BEIRUT/AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian rebels said on Thursday a U.S. decision to halt a covert CIA programme of military aid would mark a big blow to the Syrian opposition and risked allowing jihadists to tighten their grip over the insurgency.

Rebels who have received aid under the CIA programme said they had yet to be informed of the U.S. decision first reported by the Washington Post on Wednesday and confirmed by two U.S. officials to Reuters.

A Free Syrian Army (FSA) commander said the U.S. decision risked triggering the collapse of the moderate opposition, which would benefit President Bashar al-Assad and jihadists linked to al Qaeda that have long sought to extinguish more moderate groups.

Other rebel sources said much would depend on whether U.S.-allied regional states Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey kept up their support to groups fighting under the FSA banner, which had been the focus of the CIA programme.

“We heard nothing about this,” said an opposition official familiar with the program, describing the decision as a complete surprise.

The U.S. decision compounds an already bleak outlook for the Syrian opposition that has been battling since 2011 to unseat Assad, who appears militarily unassailable thanks in large part to staunch Russian and Iranian backing.

The CIA program which began in 2013 funnelled weapons, training and cash to vetted FSA groups via Jordan and Turkey.

It regulated aid to the rebels after a period of unchecked support early in the war - especially from Gulf states - helped give rise to an array of insurgent groups, many of them strongly Islamist in ideology.

The support in some cases included anti-tank missiles that helped the rebels make big advances against the depleted Syrian army, triggering Russia’s intervention in September 2015.

FSA rebels have long complained the support fell well short of what they needed to make a decisive difference in the war against the better armed Syrian army and the Iran-backed militias helping it, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

One of the U.S. officials said the decision was part of a Trump administration effort to improve relations with Russia.

Critics of the CIA programme, including some U.S. officials, have also said some of the armed and trained rebels defected to Islamic State and other radical groups.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment when asked what he thought about the U.S. move and said only that U.S. President Donald Trump and Putin did not discuss the issue when they met at a G20 summit earlier this month.

“We welcome all the efforts aiming at de-escalation of the situation and building security in the Middle East. It’s OK if that is what it’s all about,” deputy foreign ministry spokesman Artem Kozhin told a news briefing on Thursday, according to Interfax.

NOT IN OUR INTEREST

Before taking office in January, Trump suggested he could end support for FSA groups and give priority to the fight against Islamic State.

A separate U.S. military effort to train, arm and support other Syrian rebels with airstrikes and other actions will continue, the U.S. officials said. The U.S. military support has included backing for Kurdish fighters battling Islamic State.

Groups included in the CIA programme operate mostly in northwestern and southern Syria.

“Certainly this decision will have results and consequences on the Syrian scene, particularly in the north and the south. The halt of support to the FSA by the international community is a factor in escalation of Assad’s strength and the strength of the extremist groups,” the FSA commander said.

Backed by Jordan, FSA groups in southern Syria have helped contain jihadists such as the group formerly known as the Nusra Front, and have gone on the offensive against Islamic State.

FSA groups in northern Syria have had a tougher time withstanding the jihadists. Aid to the FSA in the northwest was temporarily suspended earlier this year following a major jihadist assault against them.

“The Americans have been informing us they have reached serious agreements with the Russians. The Americans are saying they have a new strategy towards Syria which is not like that of the Obama era,” said another rebel commander.

“Is this in our interest? Of course not,” the commander said of the reported U.S. decision. “We are waiting to see.”

Turkey has supported FSA groups outside the CIA-backed channels to advance its interests in northern Syria, notably in its Euphrates Shield campaign last year that carved out a de facto buffer zone at the frontier.</s>WASHINGTON (NYTIMES) - President Donald Trump has ended the clandestine American programme to provide arms and supplies to Syrian rebel groups, US officials said, a recognition that the effort was failing and that the administration has given up hope of helping to topple the government of President Bashar Assad.

The decision came more than a month ago, the officials said, by which time the effort to deliver the arms had slowed to a trickle.

It was never publicly announced, just as the beginnings of the programme four years ago, were officially a secret, authorised by President Barack Obama through a "finding" that permitted the CIA to conduct a deniable programme. News of the troublesome program soon leaked out.

It joins similar failed efforts to deliver arms and money to groups seeking to overthrow governments that Washington found noxious, most famously the Kennedy administration's disastrous effort to do away with the government of Fidel Castro in Cuba.

The White House had no comment. But the decision is bound to be welcomed by the Russians, whose military has backed Assad's government and relentlessly attacked some of the rebel groups that the United States was supplying, under the guise of helping to eradicate terrorists.

