Actualités au Moyen Orient

Kursad2 a écrit:

La Turquie n'est pas un pays musulman en soit. C'est pas parce qu'Erdogan dit des choses par populisme que l'État Turc est un État musulman. Aucune loi, aucun article de la constitution parle de l'islam. Erdogan est au pouvoir depuis le début des années 2000 mais il n'a jamais introduit un seul mot d'Islam au sein de l'État (constitution et loi).
Et puis Musulman ca veut dire quoi? Le petit-fils du Prophète sws est mort au bord de l'Euphratr avant d'atteindre l'Euphrate.
La politique étrangère ne doit jamais faire l'objet de sentimentalisme et d'idéologie. C'est pour ça qu'on a de mauvaise relation avec Israël entre autres car même si les intérêts sont communs les idéologies divergent.
Les Syriens et les Irakiens sont accueillit en Turquie mais ils devront regagner leur pays une fois la guerre finie. C'est déjà le cas de l'Irak.

Tyler Headley - The National Interest a écrit:

The Coming Fight for Middle Eastern Water

With U.S. troops already deployed to Israel, Jordan and Syria, another war in the Jordan River Basin would impact not just the countries therein, but also the United States.

Only two decades into the twenty-first century, there have already been six conflicts with more than ten thousand casualties in the Middle East. Further threatening an embroiled region, many analysts warn that more conflict could be on the horizon: wars fought over water. In the words of UN Under Secretary General Hans van Ginkel, “conflicts over water, both international and civil wars, threaten to become a key part of the twenty-first century landscape.” Unless the looming potential for conflict can be abated, the United States and its allies will be drawn into yet another war in the Middle East.

Resource scarcities are rife and rising in conflict-prone areas like the Nile region, Iraq and Yemen. Still other countries, like Somalia and Sudan, recently experienced famine or droughts that were linked to banditry and sub-state conflict. But the region with the most worrying potential for interstate conflict over a lack of resources namely water—might be the Jordan River Basin. Not only is the basin one of the most water-deprived places per capita, but it also comprises countries with previous histories of conflict: Syria, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and Jordan.

Until the mid-twentieth century, water was an abundant resource in the Jordan River Basin. Irrigation and canal systems sustained water availability even as the basin’s population grew, and bilateral agreements prevented most violence. But today’s bipartite mixture of regional instability and decreasing water supplies could destabilize the détente.

Violence over water in the Jordan River Basin has previously occurred. Israeli defense minister Ariel Sharon noted that “in reality, [the Six Days War] started . . . on the day Israel decided to act against the diversion of the Jordan [River].” (The Arab League had been helping supply Syria, Jordan and Lebanon with the knowledge and resources to divert the Jordan River away from Israel.) Non-state actors in the region have also previously perpetrated water-based violence: in 1965 the Palestinian National Liberation Movement, later renamed Fatah, employed guerilla-style attacks on the National Water Carrier of Israel, an infrastructural project bringing water from the Sea of Galilee to the center and south of Israel.

Since the 1960s, a number of lesser-known conflicts and disputes took place over water. According to the Pacific Institute , which amalgamated a database on worldwide conflicts related to water, there have been ninety-two water-related incidents in the Middle East. Most of these were attributable to developmental disputes, terrorism or incidents where water was used as a military tool or target. Still, there have been fewer conflicts over water than other natural resources, such as oil, defying Egyptian diplomat and UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s 1985 prediction that “the next war in the Middle East will be fought over water, not politics.”

The current balance of power in the Jordan River Basin may be undermined by climate change-related resource-deficiencies. Advanced climate models forecast that the Levant’s water deprivation in the twenty-first century could reach catastrophic levels. According to a 2010 study by Jeannie Sowers, Avner Vengosh, and Erika Weinthal, the Levant will experience a 25 percent decrease in annual precipitation by the end of the twenty-first century. Even more eye-opening is a 2007 article by Mousa Mohsen, which reported that should current trends hold, the per capita water supply in Jordan will more than halve . Certain countries, already weakened from civil war or political instability, will be more affected than others by water shortages. Syria, for instance, is forecasted to experience crippling water scarcities in addition to its already fraught political situation; the 2007–08 Human Development Report predicted a 50 percent decline in Syrian water availability by 2025.

The state of water in the Middle East is widely known: surveys of local residents demonstrate that the majority of the population understands how rapidly water resources are being consumed. According to the 2009 Arab Forum for Environment and Development pan-Arab survey, 72 percent of respondents thought that climate change would affect the availability of drinking water in their country. And even without Hollywood films such as Quantum of Solace popularizing potential resource deprivation, there are a plethora of clear-cut examples of dropping water levels in the Jordan River Basin. The Dead Sea’s water levels, for instance, are dropping by about a meter every year due to heavy usage of the rivers that normally replenish the sea by Israel and Jordan.

