and potentially violent partisanship between factions of the establishment political class keep most Americans distracted from larger issues—war and the bankster-rigged economy. It should be noted that criticism of central banks and monetary policy are also considered hateful antisemitism. 

In short, US foreign policy, directed by high-level neocons, is not conducted in the interest of the American people. It benefits Israel, which also takes billions every year from the American taxpayer.

Read more

Foreign backed terrorism in Iran: Part one -US/Israeli backed Salafists in Iran

Aram Mirzaei
The Saker blog 

While terrorism is a phenomenon most of us have come in touch with during our lifetime, much of the coverage is shadowed by terrorism in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Iraq, where US backed terrorist groups have wreaked havoc in devastating the wars that have plagued these countries.

Nonetheless, terrorism is widespread across the region, even in Iran. Due to Iran’s relatively strong internal stability, terrorist groups have been unable to catch major headlines in the Islamic Republic as terrorist groups often conduct hit and run attacks or the occasional kidnappings of young drafted border guards and soldiers near the Pakistan/Afghanistan border areas as well as across Iran’s western borders towards Iraq. Some groups are motivated by separatist goals, while others are driven by religious extremism. In this first part I will cover terrorism across Iran’s eastern borders, one that is driven by the Salafist ideology.

Iran has been familiar with terrorism for many decades through the Saddam Hussein-backed “People’s Mujahideen”, a strange group of “Marxist-Islamists” who waged war on their own country in an attempt to grab power, shortly after the Islamic Revolution. During Saddam’s 8 year war on Iran they were backed and armed by Iraqi security forces, often resorting to terrorist attacks, killing many innocent people in the process. While this group was effectively defeated, it has nonetheless survived as it was sheltered by the Saddam regime and recently have found refuge in Albania. I will come back to this group later.

Since the 9/11 attacks when Al-Qaeda became a household name, Takfiri groups have become increasingly widespread in the Middle East and central Asia. Many Takfiri groups have found their haven in neighbouring Pakistan which they use as a home base to launch cross border attacks on Afghanistan and Iran. Pakistan’s government and security apparatus are known to support Takfiri groups across the region, at the behest of WaTakshington, a fact that former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf admitted to.

Pakistan is home to multiple Saudi funded so called Madrasas, terrorist recruitment centres focused on brainwashing young men into joining militant groups with similar ideologies such as the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. For decades, since the days of the Soviet-Afghan war, Islamabad has used terrorism as a tool for its foreign policy towards its neighbours. But it is important to understand that Islamabad and Pakistan’s security services are working for Washington’s interests, because had they had their own interests at heart, they wouldn’t allow the Waziristan province to turn into a terrorist controlled region in the country, endangering the lives of Pakistanis across the country. These Takfiri groups have committed heinous crimes against Pakistanis as well, such as the notorious Peshawar school shootings of 2014 where 132 schoolchildren were murdered.

Since 2003, Iran has been plagued by Takfiri terrorism that has penetrated through Iran’s south-eastern borders into the Sistan and Baluchistan province. One of the more active groups in the region was the Jundallah terrorist group, made up of the predominantly Sunni Muslim Baluchis (a people living in southeastern Iran and southwestern Pakistan). Jundallah claimed to be fighting for Baluchi rights in Iran while also espousing the formation of a Sunni Baluchi state. From their bases in Pakistan, over the course of 8 years, Jundallah conducted multiple terrorist attacks in Iran, such as the 2007 Zahedan bombings where 18 members of the IRGC were killed. 

Read more

Alleged Khashoggi killers received training in US

RT

At least some Saudi agents involved in the grisly murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi were trained in the US as part of Washington's broader plan to 'modernize' Saudi intelligence, a new report by the Washington Post says.

Members of the 'Saudi Rapid Intervention Group', which was allegedly sent to the Istanbul Consulate in October 2018 to deal with the self-exiled journalist and critic of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, underwent training in America as part of a program launched under a State Department license, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius wrote, citing Saudi and US sources.

The CIA reportedly warned other government agencies that the special-operations training the Saudis might have received was conducted by Tier 1 Group, an Arkansas-based company as part of ongoing liaison with the Saudis. The hit-team's alleged leader, Colonel Maher Mutreb, is said to be the one who received the training. Mutreb reportedly served in London as deputy chief of station between 2002 and 2007, and was later repeatedly sent to the US and elsewhere for training, Ignatius said.