On Tuesday, Iran's foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, charged that the United States had helped destabilise the region, and portrayed Iran as merely defending its interests. Washington, instead, views Iran's aid to the Assad government as part of an effort to restore itself as a major regional power.

From the start, there were doubts that arming disorganised, often internally fractious forces would succeed. Officials in the Obama administration conceded that there was no way to predict the future loyalties of those who received US arms, despite a lengthy vetting process. That problem - getting the weapons into the right hands and assuring they were not passed on to others and used against US troops or allies - plagued the effort soon after it was proposed by Hillary Clinton, who was then secretary of state, and David Petraeus, the CIA director at the time.

Trump's decision was first reported by The Washington Post. But it was foreshadowed as early as April, when the Trump Administration said that ousting Assad, whose government has fought a civil war that has taken roughly half a million lives, was no longer a priority. Instead, the United States and Russia have been discussing cease-fire zones in the country, the first of which went into effect this month.

Those discussions have been possible because Assad, secure in his support from Moscow and Tehran, no longer sees a fundamental threat to his ability to remain in power. And Trump's decisions amounted to an acknowledgment that no escalation of the programme, which began in 2013 in concert with the CIA's counterparts in Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Jordan, was likely to yield a different result.

When it began, the initial objective was to force Assad to the bargaining table, in a series of negotiations that then-secretary of state John Kerry took up in earnest in late 2015. But each agreement - for cease-fires, and deadlines for a political "road map" for elections in the country - fizzled.

Kerry fumed that Obama was not willing to provide the kind of military pressure on Assad that might bolster the diplomacy. Obama, for his part, was leery of entering another Middle East war whose outcome he could neither control nor predict.

The programme became less relevant as the Russians increased their presence in Syria, targeting and badly weakening the CIA-backed rebels, who were the most capable of the opposition fighters. That helped the Assad government claw back and consolidate territorial gains.

"This is a big deal, but it's been a long time coming," Charles Lister, a Syria analyst for the Middle East Institute in Washington, said. "It's the biggest indication so far of the administration's having given up on the opposition."

"After all, the Southern Front has consistently been our most reliable anti-Assad partner," Lister said, referring to opposition forces fighting Assad in the southern part of the country. "It's also the result of strong Jordanian pressure, as Amman has been pushing a freeze for a long time. So it was probably inevitable, but it's nonetheless very significant."

He added that it was "a big mistake in my mind". Other independent experts said it was unclear whether Trump's decision would impact fighters defending areas held by the opposition.

At its height, the programme was run through operations rooms in Jordan and Turkey, supporting rebel groups fighting under the banner of the Free Syrian Army who were deemed not to be extremists.

But the pressure on Assad was not great enough to force him to enter negotiations to end the civil war. Nor was it sufficient to clear the way for the rebel groups to take over major cities or approach the capital, Damascus. The programme also sought to bolster so-called moderate rebels against extremist factions like the Syrian affiliate of al-Qaeda.

When the history of the effort is written - and the documents surrounding it are declassified - historians will doubtless seek to learn why the rebels lost ground for years, to Syrian government forces and their Russian and Iranian allies, and to extremists.

After the rebel's expulsion from the eastern half of the city of Aleppo last year, it became clear that they no longer posed a serious threat to Assad's rule.

But stopping the covert programme, which mainly helped rebels near the Turkish border in northwestern Syrian and along the Jordanian border in the south, will not affect the fight against the militants of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in the east. A different programme there run by the Pentagon is supporting a Kurdish-Arab militia known as the Syrian Democratic Forces.</s>President Trump’s decision to wind down a covert CIA program that had trained and equipped anti-regime Syrian rebels all but guarantees that Syrian President Bashar Assad will remain in power and leaves the fate of the rebels under a cloud, according to analysts.

But many feel that while the end of such support is a win for Russia and Syria, it was high time to stop a program where supposedly vetted moderate groups fighting alongside jihadi groups, and U.S. weapons often ending up in the hands of extremists.

“This program was not standing up any truly independent actor that could take over Syria in the long run,” Thomas Joscelyn, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told VICE News. “It was very ad hoc, and some of the groups that received support were often allied with al-Qaeda or other jihadi groups in Syria.”

Trump made the decision to scrap the beleaguered program – a fixture of U.S. strategy in Syria since 2013 – following a meeting with CIA Director Mike Pompeo and national security adviser H.R. McMaster in June, ahead of a July 7 meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Washington Post reported Wednesday.

