Saudi King Salman reaffirmed support for Palestinians to US President Donald Trump, state media said Tuesday, after his son and heir apparent said Israel has a “right” to a homeland.

The king “reaffirmed the kingdom's steadfast position towards the Palestinian issue and the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people to an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital,” the official Saudi Press Agency said.

The king also emphasised the need to advance the Middle East peace process in a phone call with Trump, which came after Israeli forces killed 17 Palestinians last week during a demonstration on its border with Gaza.

Saudi Arabia and Israel have no formal diplomatic relations, but behind the scenes their ties appear to have improved in recent years against what they see as a common Iranian threat.

Israel's conflict with the Palestinians has long proved an obstacle to a full rapprochement, however, as Riyadh still supports the Palestinian claim to sovereignty.

But Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman indicated a notable shift in the kingdom's position in an interview published Monday with US news magazine The Atlantic.

The prince was asked by the magazine whether the “Jewish people have a right to a nation-state in at least part of their ancestral homeland?”

“I believe that each people, anywhere, has a right to live in their peaceful nation,” said the prince, who is on a three-week US tour.

“I believe the Palestinians and the Israelis have the right to have their own land,” he added.

“But we have to have a peace agreement to assure the stability for everyone and to have normal relations.”

Since 2002, Saudi Arabia has been the main sponsor of the Arab Peace Initiative, which envisions a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

No senior Saudi official is known to have previously accepted that Israel has a right to any land beyond the practical need to secure a lasting deal.</s>WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump had separate phone conversations with two leaders of nations in the Persian Gulf region, discussing the ongoing disputes between Qatar and some of its Arab neighbours.

Trump spoke Monday with King Salman of Saudi Arabia and with Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the emir of Qatar. The White House says Trump stressed the importance of resolving the Persian Gulf dispute in both calls.

The United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia have blockaded Qatar since June, accusing it of supporting terrorism.

With Saudi Arabia, Trump also stressed the importance of achieving peace between Israel and the Palestinians and discussed efforts to defeat the Islamic State group. With Qatar, he discussed Iran’s actions in the region.</s>RIYADH - King Salman reiterated Saudi Arabia’s support for a Palestinian state after his son and heir apparent said Israelis were entitled to live peacefully on their own land - a rare statement by an Arab leader.

The king also emphasised the need to advance the peace process in a phone call with US President Donald Trump on Monday night, made after Israeli security forces killed 16 Palestinians last week during a demonstration along the Israel-Gaza border

King Salman reaffirmed “the kingdom’s steadfast position towards the Palestinian issue and the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people to an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital”, state news agency SPA said on Tuesday.

The report did not refer to the comments by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in an interview published on Monday by US magazine The Atlantic, which are the latest public sign that ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel may be growing closer.

Asked if he believes the Jewish people have a right to a nation-state in at least part of their ancestral homeland, Prince Mohammed was quoted as saying:

“I believe the Palestinians and the Israelis have the right to have their own land. But we have to have a peace agreement to assure the stability for everyone and to have normal relations.”

Saudi Arabia, birthplace of Islam and home to its holiest shrines, does not recognise Israel. It has maintained for years that normalising relations hinges on Israeli withdrawal from Arab lands captured in the 1967 Middle East war, territory Palestinians seek for a future state.

Increased tension between Riyadh and Tehran has fuelled speculation that shared interests may push Saudi Arabia and Israel to work together against what they see as a common Iranian threat.</s>RIYADH/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Saudi King Salman on Tuesday ordered that women be allowed to drive cars, ending a conservative tradition seen by rights activists as an emblem of the Islamic kingdom's repression of women.

 The kingdom, the birthplace of Islam, has been widely criticized for being the only country in the world that bans women from driving, despite gradual improvement on some women's issues in recent years and ambitious government targets to increase their public role, especially in the workforce.

 Despite trying to cultivate a more modern image in recent years, the driving ban had been a longstanding stain on Saudi Arabia's international image.

 The royal decree ordered the formation of a ministerial body to give advice within 30 days and then implement the order by June 24, 2018, according to state news agency SPA.

 It stipulated that the move must "apply and adhere to the necessary Sharia standards", referring to Islamic law. It gave no details but said a majority of the Council of Senior Religious Scholars, Saudi Arabia's top clerical body, had approved its permissibility.