Some scholars refute the narrative that a war will break out over water. Their arguments generally reflect two considerations: imports and alternative solutions. One school of thought postulates that imports of goods that are normally water-consumptive, such as food, can be substituted for local goods. This view, however, puts countries, especially those that are landlocked, at the mercy of suppliers. The second school of thought states that increases in desalination technology could provide an influx of water necessary to keep pace with demand. Desalination plants, however, add to remaining water sources’ salinity and could catalyze new problems in the local ecosystem. Furthermore, relying on uncertain technological leaps is not a strategy that countries should bet their futures on.

In the near future, desalination and damming will only go so far; water levels in the Jordan River Basin are declining and will continue to recede at precipitous rates. Given the explosive potential of a war over water in the Levant, the United States should pursue three courses of action. It should diplomatically forge new bilateral and multilateral resource-sharing agreements. It should survey and analyze food-chain logistics with regional partners. Also, it should help allies militarily secure vital water infrastructure.

First, the United States should assist in the creation of new water-sharing agreements to supplement existing treaties in lieu of the Syrian Civil War. The United States has a precedent helping navigate water issues in the Jordan River Basin: after clashes in 1953 over the Yarmouk River, President Eisenhower sent Ambassador Eric Johnson to forge a settlement. One version of the “Johnson Agreement,” which was never ratified, designated 60 percent of water consumption of the Jordan River to Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, and 40 percent to Israel. While bilateral treaties and agreements exist between some of the interested parties in the region, a comprehensive and multilateral agreement is still elusive.

Second, helping the supply of water in the Jordan River Basin meet the demand will not only alleviate some of the pressure, but will also help spur regional economic growth. In 2013, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), in partnership with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, drafted an analytical brief of the food-chain logistics from a water perspective in Jordan. More data like that presented in the report, which allows countries to better target sectors to improve upon, could also help decrease the overall demand for water while also noting places for better access and importation of water.

Third, the United States should help its allies strengthen water infrastructure security. Whether from non-state actors or from state-based military strikes, water infrastructure is a high-value target. Dams could be one potential high-risk piece of infrastructure, specifically because they are crucial to a country’s welfare and are time-consuming to rebuild. Mapped data from the FAO and DIVA-GIS demonstrate just how close many of Jordan’s dams are to the shared border with Israel and the West Bank.

Another war in the Jordan River Basin would impact not just the countries therein, but also the United States. With troops already deployed to Israel, Jordan and Syria, the United States would likely take military action to support its allies. By undertaking diplomatic and military preparations now, however, the chance of such a conflict ever taking place can be decreased.

Ryan Costello - Sina Toossi - Foreign Policy a écrit:

Mohammed bin Salman Is the Next Saddam Hussein

In the 1980s, the United States embraced a brutal Middle Eastern tyrant simply because he opposed Iran. Washington should not repeat the same mistake today.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is reportedly shocked over the backlash to his government’s killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. In a recent phone call with U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and advisor Jared Kushner, according to the Wall Street Journal, his confusion over official Washington’s furor “turned into rage,” as he spoke of feeling “betrayed by the West” and threatened to “look elsewhere” for foreign partners.

Saudi Arabia’s indignation at the United States would not be the first time an autocratic U.S. ally in the Middle East has assumed it could act with virtual impunity due to its alignment with Washington in countering Iran. Indeed, the Saudi prince’s meteoric rise to power bears striking similarities to that of a past U.S. ally-turned-nemesis whose brutality was initially overlooked by his Washington patrons: former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

Years before Saddam became Washington’s chief foe, he enjoyed significant support from the United States and other Western countries. This ended after he decided to invade Kuwait in 1990. However, the lead-up to that conflict and Washington’s earlier patronage of Saddam provide instructive lessons for U.S. regional policy today and the major risks of not responding forcefully to the assassination of Khashoggi.
Mohammed bin Salman’s gradual and brutal consolidation of power, marked by the detention and torture of his domestic rivals, evokes the “nation-changing assault on dissent within Iraq’s ruling party in 1979 by a young President Saddam Hussein,” Toby Dodge, a consulting senior fellow for the Middle East at London’s International Institute for Strategic Studies, told Bloomberg last year. “The concentration of power in one youthful, ambitious and unpredictable pair of hands is worrying now as it was then.” Washington’s steadfast support of Saddam during the 1980s not only enabled his rampage against his own people and neighboring countries, but also eventually threatened U.S. security interests.