Mutreb himself reportedly told his friends in Saudi Arabia that he had gone to several training programs in the US over the past decade. Washington also planned to launch a broader training program for Saudis, which was developed by a private firm called Culpeper National Security Solutions with help from some former CIA officials.

One of the Saudi contacts who was involved in the program's development was Major General Ahmed al-Assiri, Riyadh's deputy intelligence chief, who is now also under investigation over possible involvement in the Khashoggi killing.

The Culpeper board was led by Michael Morell, the former acting director of the CIA who, it is claimed, quit the project following the high-profile murder, according to Ignatius. 

Read more

UK special forces injured in ‘top secret’ Yemen campaign

Middle Eastern Monitor

At least five British Special Forces commandos have been wounded in gun battles as part of a top-secret UK military campaign in Yemen. The troops are all said to be members of the Special Boat Service (SBS), the Royal Navy’s equivalent of the British Army’s SAS, which recruits mainly from the Royal Marines. The SBS specialises in “mounting clandestine operations against targets at sea, in rivers or harbours and against occupied coastlines”, says the Armed Forces website.

As the UK Government welcomes the Saudi Crown Prince’s first official visit to London, Save the Children has unveiled a life-size statue of a child outside Parliament. The bronze-like statue is a reminder of the dangers that Yemeni children face every day and the risks of British-made bombs fuelling the violence [Save The Children]

The men, who are understood to be now recovering in the UK, were injured during a “top-secret” military campaign, according to the Mail on Sunday. They were treated for leg and arm wounds following battles in the Saada area of northern Yemen, where up to 30 British troops are based.

The Mail on Sunday also revealed how RAF engineers sent to Saudi Arabia to repair the kingdom’s fleet of military aircrafts narrowly escaped death last week. Iranian-backed rebels are reported to have launched a “suicide drone” strike on the King Khalid airbase, where they are maintaining Tornado jets used to bomb civilian areas in Yemen.

Read more

Saudi Arabia Has Become the World’s Top Arms Buyer

ANTIWAR.COM 

Most reports on international arms sales focus on the biggest sellers. That inevitably means the United States, the largest exporter by far in the growing market. You can’t have sales without buyers, however, and that side of the equation centers heavily on the Middle East.

Middle Eastern countries now buy more than a third of all global arms. The biggest customer not just in the Middle East but in the world, is Saudi Arabia, whose purchases have soared 192% over a five year period.

Locked in an endless war in Yemen, and always looking toward a war with Iran, Saudi Arabia has seen its military spending soar in recent years. Recent estimates have put Saudi Arabia at the third costliest military on Earth, behind on the US and China, and ahead of Russia.

Unlike the US, China, or Russia, however, Saudi Arabia lacks a huge decades-old military-industrial complex to make all their weapons of war. Instead, the Saudis are pouring into overseas contracts, buying vast amounts of arms from the US and Britain.

The Saudis show no sign of slowing down on this, but it isn’t clear how sustainable this is either. Already, Saudi war crimes are fueling a lot of calls to rethink arms sales to them. 

Read more

Lockheed gets $1 billion down payment for Saudi THAAD missile system

Reuters

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Lockheed Martin Corp will receive the first payment toward the installation a $15 billion missile defense system in Saudi Arabia as part of a $110 billion arms package the Trump administration said it negotiated with the Kingdom in 2017, the Pentagon said on Monday.

The Pentagon awarded Lockheed a $946 million payment for the foreign military sale.

In November, the Saudis and U.S. officials signed the letters of offer and acceptance formalizing terms for Saudi’s purchase of 44 THAAD launchers, missiles and related equipment.

As a part of the scope of work outlined by the Pentagon, obsolete systems currently in place will be updated to prepare the current Saudi missile defense infrastructure for the new Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) technology.

The contract also allows Lockheed to pay for materials, tooling and engineering development among other work.

The Pentagon announced the payment as an “undefinitized contract action,” a partial payment that will go to Lockheed Martin and prevent major delays in production of the new missile defense system in Saudi Arabia.

Read More

UK councils invest £566m in arms firms linked to Yemen war

theguardian.com

More than half a billion pounds of council workers’ pension money has been directly invested by local authorities in arms companies implicated in Saudi Arabia’s military campaign in Yemen, in which thousands of civilians have been killed.