 An hour after the official announcement in Saudi Arabia, a jubilant Saudi ambassador to Washington, Prince Khaled bin Salman, said it was "an historic and big day in our kingdom".

 "I think our leadership understands that our society is ready. I think it's the right decision at the right time," the ambassador said.

 Positive reactions quickly poured in from inside the kingdom and around the world. 

 The U.S. State Department welcomed the move as "a great step in the right direction". President Donald Trump commended the decision, the White House said in a separate statement that pledged U.S. support for a plan the Kingdom announced last year for economic and social reforms.

 "This is a positive step toward promoting the rights and opportunities of women in Saudi Arabia," the White House statement said. "We will continue to support Saudi Arabia in its to efforts to strengthen Saudi society and the economy through reforms like this and the implementation of Saudi Vision 2030."

 For more than 25 years, women activists have campaigned to be allowed to drive, defiantly taking to the road, petitioning the king and posting videos of themselves behind the wheel on social media. The protests brought them arrest and harassment.

 Activist Manal al-Sherif, who was arrested in 2011 after a driving protest, took to Twitter following the king's announcement to express her relief. "Today, the last country on earth to allow women to drive... we did it", she wrote.

 Latifa al-Shaalan, a member of the Shura Council, an advisory body, said the decision would strengthen women's employment in the private sector.

 "This is an historic day and I cannot find the words to express my feelings and the feelings of thousands of Saudi women," she said on Arabiya TV.

 

 CONSERVATIVE PUSHBACK

 In Saudi Arabia, a top Arab ally of the United States, women are legally subject to a male guardian, who must give approval to basic decisions they make in fields including education, employment, marriage, travel plans and even medical treatment.

 Women in the kingdom are also bound by law to wear long robes and a headscarf and require the consent of a male guardian for most legal actions.

 Prince Khaled, the ambassador, said women would not need permission from their guardians to get a license or have a guardian in the car and would be allowed to drive anywhere in the kingdom, including the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina.

 Women with a license from any of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries would be allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia, he added. He said the Interior Ministry would have to decide whether they could be professional drivers.

 "In terms of international PR, this is the biggest overnight win that Saudi Arabia - and particularly MBS - could possibly have," said Jane Kinninmont, senior research fellow at Chatham House.

 The position of Saudi women gradually improved under late King Abdullah and since King Salman took over in 2015, the kingdom has been opening more areas for women through the government's modernizing reforms.

 That has sparked tensions with influential clerics upon whose support the ruling family relies.

 Some reactions to Tuesday's announcement reflected that. Critics took to Twitter to denounce the decision, accusing the government of "bending the verses of Sharia".

 "As far as I remember, Sharia scholars have said it was haram (forbidden) for women to drive. How come it has suddenly become halal (permissible)?" another user wrote.

 Asked whether he was worried about a conservative backlash, the ambassador said: "On these changes some people will be in the drivers' seat... some people will be in the back seat, but we're all going to move forward." 

 He added: "It's not women must drive, it's women can drive. So if any women do not want to drive in Saudi Arabia, that's her choice."

 Some leading members of the country’s powerful and austere Sunni Muslim clergy have argued against women being allowed to drive, which they say could lead to them mingling with unrelated men, thereby breaching strict gender segregation rules.

 The decision could also have broad economic impacts, making it possible for women to get to work without a driver but also curbing the popularity of car hailing apps like Uber and Careem.

 Prince Khaled, a son of the king, said the decision was as much about economic reform as social change.

 His older brother, 32-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed, has become the face of reform in the kingdom in the past few years.

 Many younger Saudis regard his ascent as evidence that their generation is taking a central place in running a country whose patriarchal traditions have for decades made power the province of the old and blocked women’s progress. 

 "Oh my God, this is amazing. Ever since Mohammed bin Salman's rise, he has fast-tracked all the changes that are needed for our country," said Marwa Afandi, a 35-year-old event planner in the Red Sea city of Jeddah.

 "Congratulations to all my ladies, this is a real victory."