It’s not yet clear how vulnerable this will leave rebel groups who had received support through the program, Haid Haid, a Syrian columnist and non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council, told VICE News.

Details of support provided under the secret program are murky, but it’s known that many of the vetted groups also received support from U.S. partners in the region such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar under the terms of the program.

“We don’t know whether other partners who were channelling their support through the CIA program will also terminate their support, or will they try to find other ways to channel that support,” said Haid. “The answer to that question will determine how much trouble they’ll find themselves in.”

Lina Khatib, head of the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House, told VICE News that Trump’s decision represented the “final nail in the coffin” for the program, and ultimately reflected “the U.S.’s pandering to Russian priorities in trying to settle this conflict.”

The anti-Assad forces, long an issue for both Russia and the Syrian president, would’ve been an obstacle to Moscow and Washington’s joint efforts to implement a ceasefire in southwest Syria, a region where the rebels have been most active. The agreement to create de-escalation zones in the southwest, announced following the July 7 Trump-Putin meeting at the G-20 summit in Hamburg, has been hailed by Trump as a positive start to the tentative new cooperation with Russia in the conflict.

U.S. officials have said the shuttering of the train-and-equip program was not a pre-condition for ceasefire negotiations. But one unnamed U.S. official speaking to the Washington Post described the closure of the program as “a momentous decision.” “Putin won in Syria,” said the official.

But Joscelyn said that while the decision had “been framed as something that is appeasing Russia, I think there were probably many other reasons to be concerned about this program and to stop this flow of arms.”

While there was a clear moral case for attempting to help rebels in toppling Assad, he said, the chaotic nature of the Syrian battlefield – which saw supposedly moderate groups fighting alongside jihadis under the banner of the Free Syrian Army – meant there were concerns about the program throughout the U.S. government even prior to the Trump presidency. The covert support program, he said, was “a mess,” which had allowed for U.S. anti-tank missiles to find their way into the hands of jihadi groups.

He cited the example of the Nour al-Din al-Zenki Movement, a Salafist militia active in Aleppo that had received CIA support but later joined forces with al-Qaeda offshoot the Al Nusra Front. In July 2016, footage emerged of al-Zenki fighters beheading a boy.

“Al-Zenki was whitewashed. People pretended it was an acceptable partner in the fight against Assad,” he said. “There needs to be a clear-eyed assessment of who received U.S. support and who actually benefited in Syria.”

Khatib said the decision to wind down the program also reflected it had been a strategic failure. Right from the start, the U.S. supplied anti-Assad rebels with “just enough support to be able to continue to fight the regime but not enough to be able to defeat them,” she said.

“The U.S. thought that in doing so it could push both sides toward a negotiation.” That belief proved misguided, particularly once Russia entered the conflict in support of Assad in 2015, dramatically changing the balance of power.

Senior U.S. officials have said that the covert program will be phased out over a number of months. Separate U.S. efforts to train, arm, and support other Syrian groups involved in anti-ISIS operations will continue.</s>The crisis between Qatar and much of the new “Sunni” NATO – as some US media already call it today – consists in a formal series of 13 requests that Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Yemen, the Emirates, Bahrain, and even Mauritius, have made – as an ultimatum – to Qatar:

1) to break off any diplomatic and economic relations with Iran; 2) to immediately close the Turkish military base near Doha and, anyway, put an end to military cooperation between Qatar and Turkey; 3) to immediately close Al Jazeera, an old TV created on the ruins of the BBC broadcasting in Arabic and later de facto monopolized by the Muslim Brotherhood; 4) to make the members of the Qatari Royal House no longer fund networks such as Arabi21, RASSD, Araby al-Jadid and Middle East Eye. “Araby al Jadeed” is a brand-new all-news network created in March 2014 and organized by Azmi Bashara, a former member of the Israeli Parliament, broadcasting from London, Beirut and Doha, with 150 employees, while the above stated Middle East Eye is currently led by David Hearst, formerly foreign editor-in-chief of the London Guardian.

The network Middle East Eye has been blocked by the Saudi authorities and by the other Emirates.

The other requests are the following: 5) Saudi Arabia has asked Qatar to stop funding groups or individuals designated as terrorists by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAEs), Bahrain and Egypt, as well as providing data and information.

Well done. Some terrorists designated as such by Saudi Arabia are defined in the same way also by the West. It is the case of Hajjaj al Azmi, a Kuwaiti citizen who often lives in Doha. In the list of the 13 requests also the “Benghazi Defense Brigades” are mentioned, namely a militia created in June 2016 to oppose the forces of Khalifa Haftar’s Operation Dignity.