The U.S. relationship with Saddam Hussein began in 1963, when, according to the former National Security Council official Roger Morris, the CIA under President John F. Kennedy “carried out in collaboration with Saddam Hussein” a coup to overthrow the government of Gen. Abdel Karim Kassem, who had five years earlier toppled Iraq’s pro-American monarchy.

However, U.S. ties with Saddam truly began to solidify in February 1982, when the Reagan administration removed Iraq from the State Department’s terrorism list, paving the way for providing military assistance to Iraq. This occurred roughly 17 months after Saddam’s invasion of Iran, while Iraqi forces were occupying the oil-rich southwestern Iranian province of Khuzestan that Iraq sought to annex. In December 1983, President Ronald Reagan dispatched Donald Rumsfeld as a presidential envoy to meet Saddam and set the stage for normalizing U.S.-Iraqi relations. U.S. support for Saddam during the war would grow to include, according to the Washington Post, “large-scale intelligence sharing, supply of cluster bombs through a Chilean front company, and facilitating Iraq’s acquisition of chemical and biological precursors.”
Saddam’s devastating use of chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq War, both against Iranian military and civilian targets and on his own people, did not deter U.S. support. Rumsfeld’s meeting with Saddam took place despite Washington possessing firm evidence of Iraqi chemical weapons use beginning in 1983. Prior to Rumsfeld’s trip, on Nov. 1, 1983, senior State Department official Jonathan Howe had told Secretary of State George Shultz of intelligence reports showing that Iraq was resorting to “almost daily use of CW [chemical weapons]” against the Iranians.

While Iran received some weaponry from the United States through the Iran-Contra affair, Washington tipped the scales much further in favor of Saddam. When intelligence showed Iran mounting a major offensive in early 1988 that threatened to break through Iraqi lines, Reagan wrote to his secretary of defense: “An Iranian victory is unacceptable.” Toward the end of the war, “U.S. intelligence was flowing freely to Hussein’s military,” according to a 2013 article in Foreign Policy, despite U.S. officials being “fully aware that Hussein’s military would attack with chemical weapons.”

According to declassified CIA documents, two-thirds of all Iraqi chemical weapons deployed during the war were used in the last 18 months of the conflict, when U.S.-Iraqi cooperation peaked. This included the March 1988 genocidal chemical weapons attack on the Iraqi Kurdish town of Halabja, which led to the deaths of as many as 5,000 civilians. Ironically, this attack would later be used by the George W. Bush administration in 2003 as part of its pretext for invading Iraq to eliminate the country’s by then nonexistent weapons of mass destruction.
A few months after the Halabja attack, in September 1988, Assistant Secretary of State Richard Murphy wrote in a memo on the chemical weapons question that “the U.S.-Iraqi relationship is … important to our long-term political and economic objectives.” Today, the Trump administration is echoing this language when discussing the U.S.-Saudi relationship, despite Saudi Arabia’s killing of Khashoggi and its devastating assault on Yemen, with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently proclaiming that Saudi Arabia is “an important strategic alliance of the United States” and that “the Saudis have been great partners in working alongside us.”

It was no surprise, then, that on the eve of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, Saddam felt he had unconditional backing from the United States. This impression was reinforced by Saddam’s meeting with then-U.S. Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie on July 25, 1990, a week before his invasion of Kuwait. During their fateful encounter, according to a diplomatic cable summarizing the meeting, Glaspie stressed “President [George H.W.] Bush’s desire for friendship” and that “the president had instructed her to broaden and deepen our relations with Iraq.” When Saddam raised the issue of Kuwait, which he had been relentlessly threatening, Glaspie stated that the United States took “no position on these Arab affairs.”

To this day, academic experts such as the Harvard University professor and FP columnist Stephen M. Walt contend that “the United States did unwittingly give a green light to Saddam” to invade Kuwait—much as he invaded Iran—without a strong response from the United States. Walt adds that, contrary to some perceptions, Glaspie was “following the instructions she had been given” and that “she was doing what the Bush administration wanted at this crucial meeting.” U.S. diplomatic cables from Glaspie’s era also reveal, according to Germany’s Der Spiegel, that “Glaspie and her predecessor painted the regime in an extremely favorable light from the very outset, overlooked Saddam’s widely-known crimes, and were so influenced by mutual enmity for Iran as to be negligently uncritical.”

The United States was wrong to back Saddam simply because he opposed Iran, a mistake that has haunted it for decades. Not only were more than 500,000 U.S. troops required to dislodge Saddam from Kuwait, resulting in 382 U.S. military casualties, but it also placed the U.S. government on a warpath that resulted in the 2003 toppling of Saddam, an event that beyond its humanitarian and financial costs for the Iraqi and American people led to the rise of terrorist groups such as the Islamic State and inextricably altered the regional balance of power in favor of Iran—whose largely Shiite allies have assumed power in Baghdad by way of democratic elections.