 

 (Additional reporting by Celine Aswad, Reem Shamseddine, Katie Paul, Ali Abdelatty, Yara Bayoumy, Arshad Mohammed and Reuters TV; Editing by Dan Grebler and Simon Cameron-Moore)</s>Saudi King Salman reaffirmed support for Palestinians to US President Donald Trump, state media said Tuesday, after his son and heir apparent said Israel has a "right" to a homeland.

The king "reaffirmed the kingdom's steadfast position towards the Palestinian issue and the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people to an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital," the official Saudi Press Agency said.

The king also emphasised the need to advance the Middle East peace process in a phone call with Trump, which came after Israeli forces killed 17 Palestinians last week during a demonstration on its border with Gaza.

Saudi Arabia and Israel have no formal diplomatic relations, but behind the scenes their ties appear to have improved in recent years against what they see as a common Iranian threat.

Israel's conflict with the Palestinians has long proved an obstacle to a full rapprochement, however, as Riyadh still supports the Palestinian claim to sovereignty.

But Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman indicated a notable shift in the kingdom's position in an interview published Monday with US news magazine The Atlantic.

The prince was asked by the magazine whether the "Jewish people have a right to a nation-state in at least part of their ancestral homeland?"

"I believe that each people, anywhere, has a right to live in their peaceful nation," said the prince, who is on a three-week US tour.

"I believe the Palestinians and the Israelis have the right to have their own land," he added.

"But we have to have a peace agreement to assure the stability for everyone and to have normal relations."

Since 2002, Saudi Arabia has been the main sponsor of the Arab Peace Initiative, which envisions a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

No senior Saudi official is known to have previously accepted that Israel has a right to any land beyond the practical need to secure a lasting deal.</s>Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has recognized Israel, stressing that Israelis are entitled to their own land.

“I believe that each people, anywhere, has a right to live in their peaceful nation. I believe the Palestinians and the Israelis have the right to have their own land,” said bin Salman during an interview with the Atlantic published on Monday.

“But we have to have a peace agreement to assure the stability for everyone and to have normal relations,” he added.

He added that kingdom has no problems with Jews and that “there are a lot of interests we share with Israel.”

He further noted that Saudi Arabia would establish economic ties with the Tel Aviv regime after conflict with the Palestinian Authority is settled.

The announcement is the latest step in the kingdom’s path moving towards normalization of diplomatic relations with the Tel Aviv regime.

On Friday, bin Salman met with the leaders of a number of pro-Israeli lobbying groups during his tour of the United States.

According to a leaked copy of his itinerary, the Israeli Haaretz daily reported that bin Salman had conferred with officials from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Stand Up for Israel (ADL), the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA), Presidents’ Conference, B’nai B’rith and the American Jewish Committee (AJC).

Speaking in an interview with France 24 television news network on December 13, 2017, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said the kingdom has a “roadmap” to establish full diplomatic ties with the Tel Aviv regime.

The Israeli military’s chief-of-staff, Gadi Eizenkot, recently said the regime was ready to share intelligence with Saudi Arabia on Iran.

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Copyright 2018 SIGNAL. Permission to use portions of this article is granted provided appropriate credits are given to www.signalng.com and other relevant sources.

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This post was syndicated from SIGNAL. Click here to read the full text on the original website.</s>Mohammad Bin Salman is set to meet Rupert Murdoch, Bob Iger and Kevin Tsujihara, while a major summit will discuss his country's plans to build an entertainment industry from scratch.

Less than four months after Saudi Arabia revealed it would be lifting its 35-year ban on public cinemas, heralding a rush of international investment into the kingdom’s nascent entertainment industry, its de facto ruler is making his first visit to Hollywood.

Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman, on a whirlwind three-week tour of the U.S. to help firm up business ties and promote his country’s sweeping reforms, has a series of engagements planned from Monday, including a dinner party hosted by Rupert Murdoch.

Marking the 32-year-old royal’s trip, a three-day event entitled "Saudi Art Days" is being held by the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture initiative at the Linwood Dunn Theater. Alongside a photography exhibit and the screening of 13 Saudi films, three industry panels, featuring director Andy Tennant (Sweet Home Alabama, Hitch) and screenwriter Shauna Cross (Whip It, What to Expect When You’re Expecting), are set to discuss the future of filmmaking in Saudi Arabia.