The Benghazi Defense Brigades cooperated with the ISIS “Caliphate” in its operations at Suq al-Hout and in Sirte.

The Saudi list includes Abdullah Bin Khalid al-Thani, former Interior Minister of the Emirate, linked to the 9/11 jihadist operations.

However, let us be honest and face it. Prince Turki bin Faisal was the leader of Saudi intelligence services for 23 years since 1979 until ten days before the 9/11 attack. Is it by mere coincidence?

According to well-known data, Nawaf bin al-Hamzi and Khalid al-Mindar, who both arrived in the United States for the 9/11 attack, were managed by the Saudi intelligence services.

Al-Bayoumi, selected by the FBI exactly as a Saudi agent, had huge funds in the United States granted by Saudi Arabia through the company Dallah Alco.

Al-Bayoumi was connected with Fahad al-Thumairy, Director of the Saudi Ministry for Islamic Affairs. However, let us not focus on the 29 pages taken from the US report on Saudi Arabia and the 9/11 attack.

This would get us very far and would shed light on many facts and events that are currently taking place, not only in the Middle East.

Strategically, the issue of the relationship between Saudi Arabia and Islamic terrorism has been long lasting: the jihad – which the West has foolishly favoured – has become the primary geopolitical agent throughout the Greater Middle East and also in the rest of the world.

This was solely Westerners’ fault since they had every chance to force Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Iran, the Lebanon, Iraq and all the other Islamic regional players in the Middle East to be more reasonable and become somewhat milder as to the “sword jihad”.

As things stand now, without a change there is no solution for this situation. We will be confronted with the remote-controlled jihad and later we will ask those maneuvering it for money to be rescued from an economic crisis that is also caused by the crazy geopolitics of the whole West.

Currently Saudi Arabia invests approximately 20 billion US dollars for infrastructure in the United States, as well as six billions for 150 Black Hawk helicopters to be used in the its kingdom.

If all goes well, at the very quick pace recently imparted to reach economic diversification, Saudi Arabia will go ahead according to its program “Vision 2030” by selling, at first, Saudi Aramco on the market.

This is another important fact to understand today’s events.

Nevertheless the project “Vision 2030” also proposes measures which may still generate tension, such as the increase in tariffs, rates and taxes, although with a fall in the unemployment rate from 11.6% to 7%.

Furthermore Saudi Arabia envisages primary support for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The Saudi public Fund devoted to SMEs, namely Musharakah, has already 4 billion Saudi riyals, equal to approximately 6 billion US dollars.

In short, Saudi Arabia wants to rapidly diversify its oil-dependent economy and grow up to becoming the 15th global economy in 2020.

Special Economic Zones will also be created and foreign direct investment (FDI) will rise from the current 3.8% to 5.7% .

According to Al Saud’s plans, the private sector is expected to reach 65% of GDP as against the current 45%.

If Saudi Arabia does not bring the whole Peninsula and the Sunni world up to speed according to this program, “Project 2020” is clearly doomed to failure. Another rational motivation for the anti-Qatar diktat.

Let us now move to request 6.

Against this background, Saudi Arabia asks Qatar to “break off relations with Hezbollah, al-Qaeda and the “Caliphate”.

In 2008, the leader of Qatar, Emir al-Thani, held a meeting between all parties present on the Lebanese political scene, by showing clear support for the Shiite movement of the “Party of God” and its allies, especially for the many Iranian foundations operating in Beirut.

It is worth recalling that exactly in 2008, the Sunni Lebanese leader, Rafik Hariri (whose economic fortune had started in Saudi Arabia), was killed, probably by a joint operation of some Shiite countries.

Recently the Qatari Emir has also spoken of Hezbollah as a “resistance movement”, adding that it is “not wise” to oppose Iran.

Al-Thani has also said that such news were manipulated, but obviously this just exacerbates the situation.

The issue, however, is not only geopolitical, but also economic.

Qatar is a relatively small, but not irrelevant oil producer, with 620,000 barrels a day. However, it is the first natural gas supplier in the world and – according to 2016 data – it exports 77.2 million tons mainly to the East.

However, why is there no OPEC for natural gas, which would avoid the politicization of the search of market shares between producers?

Meanwhile, the United States is becoming the largest natural gas producer in the world, with a 2016 extraction level equal to 23%, while in 2001 the share of shale gas in North American extraction was a mere 1%.

Hence it is obvious to imagine how prices and market shares will change with this mass of liquid gas in Europe and Asia. It is also easy to imagine how the economies depending on natural gas in the Middle East would end up if the United States became more aggressive on the global liquid gas markets.