Today, the Trump administration’s reflexive support of Mohammed bin Salman is heading in the same direction as Washington’s ill-fated support of Saddam Hussein. Washington’s backing of Riyadh today even has the same justification: countering Iran. Trump has endorsed the crown prince’s purge of his domestic rivals and has given him carte blanche in his botched endeavors to rout Houthi rebels in Yemen while massacring civilians, turn Qatar into a vassal state, unseat the Lebanese prime minister, and punish Canada over a human rights complaint. The apparent order to assassinate Khashoggi is only the latest of Mohammed bin Salman’s reckless and impulsive decisions to which the United States has failed to react forcefully.
In the wake of Khashoggi’s killing, Trump administration officials have shamelessly warned that punishing the kingdom could jeopardize the escalating pressure campaign against Iran. A desire to bleed Iran shouldn’t once again overshadow a growing threat to the region: an unchecked, ambitious Saudi crown prince who has already presided over the decimation of Yemen and the butchering of a prominent journalist in his quest to consolidate absolute power.

Mohammed bin Salman, if allowed to ascend to the throne without facing any consequences from Washington for his outrageous behavior, will likely terrorize the region for decades, just as Saddam did. If Khashoggi’s brazen slaughter, carried out in utter disregard for international norms or the political cost for its allies, is a sign of a new Saudi playbook, the world may be facing an even greater threat than Saddam posed. Not only has the crown prince made clear his willingness to use force against neighboring countries, but his country also still enjoys vast oil wealth—giving him the ability to disrupt the global economy (although not to the extent of the 1973 Arab oil embargo) and threaten the profits of Western defense firms, given that the kingdom is the world’s third-largest military spender after the United States and China.

The Trump administration must act now to make it clear to the Saudi royal family that there will be severe consequences for such transgressions and end the unqualified support provided to Saudi Arabia. At a minimum, this should include an end to U.S. participation in the Yemen war, a halt to arms sales, and Magnitsky Act sanctions against all Saudi officials connected to Khashoggi’s killing.

Des juifs ultra-orthodoxes israéliens s'insurgent contre le service militaire obligatoire

Steven A. Cook - the Council on Foreign Relations - Foreign Policy a écrit:

Oman Just Bought Israeli Insurance

Why is Sultan Qaboos cozying up to Benjamin Netanyahu? The answer is in Washington.

A little more than a week ago, the drumbeat of news concerning Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s murder was briefly interrupted by an extraordinary video coming from Oman’s state news agency. The footage showed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu being greeted by and meeting with Sultan Qaboos bin Said at his palace in Muscat.

Contact between the Israelis and the countries of the Persian Gulf has taken place for some time, and the Omanis have been particularly “forward-leaning,” as they say in Washington—then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin visited Muscat in late 1994, when peace between Israelis and Palestinians seemed like a real possibility. Even so, the Omanis requested that the meeting be kept secret until its conclusion. Shimon Peres, who succeeded Rabin, hosted the Omani foreign minister in Jerusalem in 1995, and the countries established trade offices in 1996 that were shuttered after the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000.

Netanyahu’s visit was different, of course, because there is no peace process and the sultan even signaled he was willing to normalize ties with Israel. That goes significantly beyond the sorts of contact between Israel and other Arab states that has picked up in recent years amid their confluence of interests regarding Iran and Islamist extremism. Retired Saudi officials have been willing to sit on the same stage as their retired Israeli counterparts, the Emiratis host what is essentially an Israeli diplomatic outpost in Abu Dhabi under the guise of the International Renewable Energy Agency, and there are persistent whispers of regular meetings among Israeli, Egyptian, Jordanian, and Gulf intelligence chiefs. Yet no leader in the Gulf has gone as far as Qaboos by meeting so publicly with Netanyahu.

Why did Qaboos go so far out on a limb? Essentially, he was taking out an insurance policy.

Qaboos has often played the role of quiet regional troubleshooter and exchanger of messages for those who cannot—or prefer not to—speak to each other. It is now well known that much of the groundwork between the United States and Iran on the 2015 nuclear agreement was undertaken through an Omani channel. Over the last year, there was also speculation that U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration was seeking to use Muscat’s good offices in Tehran to help bring an end to the devastating conflict in Yemen. Thus, speculation was rampant among journalists, analysts, and the Twitterati that the Israeli prime minister and the Omani sultan were discussing either Palestinians or Iran. It was probably both—but that was not the point of the visit, at least for the Omanis.