On Wednesday, the country’s General Entertainment Authority is holding a major summit at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills, where government ministers and investors from both the public and private sectors will talk about their experiences and the path to develop Saudi’s entertainment industry, which for decades has been practically nonexistent due to strict Islamic laws.

But arguably the biggest date on Salman’s L.A. diary lands Monday night, when Murdoch throws a special dinner party at his Bel Air estate. The co-executive chairman of 21st Century Fox is understood to have also invited Disney CEO Bob Iger and Warner Bros. chairman Kevin Tsujihara, giving the Crown Prince the opportunity to pick the brains of top entertainment industry brass.

While it’s unknown if any business dealings between Hollywood studios and Saudi Arabia are in the pipeline, the country’s Public Investment Fund is reportedly soon set to close its acquisition of a 5 to 10 percent stake in WME holding company Endeavor for $400 million and entertainment is being shaped as a major component of the kingdom’s future economy as part of a broader initiative to diversify away from oil.

The announcement in December that Saudi Arabia would be lifting its ban on cinemas — which had been widely expected given the recent welcoming of exhibitions such as Comic-Con to Saudi — saw a flood of interest from major international cinema chains. AMC, Vue, iPic and a number of Middle East theater groups have all announced plans to move into the country over the past few months, with sources suggesting to The Hollywood Reporter that the first multiplex is likely to open in Jeddah in October.

Amusement parks are also in the country’s sights as a path to enhance its recreational and tourism offerings, echoing a move made by the United Arab Emirates city of Dubai over a decade ago. Dubai, which has become a major tourist hub, has teamed with the likes of Marvel and Lionsgate to develop several Hollywood-themed amusement parks, including Legoland, while its large number of cinemas have for years seen film-starved Saudis make the hourlong flight.

But while Salman’s Hollywood visit may have pricked the ears of those looking to tap into the billions of petro-dollars he’s hoping to invest in entertainment, not everybody is happy. Several protests have been planned focusing on Saudi Arabia’s ongoing military attacks on Yemen, currently suffering from a major humanitarian crisis.

Codepink, a women-initiated peace group, will be protesting Monday outside WME’s Beverly Hills office at 11 a.m. and at the same time Tuesday outside the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica.

“Mohammed Bin Salman employs an army of lobbyists and PR firms to sell himself as a reformer when he is really a war criminal and a power-hungry thug whose ego rivals that of Donald Trump,” said Codepink co-founder Jodie Evans. “It is absurd that the U.S. is in bed with this ‘prince’ who mercilessly bombs Yemen, shakes down Saudi businessmen, captured the Lebanese prime minister, concocted a rift with Qatar and even kidnapped his own mother. The Saudi monarchy also jails and beheads dissidents, discriminates against the Shia minority, and forces women to live under a repressive male guardianship system. It is not a regime the United States should be arming and abetting.”</s>It’s one of those stories of the century that somehow never gets treated that way. For an astounding 25 of the past 26 years, the United States has been the leading arms dealer on the planet, at some moments in near monopolistic fashion. Its major weapons-producers, including Boeing, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin, regularly pour the latest in high-tech arms and munitions into the most explosive areas of the planet with ample assistance from the Pentagon. In recent years, the bulk of those arms have gone to the Greater Middle East. Donald Trump is only the latest American president to preside over a global arms sales bonanza. With remarkable enthusiasm, he’s appointed himself America’s number one weapons salesman and he couldn’t be prouder of the job he’s doing.

Earlier this month, for instance, on the very day Congress was debating whether to end U.S. support for Saudi Arabia’s brutal war in Yemen, Trump engaged in one of his favorite presidential activities: bragging about the economic benefits of the American arms sales he’s been promoting. He was joined in his moment of braggadocio by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the chief architect of that war. That grim conflict has killed thousands of civilians through indiscriminate air strikes, while putting millions at risk of death from famine, cholera, and other “natural” disasters caused at least in part by a Saudi-led blockade of that country’s ports.