European markets’ net dependence on African and Middle East gas imports and rigid pricing of liquid gas on Asian markets, as well as the huge investment needed for extraction and transport infrastructure, are all factors which – unlike what happened for oil – prevent the creation of a global natural gas market protected by a single producer cartel.

This is why there is no OPEC for gas and this is particularly the reason why the oil exporters floundering in the financial crisis want to back the large gas extracting countries into a corner and later possibly expropriate them.

Hence Saudi Arabia’s and its allies’ current crackdown on Qatar poses a major economic problem for al-Thani’s Emirate, considering that all the ships flying the Qatari flag have been forbidden to dock in the Saudi and Emirates’ oil and gas terminal of Fujariah in the Persian Gulf.

For the time being the Emirate “punished” by Saudi Arabia has reassured its customers, especially the Asian ones and the major one, namely the Japanese Jera buying Qatari gas with long-term contracts, about the regularity of supplies, but nothing prevents delays and additional costs from occurring, which will soon affect Italy as well.

Furthermore the oil price fall had created a 98 billion US dollar deficit in Saudi Arabia’s public finances.

In a logic of looting, which Quran rules permit, the easiest solution is to put a strain on the richest opponent.

However, besides creating debt securities, Saudi Arabia will sell significant shareholdings of its oil companies, but above all of Saudi Aramco – and this is a central factor, as already mentioned.

Economic diversification is therefore an immediate need for Saudi Arabia and this explains most of the current internal conflicts among the “Seven Sudayri” of the Al Saud family, who have been ruling and deciding the fate of much of the Arabian peninsula since the time of the Wahhabi uprising.

However let us continue with the requests made by Saudi Arabia and its allies to Qatar.

Again to continue the discussion of “request” 5 to Qatar, we are talking about 59 individuals and 12 institutions which, according to Saudi Arabia, support, organize and fund terrorism.

The list of organizations obviously include the charities linked to al-Thani’s family, but there are also Saraya al-Ashtar, an organization of “occasional terrorists” linked to Hezb’ollah in Bahrain; the “February 14 Coalition”, again operating in Bahrain in favor of the Shiite majority in the country; the “Resistance Brigades”, again active in Bahrain; Saraya al-Mukhtar, a Shiite League operating in the al-Khalifa’s kingdom, and finally Harakat Ahrar Bahrain.

Judging from this list, it seems that Daesh-Isis is not a terrorist organization and the same holds true for al-Qaeda.

That is true, but they are Sunni organizations.

Moreover, a few days ago the British media published very compromising documents on the Saudi leaders’ funding to all jihadist terrorist organizations.

Again according to the latest data, the money spent by the Saudi ruling class to spread Wahhabism (and Salafism) in the world – both ideological foundations of contemporary jihad – is currently at least 5.2 billion US dollars.

Hence the oil powers are brutally demanding Qatar, the world’s gas leader, to extradite “terrorists” (but only the Shiite ones) and not interfere in domestic affairs or grant citizenship to Saudi, Egyptians and Emirates’ citizens who are wanted in their countries of origin.

These are requests 7 and 8 of the cahier de doleances issued by Saudi Arabia and its allies, also supported by the short-sightedness of the US intelligence services.

However, it is now well-established that in 1996 the Qatari royal family hosted and protected Khalid Sheik Mohammed, thus saving him from a US arrest warrant issued against him who is considered one of the “masterminds” of the 9/11 attack.

It has also been ascertained that a member of al-Thani’s family provided a safe cover in Doha to Al Zarkawi, the founder of al-Qaeda in Iraq, during his many transfers to and from Afghanistan.

Later the Iraqi Prime Minister, al-Maliki, openly accused Qatar of backing al-Baghdadi’s Caliphate.

However, why is Qatar supposed to support Daesh-Isis, mainly funded by its Saudi arch-enemy?

Simply because the Syrian-Iraqi Caliphate perpetrated at least three attacks on the Saudi territory in 2015, 2016 and 2017, for which it duly claimed responsibility.

As to request 9, Saudi Arabia and its allies – supported by the United States that found out that the country organizing terrorists is only the Shiite Iran – oblige Qatar to suspend any aid to their internal political enemies hosted by the Qatari Emirate and immediately inform the Sunni authorities (indeed Qatar, too, is strictly Sunni).

Moreover, Saudi Arabia and its allies ask Qatar to align itself with Saudi Arabia and with the other signatories of the diktat list at “economic, political, social and military” levels, following the indications of the Treaty reached between Qatar and Saudi Arabia in 2014.