Ismail Sabri Abdullah, the minister of planning under former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, once neatly, if crudely, articulated the logic behind the Egyptian outreach to Israel in the late 1970s, remarking, “If we wanted a good relationship with Washington, we needed to spend the night in Tel Aviv.” Abdullah, an unreconstructed leftist and anti-Zionist, was either reflecting a boorish and anti-Semitic view that Jews control U.S. foreign policy or was expressing a cleareyed calculation that because of the special relationship between the United States and Israel, Egyptians stood to benefit from coming to terms with the Israelis. Something similar—without the boorishness—is at play behind the Israeli leader’s open visit to Muscat. Even though Oman has been a trusted interlocutor in the past, there are new political and diplomatic pressures on the country that a very public visit with the Israelis can help mitigate or relieve.

The 77-year-old sultan, who took power in a British-backed coup in 1970, does not look well. He is said to be suffering from cancer and looked quite frail sitting next to the robust Netanyahu. Everyone knows he is at the end of his reign, and with no heir, succession is not entirely clear. Oman’s new leader—whoever that may be—will need U.S. political and diplomatic backing when Qaboos dies to bolster the country’s stability at a critical moment. Under ordinary circumstances that support would be forthcoming, but given the conflicts and forces—both internal and external—buffeting the Gulf, there are no guarantees. Oman’s role in the region as discreet interlocutor and broker of deals makes Muscat important beyond its size and resources, but it is also vulnerable. The Omanis sit between Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. If the sultan or his successor cannot maintain the balance among these countries, Oman may well get sucked into conflicts its leadership has sought to avoid.

And there seems to be pressure building on Muscat to choose sides. In particular, because the Omanis have not joined the Saudis and Emiratis in Yemen, combined with their ties to Iran, analysts and officials have raised questions whether Muscat is an enabler of Tehran’s bad behavior rather than a neutral interlocutor. There have even been accusations that Oman’s leaders have turned a blind eye to Iranian gunrunning to the Houthi army in Yemen through Omani territory. If this is true, the Omanis might be in for trouble. With a Trump administration made up of Iran hard-liners, including his national security advisor, the secretaries of state and defense, and the president himself, Muscat could be in for rougher treatment from Washington than in the past. Previous presidents have determined that whatever Oman’s transgressions, preserving an “Omani channel” was important to policymakers. It is not at all clear that Trump thinks this way.

In addition, being on the wrong side of one’s more powerful Gulf Cooperation Council allies is not a great place to be. Even if the Qataris have managed fairly well since the Saudi-led blockade began in June 2017, they remain concerned about their sovereignty given the recklessness of the present Saudi leadership. Unlike Qatar, Oman has far fewer resources and does not host one of the largest U.S. military bases outside the United States.

What better way to relieve some of this mounting pressure than to host the Israeli prime minister for tea and television cameras? Qaboos clearly understands some things about the United States and Israel that Ismail Sabri Abdullah did, though one would hope in a more sophisticated way. Israel’s supporters in the United States deeply appreciate Muscat’s outreach with Jerusalem given the importance they and Israel place on widening the circle of peace, a diplomatic achievement, as the prospects for peace with the Palestinians are dim. The same can be said of Congress, which has worked with successive administrations to end Israel’s isolation around the world.

The Omanis can expect the Israelis and their friends to repay the favor in Washington if things get tough for Muscat. After all, among the most effective voices on behalf of the Egyptians inside the Beltway is Israel’s ambassador. The Israelis have also quietly counseled caution on the fate of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as the Trump administration wrestles with the fallout from Khashoggi’s death.

Having ties with the Israelis does not necessarily mean that they will be helpful to you in Washington—Egypt’s late intelligence chief Omar Suleiman complained bitterly about Israel’s very public campaign in D.C. about Gaza smuggling tunnels—but it does help. And without the resources that his neighbors have to spend lavishly (and ineffectively) on consultants and lobbyists, Qaboos just earned himself enough goodwill that it will not matter.

RT a écrit:

Washington ne ravitaille plus les avions de la coalition saoudienne au Yémen : un effet d'annonce ?

Sur fond de pression internationale, Washington et Riyad ont décidé de cesser les opérations de ravitaillement en vol des avions de la coalition saoudienne par les Etats-Unis. Une annonce en trompe-l'oeil, alors que les combats continuent à Hodeida.

Alors que les forces progouvernementales yéménites se sont emparées ce 10 novembre du plus grand hôpital de la ville portuaire stratégique de Hodeida, tenue par les rebelles houthis, la coalition militaire sous direction saoudienne, qui mène une offensive militaire au Yémen depuis 2015, a annoncé le même jour avoir demandé aux Etats-Unis de cesser leurs opérations de ravitaillement en vol de ses avions. Elle est en effet désormais en mesure de les assurer elle-même.