That Washington-enabled humanitarian crisis provided the backdrop for the Senate’s consideration of a bill co-sponsored by Vermont independent Senator Bernie Sanders, Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee, and Connecticut Democratic Senator Chris Murphy. It was aimed at ending U.S. mid-air refueling of Saudi war planes and Washington’s additional assistance for the Saudi war effort (at least until the war is explicitly authorized by Congress). The bill generated a vigorous debate. In the end, on an issue that wouldn’t have even come to the floor two years ago, an unprecedented 44 senators voted to halt this country’s support for the Saudi war effort. The bill nonetheless went down to defeat and the suffering in Yemen continues.

Debate about the merits of that brutal war was, however, the last thing on the mind of a president who views his bear-hug embrace of the Saudi regime as a straightforward business proposition. He’s so enthusiastic about selling arms to Riyadh that he even brought his very own prop to the White House meeting with bin Salman: a U.S. map highlighting which of the 50 states would benefit most from pending weapons sales to the prince’s country.

You undoubtedly won’t be surprised to learn that Michigan, Ohio, and Florida, the three crucial swing states in the 2016 presidential election, were specially highlighted. His latest stunt only underscored a simple fact of his presidency: Trump’s arms sales are meant to promote pork-barrel politics, while pumping up the profits of U.S. weapons manufacturers. As for human rights or human lives, who cares?

To be fair, Donald Trump is hardly the first American president to make it his business to aggressively promote weapons exports. Though seldom a highlighted part of his presidency, Barack Obama proved to be a weapons salesman par excellence. He made more arms offers in his two terms in office than any U.S. president since World War II, including an astounding $115 billion in weapons deals with Saudi Arabia. For the tiny group of us who follow such things, that map of Trump’s only underscored a familiar reality.

On it, in addition to the map linking U.S. jobs and arms transfers to the Saudis, were little boxes that highlighted four specific weapons sales worth tens of billions of dollars. Three of those that included the THAAD missile defense system, C-130 transport planes, P-8 anti-submarine warfare planes, and Bradley armored vehicles were, in fact, completed during the Obama years. So much for Donald Trump’s claim to be a deal maker the likes of which we’ve never seen before. You might, in fact, say that the truest arms race these days is between American presidents, not the United States and other countries. Not only has the U.S. been the world’s top arms exporting nation throughout this century, but last year it sold one and a half times as much weaponry as its closest rival, Russia.

It’s worth noting that three of those four Saudi deals involved weapons made by Lockheed Martin. Admittedly, Trump’s relationship with Lockheed got off to a rocky start in December 2016 when he tweeted his displeasure over the cost of that company’s F-35 combat aircraft, the most expensive weapons program ever undertaken by the Pentagon. Since then, however, relations between the nation’s largest defense contractor and America’s most self-involved president have warmed considerably.

Before Trump’s May 2017 visit to Saudi Arabia, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, new best buddy to Mohammed bin Salman, was put in charge of cobbling together a smoke-and-mirrors, wildly exaggerated $100 billion-plus arms package that Trump could announce in Riyadh. What Kushner needed was a list of sales or potential sales that his father-in-law could boast about (even if many of the deals had been made by Obama). So he called Lockheed Martin CEO Marillyn Hewson to ask if she could cut the price of a THAAD anti-missile system that the administration wanted to include in the package. She agreed and the $15 billion THAAD deal — still a huge price tag and the most lucrative sale to the Saudis made by the Trump administration — went forward. To sweeten the pot for the Saudi royals, the Pentagon even waived a $3.5 billion fee normally required by law and designed to reimburse the Treasury for the cost to American taxpayers of developing such a major weapons system. General Joseph Rixey, until recently the director of the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which granted that waiver, has since gone directly through Washington’s revolving door and been hired by — you guessed it — Lockheed Martin.

In addition, former Lockheed Martin executive John Rood is now the Trump administration’s undersecretary of defense for policy, where one of his responsibilities will be to weigh in on… don’t be shocked!… major arms deals. In his confirmation hearings, Rood refused to say that he would recuse himself from transactions involving his former employer, for which he was denounced by Senators John McCain and Elizabeth Warren. As Warren asserted in a speech opposing Rood’s appointment,

“No taxpayer should have to wonder whether the top policy-makers at the Pentagon are pushing defense products and foreign military sales for reasons other than the protection of the United States of America… No American should have to wonder whether the Defense Department is acting to protect the national interests of our nation or the financial interests of the five giant defense contractors.”