In particular, the above mentioned Treaty regards Qatar’s end of money and weapon supplies, as well as logistical support, to groups and individuals hostile to Saudi Arabia in Yemen, Egypt and in the various Gulf Countries, obviously including Saudi Arabia.

The 2013 and 2014 agreements were secret agreements, but the topic is primarily the fight against the Muslim Brotherhood, which is now secretly operating in Saudi Arabia and throughout the Gulf – and listens on al- Jazeera the sermons of Shaykh al-Qaradawi, the most authoritative theoretician of the Muslim Brotherhood.

It is worth recalling that it was exactly a Saudi university professor of the Muslim Brotherhood who radicalized Osama bin Laden who, until then, had been a cheerful Westernized young Saudi tycoon.

The list of the thirteen requests ends with two recommendations: firstly, to undergo monthly supervision during the first year and, for the following ten years, to be monitored, again on a yearly-basis, and anyway decide on the list of the thirteen requests within ten days.

Obviously Qatar, which so far has not accepted the thirteen requests – has immediately turned to Turkey, governed by the AKP, a party born from a rib of the Muslim Brotherhood, and to Iran.

As is well-known, the United States initially supported the Saudi requests – although it later remembered that its central command for the whole Middle East was in Qatar, at the al-Udayd base.

If Qatar loses its tug-of-war with Saudi Arabia and its allies, its large financial reserves will be hoarded by Saudi Arabia to back its project for stabilizing State budgets and rapidly achieving economic diversification, which is at the core of the new King Muhammad al-Salman’s policy line.

Qatar has a sovereign fund of 355 billion US dollars and owns 30 billions worth of securities and shares, as well as an unknown, but definitely huge amount of other investments outside the Emirate.

Moreover, the Saudi royal family pays a high price – with a public debt that would have forced Saudi Arabia into default by 2018 – for the huge funds and loans granted to terrorist organizations in Syria, Yemen and Iraq – all jihadist militias now out of the new balance of power and obviously defeated by the new connection between Russia, Iran, Syria and, in the future, Turkey.

Furthermore, in an already problematic situation, the bloody suicide rush to forcedly reduce oil prices – mainly targeted against the US shale oil – has depleted the public finances and the private incomes of the Wahhabi Kingdom.

Hence, with his victory, President Trump – who played many of his electoral cards precisely on the North American economic recovery to be funded with “unconventional oil and gas” – as shale is officially called – has unintentionally triggered off a tough internal power struggle within the Al Saud family.

The first faction wants to rebuild an effective relationship with Russia and China, so as to stabilize prices and, in the long run, stop pegging the Saudi oil to the US dollar, which will shortly be only the financial instrument of the globalization of North American shale oil – a direct competitor of the Saudi one.

On the contrary, the opposite faction wants to preserve the already strong relationship between Saudi Arabia and the United States, so as to use the US economy as a carrier for the increasingly necessary and quick diversification of the Saudi economy, which is still heavily oil-dependent.

A factor linked to this new US-Saudi bilateralism is also the Saudi pressure against the New Silk Road of China, which is currently the number one enemy of US geopolitics and that the pro-American Saudis want to drive away from all the Gulf countries.

Conversely, it is almost useless to note that Iran has always been an essential passage point of the One Belt and One Road initiative (OBOR) designed by China.

It is also worth recalling it was Qatar, jointly with Iran, to open the first yuan “exchange centre” throughout the Middle East on April 14, 2015.

In addition to the above-mentioned monetary exchange and clearing centre for the Chinese and Middle East currencies – and it should be noted that yuan-denominated oil contracts between China and Iran are already in place – the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China also operates in Qatar.

If the yuan (and the ruble) became the new benchmark for gas and oil, the US dollar good days would be over since it could no longer lay onto the US-dollar denominated international trade the imbalances and asymmetries of public debt (which, including households’ and companies’ debt, accounts for 345% of the US GDP) and of its trade deficit.

“The dollar is our currency, but your problem” as a FED Governor said to his European counterparts.

Meanwhile, the new Saudi king, Muhammad bin Salman, is planning and designing a new 2 trillion US dollar sovereign fund, with a view to putting an end to the Saudi oil-dependence “within the next twenty years.”

Again according to the pro-American faction of the al-Saud family, the new sovereign fund is expected to invest half of its capital abroad, obviously without ever affecting Aramco, the world’s first oil producer and second holder of world reserves.

Said faction does not show any particular problem with oil price fluctuations, as has already demonstrated by trying – in vain – to push the US shale oil out of the market.