Une demande immédiatement approuvée par Washington, et qui tombe à point nommé. Le Pentagone faisait en effet face aux réclamations insistantes des parlementaires américains, aussi bien républicains que démocrates, pour que les Etats-Unis mettent immédiatement fin à leurs opérations de ravitaillement des avions de la coalition saoudienne opérant au Yémen, faute de quoi ils menaçaient de faire adopter des mesures au Sénat.

L'affaire Khashoggi, ce journaliste saoudien assassiné en octobre dans l'ambassade de son pays à Istanbul, a pointé les projecteurs sur la guerre au Yémen et de fait, sur le soutien militaire apporté par les Etats-Unis à la coalition dirigée par Riyad.

«Nous soutenons la décision du Royaume d'Arabie saoudite, après consultations avec le gouvernement américain, d'utiliser les capacités militaires propres de la Coalition pour effectuer les ravitaillements en vol en soutien de ses opérations au Yémen», a déclaré dans un communiqué le secrétaire américain à la Défense, Jim Mattis.

«Récemment, le Royaume et la Coalition ont accru leur capacité à mener indépendamment le ravitaillement en vol au Yémen. En conséquence, en consultation avec les Etats-Unis, la Coalition a demandé la cessation du soutien au ravitaillement en vol pour ses opérations au Yémen», précisait plus tôt l'agence de presse saoudienne SPA.

Le Washington Post avait de son côté évoqué le 9 novembre cette question des ravitaillements en vol américains, affirmant que les Etats-Unis avaient décidé, sous la pression de parlementaires, de cesser de ravitailler les avions de la coalition sous commandement saoudien, mettant ainsi fin à leur soutien le plus concret. Mais Washington a poliment laissé Riyad annoncer la nouvelle.

Malgré cette mesure, rien n'indique cependant que les Etats-Unis vont arrêter de vendre des armes à l'Arabie saoudite. Des experts en munitions révélaient en effet publiquement mi-août que la bombe qui a tué 40 enfants yéménites le 9 août 2018 était de fabrication américaine.

Perspective de paix encore lointaine

Après l'échec en septembre d'une médiation de l'ONU, la coalition a annoncé la reprise de l'assaut sur le port stratégique de Hodeida, dans l'ouest du Yémen, qui s'est intensifié à partir du 1er novembre, faisant 110 morts parmi les rebelles houthis qui contrôlent cette ville, et tué 22 combattants des forces progouvernementales tentant de la reprendre, selon des informations recueillies par l'AFP.

Ce bilan porte à 382 le nombre de combattants des deux camps tués depuis le 1er novembre. Pourtant, le 30 octobre, Jim Mattis avait demandé que des négociations de paix s'ouvrent dans les 30 jours, soutenant que l'Arabie saoudite et les Emirats arabes unis y étaient «prêts».

«Les Etats-Unis et la coalition prévoient de collaborer au renforcement des forces yéménites légitimes pour défendre le peuple yéménite, sécuriser les frontières de leur pays, et contribuer à contrer les efforts d'Al-Qaïda et de Daesh au Yémen et dans la région», a ajouté Jim Mattis ce 10 novembre. Une déclaration qui a de quoi semer la confusion car si les Etats-Unis entendent lutter contre ces deux organisations djihadistes au Yémen, la coalition menée sous l'égide de l'Arabie saoudite semble, pour sa part, combattre en priorité les rebelles houthis, eux-mêmes ennemis de Daesh et d'Al-Qaïda, mais soutenus par l'Iran, bête noire historique de Riyad.

La coalition «espère voir la fin de l'agression des milices houthis soutenues par l'Iran contre le peuple yéménite et contre des pays de la région, notamment la menace des missiles balistiques et des drones», selon des propos rapportés par l'agence saoudienne SPA ce 10 novembre.

Depuis 2015, le Yémen est le théâtre d'une guerre opposant les rebelles chiites houthis, qui contrôlent le port de Hodeida ainsi que la capitale yéménite Sanaa, à une coalition arabe sous commandement saoudien cherchant à rétablir le gouvernement réfugié à Aden, dans le sud du pays.

La coalition bombarde régulièrement le Yémen, causant des milliers victimes civiles, dont un grand nombre d'enfants. Au mois d'août, au moins 66 enfants ont été tués dans des frappes de la coalition saoudienne. En plus de trois ans, le conflit a fait des dizaines de milliers de morts et est à l'origine de la pire crise humanitaire au monde, selon l'ONU. Selon les données des Nations unies, le bilan était de 10 000 morts en août 2016, un chiffre qui serait très largement dépassé aujourd'hui. Désormais, il se rapprocherait des 56 000 morts, selon une estimation indépendante citée par The Independent.