Still, most senators were unfazed and Rood’s nomination sailed through that body by a vote of 81 to 7. He is now positioned to help smooth the way for any Lockheed Martin deal that might meet with a discouraging word from the Pentagon or State Department officials charged with vetting foreign arms sales.

Though Saudi Arabia may be the largest recipient of U.S. arms on the planet, it’s anything but Washington’s only customer. According to the Pentagon’s annual tally of major agreements under the Foreign Military Sales program, the most significant channel for U.S. arms exports, Washington entered into formal agreements to sell weaponry to 130 nations in 2016 (the most recent year for which full data is available). According to a recent report from the Cato Institute, between 2002 and 2016 the United States delivered weaponry to 167 countries — more than 85% of the nations on the planet. The Cato report also notes that, between 1981 and 2010, Washington supplied some form of weaponry to 59% of all nations engaged in high-level conflicts.

In short, Donald Trump has headed down a well-traveled arms superhighway. Every president since Richard Nixon has taken that same road and, in 2010, the Obama administration managed to rack up a record $102 billion in foreign arms offers. In a recent report I wrote for the Security Assistance Monitor at the Center for International Policy, I documented more than $82 billion in arms offers by the Trump administration in 2017 alone, which actually represented a slight increase from the $76 billion in offers made during President Obama’s final year. It was, however, far lower than that 2010 figure, $60 billion of which came from Saudi deals for F-15 combat aircraft, Apache attack helicopters, transport aircraft, and armored vehicles, as well as guns and ammunition.

There have nonetheless been some differences in the approaches of the two administrations in the area of human rights. Under pressure from human rights groups, the Obama administration did, in the end, suspend sales of aircraft to Bahrain and Nigeria, both of whose militaries were significant human rights violators, and also a $1 billion-plus deal for precision-guided bombs to Saudi Arabia. That Saudi suspension represented the first concrete action by the Obama administration to express displeasure with Riyadh’s indiscriminate bombing campaign in Yemen. Conducted largely with U.S. and British supplied aircraft, bombs, and missiles, it has included strikesagainst hospitals, marketplaces, water treatment facilities, and even a funeral. In keeping with his focus on jobs to the exclusion of humanitarian concerns, Trump reversed all three of the Obama suspensions shortly after taking office.

In fact, selling weapons to dictatorships and repressive regimes often fuels instability, war, and terrorism, as the American war on terror has vividly demonstrated for the last nearly 17 years. U.S.-supplied arms also have a nasty habit of ending up in the hands of America’s adversaries. At the height of the U.S. intervention in Iraq, for instance, that country’s armed forces lost track of hundreds of thousands of rifles, many of which made their way into the hands of forces resisting the U.S. occupation.

In a similar fashion, when Islamic State militants swept into Iraq in 2014, the Iraqi security forces abandoned billions of dollars worth of American equipment, from small arms to military trucks and armored vehicles. ISIS promptly put them to use against U.S. advisers and the Iraqi security forces as well as tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians. The Taliban, too, has gotten its hands on substantial quantities of U.S. weaponry, either on the battlefield or by buying them at cut-rate, black market prices from corrupt members of the Afghan security forces.

In northern Syria, two U.S.-armed groups are now fighting each other. Turkish forces are facing off against Syrian Kurdish militias that have been among the most effective anti-ISIS fighters and there is even an ongoing risk that U.S. and Turkish forces, NATO allies, may find themselves in direct combat with each other. Far from giving Washington influence over key allies or improving their combat effectiveness, U.S. arms and training often simply spur further conflict and chaos to the detriment of the security of the United States, not to speak of the peace of the world.

In the grim and devolving conflict in Yemen, for instance, all sides possess at least some U.S. weaponry. Saudi Arabia is, of course, the top U.S. arms client and its forces are a catalogue of American weaponry, from planes and anti-tank missiles to cluster bombs, but hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid were also provided to the forces of Yemeni autocrat Ali Abdullah Saleh during his 30 years of rule before he was driven from power in 2012. Later, however, he joined forces with the Houthi rebels against the Saudi-led intervention, taking large parts of the Yemeni armed forces — and their U.S.-supplied weapons — with him. (He would himself be assassinated by Houthi forces late last year after a falling out.)