If the oil price increases, there will be more money available to Saudi Arabia for stepping up economic diversification. Even if the oil price decreases there would be no problem: the Saudi oil has the lowest unit extraction cost and the country will always be in a position to sell its products on the fastest-growing and most liquid market in the world, which is currently the Asian one.

Once again Qatar’s primary role in the Japanese and Chinese energy system is very annoying for Saudi Arabia.

Everything will change in the Middle East when, at the end of hostilities in Syria, Israel shall face a number one enemy, namely Iran, which is currently strengthened by the new balance of power prevailing in Syria (and in the Lebanon) and shall also come to terms with what is increasingly becoming the “lesser evil”, namely Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabism.

About the author:

 *Professor Giancarlo Elia Valori is an eminent Italian economist and businessman. He holds prestigious academic distinctions and national orders. Mr Valori has lectured on international affairs and economics at the world’s leading universities such as Peking University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Yeshiva University in New York. He currently chairs “La Centrale Finanziaria Generale Spa”, he is also the honorary president of Huawei Italy, economic adviser to the Chinese giant HNA Group and member of the Ayan-Holding Board. In 1992 he was appointed Officier de la Légion d’Honneur de la République Francaise, with this motivation: “A man who can see across borders to understand the world” and in 2002 he received the title of “Honorable” of the Académie des Sciences de l’Institut de France.

Source:

 This article was published by Modern Diplomacy</s>The sovereign, internationally recognized state of Syria has strongly denounced the deadly Takfiri bomb attack targeting buses carrying people from two Shia-majority villages in the northwestern province of Idlib.

The government of Syria called on the United Nations to hold responsible the countries that fund terrorists and provide them with weapons and ammunition. Those nations were identified by the Syrian Foreign Ministry as Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, France, the UK and the United States.

At least 126 people, including 68 children, were killed and dozens of others sustained injuries on bus attack which happened this last Saturday.

Little media attention has been given to the horrific attack which saw a bomber blow up an explosive-laden car, ripping through multiple buses carrying evacuees from Kefraya and Foua villages in Idlib, as they were waiting in al-Rashidin district to enter the city of Aleppo.

In two letters to United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres and the UN Security Council on Sunday, Syria’s Foreign Ministry said the barbaric attack clearly revealed that the terror groups, particularly Daesh and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham Takfiri terrorist groups, had been wearied by Syria’s repeated victories. The ministry’s statement also stressed the need for coordinating international attempts aimed at battling terrorism in the Arab country and the necessity of full cooperation with Damascus in any counter-terrorism endeavor. Elsewhere in the statement, the ministry said that some countries that claimed they supported human rights showed that their policies were aimed at more killings and destruction when they refused to condemn the deadly bus attack as a crime against humanity. It added that the Saturday bombing complemented the US attack on the Shayrat Airfield in Homs Province with a barrage of 59 Tomahawk missiles on April 7, which caused some 15 fatalities, including civilians. On Saturday, the UN condemned the bombing in al- Rashidin, calling on “the parties to ensure the safety and security of those waiting to be evacuated.” The Syrian Foreign Ministry further called on the UN to pressure main supporters of terrorists operating inside the Middle Eastern country, namely Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, France, the UK and the US, to stop their support for terrorist groups.</s>President Donald Trump has decided to end the CIA's covert program to arm and train moderate Syrian rebels battling the government of Bashar al-Assad, a move long sought by Russia, according to U.S. officials.

The program was a central plank of a policy begun by the Obama administration in 2013 to put pressure on Assad to step aside, but even its backers have questioned its efficacy since Russia deployed forces in Syria two years later.

Officials said the phasing out of the secret program reflects Trump's interest in finding ways to work with Russia, which saw the anti-Assad program as an assault on its interests. The shuttering of the program is also an acknowledgment of Washington's limited leverage and desire to remove Assad from power.

Just three months ago, after the United States accused Assad of using chemical weapons, Trump launched retaliatory airstrikes against a Syrian air base. At the time, U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, said that "in no way do we see peace in that area with Assad at the head of the Syrian government."

Officials said Trump made the decision to scrap the CIA program nearly a month ago, after an Oval Office meeting with CIA Director Mike Pompeo and national security adviser H.R. McMaster ahead of a July 7 meeting in Germany with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Spokesmen for the National Security Council and the CIA declined to comment.

After the Trump-Putin meeting, the United States and Russia announced an agreement to back a new cease-fire in southwest Syria, along the Jordanian border, where many of the CIA-backed rebels have long operated. Trump described the limited cease-fire deal as one of the benefits of a constructive working relationship with Moscow.