BOUBOU a écrit:

Les occidentaux parlent des journalistes turcs et non étrangers.
La Turquie accepte sur son territoire des opposants aux autres régimes, mais avec leur bénédiction car ça les éloigne de leur pays et ils n'ont plus que des moyens électroniques (sites internet, réseaux sociaux) souvent bloqué dans les pays qu'ils attaquent.

c'est un levier pour Ankara, qui n'hésitera pas à expulser des journalistes (en tous cas qui se revendiquent comme tel, car même un bloggeur peut se faire passer pour un journaliste) étrangers trop gênant.

Ce dont parlent la communauté occidentale c'est les journalistes d'opposition turcs. Et là c'est autre chose...

Alloudi a écrit:

Par sûre que l affaire kashoggi rassure tout ce beau monde

Réfugié en Turquie mais quand même découpé en morceaux

Sous les yeux du MIT !? Parce qu appartement les Turcs ont tout, vidéos, filature, écoutes, nom des personnes impliqués

Alloudi a écrit:

Par sûre que l affaire kashoggi rassure tout ce beau monde

Réfugié en Turquie mais quand même découpé en morceaux

Sous les yeux du MIT !? Parce qu appartement les Turcs ont tout, vidéos, filature, écoutes, nom des personnes impliqués

The New-York Times a écrit:

Saudis Close to Crown Prince Discussed Killing Other Enemies a Year Before Khashoggi’s Death

Top Saudi intelligence officials close to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman asked a small group of businessmen last year about using private companies to assassinate Iranian enemies of the kingdom, according to three people familiar with the discussions.

The Saudis inquired at a time when Prince Mohammed, then the deputy crown prince and defense minister, was consolidating power and directing his advisers to escalate military and intelligence operations outside the kingdom. Their discussions, more than a year before the killing of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, indicate that top Saudi officials have considered assassinations since the beginning of Prince Mohammed’s ascent.

Saudi officials have portrayed Mr. Khashoggi’s death as a rogue killing ordered by an official who has since been fired. But that official, Maj. Gen. Ahmed al-Assiri, was present for a meeting in March 2017 in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, where the businessmen pitched a $2 billion plan to use private intelligence operatives to try to sabotage the Iranian economy.

During the discussion, part of a series of meetings where the men tried to win Saudi funding for their plan, General Assiri’s top aides inquired about killing Qassim Suleimani, the leader of the Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps and a man considered a determined enemy of Saudi Arabia.



The interest in assassinations, covert operations and military campaigns like the war in Yemen — overseen by Prince Mohammed — is a change for the kingdom, which historically has avoided an adventurous foreign policy that could create instability and imperil Saudi Arabia’s comfortable position as one of the world’s largest oil suppliers.

As for the businessmen, who had intelligence backgrounds, they saw their Iran plan both as a lucrative source of income and as a way to cripple a country that they and the Saudis considered a profound threat. George Nader, a Lebanese-American businessman, arranged the meeting. He had met previously with Prince Mohammed, and had pitched the Iran plan to Trump White House officials. Another participant in the meetings was Joel Zamel, an Israeli with deep ties to his country’s intelligence and security agencies.

Both Mr. Nader and Mr. Zamel are witnesses in the investigation by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, and prosecutors have asked them about their discussions with American and Saudi officials about the Iran proposal. It is unclear how this line of inquiry fits into Mr. Mueller’s broader inquiry. In 2016, a company owned by Mr. Zamel, Psy-Group, had pitched the Trump campaign on a social media manipulation plan.

A spokesman for the Saudi government declined to comment, as did lawyers for both Mr. Nader and Mr. Zamel.

During the March 2017 meeting about the plan to sabotage Iran’s economy, according to the three people familiar with the discussions, the Saudis asked the businessmen whether they also “conducted kinetics” — lethal operations — saying they were interested in killing senior Iranian officials. The businessmen hesitated, saying they would need to consult their lawyer.

The lawyer flatly rejected the plan, and the businessmen told the Saudis they would not take part in any assassinations. Mr. Nader told the Saudis about a London-based company run by former British special operations troops that might take on the contract. It is unclear which company he suggested.

Before he was ousted last month, General Assiri was considered one of Prince Mohammed’s closest advisers, a man whose sharp ascent tracked the rise of the young crown prince. In 2016, he became the public face of Saudi Arabia’s campaign in Yemen, giving briefings about the state of the war. He traveled frequently to Washington, where Saudi-paid lobbyists brought him to think tanks to give optimistic assessments about the campaign’s progress and he extolled the Saudi concern for the welfare of civilians.