Council pension funds have sizeable shareholdings in BAE Systems, Airbus, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, according to nearly 100 freedom of information requests.

Between them, 43 pension funds directly hold shares worth £566m in the five companies and earned more than £18.5m in dividends in 2018, a period in which civilian deaths reportedly surged and a punishing famine took hold.

The councils also hold hundreds of millions of pounds in shares in the five companies via pooled investments, which they do not control directly.

The holdings mean thousands of local authority staff will have their retirement payouts part-funded by the companies, some of which manufacture arms linked to incidents in which civilians and children were killed.

The Guardian gathered the data through the freedom of information website 
WhatDoTheyKnow.com.

Read More

NGO’s Warn That Half The Population Of Yemen Is On Brink Of Famine

NWO Report

Thirty-five non-governmental organization have demanded an immediate end to hostilities in Yemen, warning that the Saudi-led coalition’s war against the country has put 14 million people on the verge of famine.

The UN has also warned that Yemen is on brink of ‘world’s worst famine in 100 years‘ if airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition continued.

In a statement on Wednesday both Yemeni and international NGO’s said : “With 14 million men, women and children on the brink of famine – half of the country’s population – there has never been a more urgent time to act”

Press TV reports: The statement also called on the world to “secure an immediate cessation of hostilities” and “suspend the supply of arms at risk of being used in Yemen”.

“We call on governments to redouble their efforts to guarantee unimpeded access to essential items… including through the lifeline port of Hudaydah, where civilians have been caught in renewed fighting over the past few days.”

The humanitarian crisis in Yemen is manmade and a direct consequence of the severe restrictions on access to food, fuel, medical imports and humanitarian aid, it added.

The appeal was signed by Oxfam, Action Against Hunger, Doctors of the World, the International Federation for Human Rights, CARE International, and Yemeni organizations.

Saudi Arabia has been incessantly pounding Yemen since March 2015 in an attempt to crush the popular Houthi movement and reinstate former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, a staunch ally of the Riyadh regime.

One of the principle targets of the Saudi strikes is Hudaydah port, where the World Food Programme is finding it hard or impossible to access desperately-needed wheat stocks. Yemen is heavily dependent on food imports and the deadly ground and aerial attacks by the Riyadh regime and its allies are directly adding to the risk of starvation on a massive scale.

According to a new report by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit conflict-research organization, the Saudi-led war has so far claimed the lives of around 56,000 Yemenis.

Saudi Arabia Issues Royal Pardon for Everything Soldiers Have Done in Yemen

Jason Ditz
Anti-War

On Tuesday, Saudi Arabia announced that it is issuing a royal pardon for any and all Saudi troops engaged in the war in Yemen, covering all crimes related to violating military rules and discipline. They said this is to show appreciation for the “heroics” of the invading forces.

The Saudi invasion of Yemen has been widely controversial internationally. Saudi airstrikes have killed massive numbers of Yemeni civilians, and the war has also caused a famine, and the largest cholera epidemic in human history.

Faced with UN criticism, Saudi officials heavily resisted allegations of wrongdoing, and ultimately got the UN to agree that Saudi Arabia would be allowed to investigate its own forces, and police themselves. This pardon shows none of that is going to matter.

It is unclear what prompted the pardon to be offered no, as the war shows no sign of ending, and there is no suggestion from official reports that the Saudis had punished any of their troops more than nominally for war crimes in the first place.

Yemen’s Houthis Down Saudi Jet as It Returned From a Bombing Run

Mint Press News

On Thursday morning, Yemen’s Air Defense Force shot down an aircraft belonging to the Saudi-led coalition with a surface-to-air missile after it took part in airstrikes against residential villages in northern Saada. The Saudi-led coalition confirmed that it lost a Tornado fighter jet, but claims the aircraft fell due to a technical issue and that the pilot survived the crash.

A Yemeni military source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told MintPress that the fighter jet was targeted after it launched airstrikes against residential villages in the Alaf district in Yemen`s northwestern province of Saada.

The incident was reported on the Yemeni Army’s official website, September 26th. A statement on the site read, “The hostile plane fell after returning from carrying out hostile missions in Saada province,” but gave no further details.

This is not the first time Yemen’s military has successfully downed a coalition aircraft. In fact, Yemeni forces have successfully shot down high-tech coalition aircraft on several occasions.

Read more