The Trump administration is poised to release a new policy directive on global arms transfers. A report by Politico, based on interviews with sources at the State Department and a National Security Council (NSC) official, suggests that it will seek to further streamline the process of approving arms sales, in part by increasing the already extensive role of U.S. government personnel in promoting such exports. It will also remove what a National Security Council statement has described as “unreasonable constraints on the ability of our companies to compete.” In keeping with that priority, according to the NSC official, “the administration is intent on ensuring that U.S. industry has every advantage in the global marketplace.”

In January, a Reuters article confirmed this approach, reporting that the forthcoming directive would emphasize arms-sales promotion by U.S. diplomats and other overseas personnel. As one administration official told Reuters, “We want to see those guys, the commercial and military attaches, unfettered to be salesmen for this stuff, to be promoters.”

The Trump administration is also expected to move forward with a plan, stalled as the Obama years ended, to ease controls on the export of U.S. firearms. Gun exports now licensed and scrutinized by the State Department would instead be put under the far-less-stringent jurisdiction of the Commerce Department. Some firearms could then be exported to allies without even a license, reducing the government’s ability to prevent them from reaching criminal networks or the security forces of potential adversaries.

In September 2017, Democratic senators Ben Cardin, Dianne Feinstein, and Patrick Leahy sent a letter to then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson raising concerns about such a change. As they wrote, “Combat firearms and ammunition are uniquely lethal; they are easily spread and easily modified, and are the primary means of injury, death and destruction in civil and military conflicts throughout the world. As such they should be subjected to more — not less — rigorous export controls and oversight.”

If Trump’s vision of an all-arms-sales-all-the-time foreign policy is realized, he may scale the weapons-dealing heights reached by the Obama administration. As Washington’s arms-dealer-in-chief, he might indeed succeed in selling American weaponry as if there were no tomorrow. Given the known human costs of unbridled arms trafficking, however, such a presidency would also ensure that whatever tomorrow finally arrived would prove far worse than today, unless of course you happen to be a major U.S. arms maker.</s>WASHINGTON (AP) - President Donald Trump had separate phone conversations with two leaders of nations in the Persian Gulf region, discussing the ongoing disputes between Qatar and some of its Arab neighbors.

Trump spoke Monday with King Salman of Saudi Arabia and with Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the emir of Qatar. The White House says Trump stressed the importance of resolving the Persian Gulf dispute in both calls.

The United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia have blockaded Qatar since June, accusing it of supporting terrorism.

With Saudi Arabia, Trump also stressed the importance of achieving peace between Israel and the Palestinians and discussed efforts to defeat the Islamic State group. With Qatar, he discussed Iran's actions in the region.</s>US Secretary of Defense James Mattis (L) and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman walk into the Pentagon after an honor cordon March 22, 2018 in Washington, DC. (Photo by AFP)

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has recognized Israel, stressing that Israelis are entitled to their own land.

I believe that each people, anywhere, has a right to live in their peaceful nation. I believe the Palestinians and the Israelis have the right to have their own land,” said bin Salman during an interview with the Atlantic published on Monday.

“But we have to have a peace agreement to assure the stability for everyone and to have normal relations,” he added.

He added that kingdom has no problems with Jews and that “there are a lot of interests we share with Israel.”

He further noted that Saudi Arabia would establish economic ties with the Tel Aviv regime after conflict with the Palestinian Authority is settled.

The announcement is the latest step in the kingdom’s path moving towards normalization of diplomatic relations with the Tel Aviv regime.

On Friday, bin Salman met with the leaders of a number of pro-Israeli lobbying groups during his tour of the United States.

According to a leaked copy of his itinerary, the Israeli Haaretz daily reported that bin Salman had conferred with officials from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Stand Up for Israel (ADL), the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA), Presidents’ Conference, B’nai B’rith and the American Jewish Committee (AJC).

Speaking in an interview with France 24 television news network on December 13, 2017, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said the kingdom has a “roadmap” to establish full diplomatic ties with the Tel Aviv regime.

The Israeli military’s chief-of-staff, Gadi Eizenkot, recently said the regime was ready to share intelligence with Saudi Arabia on Iran.
Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and United States President Donald Trump hold a telephone conversation discussing the incidents.