By 2017, however, the Saudi campaign that General Assiri oversaw in Yemen had ground into a military stalemate and, despite his assurances, a humanitarian catastrophe. But his patron, Prince Mohammed, also consolidated his power over all of the kingdom’s security apparatuses, and he promoted General Assiri to the deputy head of the kingdom’s spy agency, the General Intelligence Directorate.

Western analysts believe that Prince Mohammed moved General Assiri there in part to keep an eye on the spy chief, Khalid bin Ali bin Abdullah al-Humaidan, known as Abu Ali, who was close to Western intelligence agencies and suspected of harboring loyalties to one of the crown prince’s royal rivals.

General Assiri was dismissed last month when the Saudi government acknowledged Mr. Khashoggi’s killing and said he had organized the operation. On Saturday, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey said his government had handed over a recording of Mr. Khashoggi’s killing to the United States, Saudi Arabia, Britain and France, pressuring President Trump to more harshly punish the Saudis over the murder.



Mr. Nader’s and Mr. Zamel’s plan dates to the beginning of 2016, when they started discussing an ambitious campaign of economic warfare against Iran similar to one waged by Israel and the United States during the past decade aimed at coercing Iran to end its nuclear program. They sketched out operations like revealing hidden global assets of the Quds Force; creating fake social media accounts in Farsi to foment unrest in Iran; financing Iranian opposition groups; and publicizing accusations, real or fictitious, against senior Iranian officials to turn them against one another.

Mr. Nader is an adviser to the crown prince of the United Arab Emirates, a country that, along with Saudi Arabia and Israel, has identified Iran as the primary threat to stability in the Middle East.

Both he and Mr. Zamel believed that Hillary Clinton’s anticipated victory in the 2016 election meant a continuation of the Iran nuclear deal signed by President Barack Obama — and little appetite in Washington for a concerted campaign to cripple the Iranian economy. So, they decided to pitch the plan to Saudi and Emirati officials, even submitting a proposal to General Assiri during a meeting in Belgium.

The election of Donald J. Trump changed their calculus, and shortly after, Mr. Nader and Mr. Zamel traveled to New York to sell both Trump transition officials and Saudi generals on their Iran plan.

Mr. Nader’s initiative to try to topple the Iranian economy was first reported in May by The New York Times. His discussions in New York with General Assiri and other Saudi officials were reported last month by The Daily Beast.

Mr. Nader and Mr. Zamel enlisted Erik Prince, the former head of Blackwater and an adviser to the Trump transition team. They had already discussed elements of their plan with Mr. Prince, in a meeting when they learned of his own paramilitary proposals that he planned to try to sell to the Saudis. A spokesman for Mr. Prince declined to comment.

In a suite on one of the top floors of the Mandarin Oriental hotel in New York, Mr. Zamel and Mr. Nader spoke to General Assiri and his aides about their Iran plan. The Saudis were interested in the idea but said it was so provocative and potentially destabilizing that they wanted to get the approval of the incoming Trump administration before Saudi Arabia paid for the campaign.

After Mr. Trump was inaugurated in January 2017, Mr. Nader met frequently with White House officials to discuss the economic sabotage plan.

General Assiri’s interest in assassinations was unsurprising but unrepresentative of official policy, said one Saudi familiar with the inquiry into the Khashoggi killing. The investigation has shown the general to be a grandiose and ambitious novice to intelligence who sought to impress the crown prince with unauthorized schemes for black operations, the person said.

But General Assiri’s well-known closeness to the crown prince — the general often joined Prince Mohammed for meetings in Riyadh with visiting American officials — might make it difficult for the prince’s supporters to distance him from the proposals, just as the same connections have helped convince Western intelligence agencies that the prince must have known about the plot against Mr. Khashoggi.

Moreover, General Assiri and his lieutenants were meeting with Mr. Nader around the same time that Mr. Nader was meeting with Prince Mohammed himself, as Saudi officials have acknowledged. In emails to a business associate obtained by The Times, Mr. Nader sometimes referred to conversations he held with Prince Mohammed — also known by his initials, M.B.S. — about other projects he had discussed with General Assiri.

“Had a truly magnificent meeting with M.B.S.,” Mr. Nader wrote in early 2017, discussing possible Saudi contracts. The crown prince, he said, had advised him to “review it and discuss it with General Ahmed.”

BOUBOU a écrit:

La Turquie ne maîtrise plus ce dossier. c'est les USA qui tirent les cordes à présent.