The move to end the secret program to arm the anti-Assad rebels was not a condition of the cease-fire negotiations, which were already well underway, said U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the secret program.

Trump's dealings with Russia have been under heavy scrutiny because of the investigations into the Kremlin's interference in the 2016 election. The decision on the CIA-backed rebels will be welcomed by Moscow, which focused its firepower on those fighters after it intervened in Syria in 2015.

Some current and former officials who support the program cast the move as a major concession.

"This is a momentous decision," said a current official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a covert program. "Putin won in Syria."

The decision will not affect a separate Pentagon-led effort to work with U.S.-backed Syrian rebels fighting the Islamic State. And the CIA-backed rebels were part of the larger moderate opposition.

Some analysts said the decision was likely to empower more radical groups inside Syria and damage the credibility of the United States.

"We are falling into a Russian trap," said Charles Lister, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, who focuses on the Syrian resistance. "We are making the moderate resistance more and more vulnerable. . . . We are really cutting them off at the neck."

Others said it was recognition of Assad's entrenched position in Syria.

"It's probably a nod to reality," said Ilan Goldenberg, a former Obama administration official and director of the Middle East Security Program at the Center for a New American Security.

U.S. intelligence officials say battlefield gains by rebels in 2015 prompted Russia's direct military intervention on the side of the Assad regime. Some U.S. officials and their allies in the region urged President Barack Obama to respond by providing the rebels with advanced antiaircraft weapons so they could better defend themselves. But Obama balked, citing concerns about the United States getting pulled into a conflict with Russia.

Senior U.S. officials said that the covert program would be phased out over a period of months. It is also possible that some of the support could be redirected to other missions, such as fighting the Islamic State or making sure that the rebels can still defend themselves from attacks.

"This is a force that we can't afford to completely abandon," Goldenberg said. "If they are ending the aid to the rebels altogether, then that is a huge strategic mistake."

U.S. officials said the decision had the backing of Jordan, where some of the rebels were trained, and appeared to be part of a larger Trump administration strategy to focus on negotiating limited cease-fire deals with the Russians.

Earlier this month, five days into the first cease-fire in southwest Syria, Trump indicated that another agreement was under discussion with Moscow. "We are working on the second cease-fire in a very rough part of Syria," Trump said. "If we get that and a few more, all of a sudden we are going to have no bullets being fired in Syria."

One big potential risk of shutting down the CIA program is that the United States may lose its ability to block other countries, such as Turkey and Persian Gulf allies, from funneling more sophisticated weapons - including man-portable air-defense systems, or MANPADS - to anti-Assad rebels, including more radical groups.

Toward the end of the Obama administration, some officials advocated ending the CIA program, arguing that the rebels would be ineffective without a major escalation in U.S. support. But the program still had the support of a majority of top Obama advisers, who argued that the United States couldn't abandon its allies on the ground and give up on the moderate opposition because of the damage that it would do to U.S. standing in the region.

Even those who were skeptical about the program's long-term value, viewed it as a key bargaining chip that could be used to wring concessions from Moscow in negotiations over Syria's future.

"People began thinking about ending the program, but it was not something you'd do for free," said a former White House official. "To give [the program] away without getting anything in return would be foolish."</s>President Trump's announcement this week to end the CIA's covert arming of militants in Syria is an admission of defeat. The US has lost its six-year war for regime change in the Arab country. It's time to wrap it up.Also, Trump's decision does not mean the US and its allies will withdraw ground and air forces from Syria, where they are illegally operating in violation of international law.It would have been politically expedient for Trump to have not pulled the plug on the CIA in Syria. But by doing so, he is bound to compound the anti-Russia hysteria gripping Washington and large sections of the media accusing him of being a "Kremlin stooge".Any rational person would have to agree that the best way to end the violence in Syria is for foreign countries to halt pouring weapons into the country. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has long maintained this logical position: if nations want Syria's bloodshed to stop, as they claim, then they should stop supplying arms and cut out sponsoring militant groups.By its own admission, the US has been funneling weapons into Syria since at least 2013, according to media reports, and probably before that date right back to the beginning of the war in March 2011. Not only the US but its NATO partners, Britain, France and Turkey, as well as regional allies Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Israel. This is an admission of a criminal conspiracy to destabilize a sovereign country by supporting illegally armed anti-government militant groups. It matters little whether these groups are arbitrarily designated "moderate rebels". They are illegally armed.Trump's call was also a brave one because the US media immediately and predictably depicted the move as a "concession to Russia". With the US president already being assailed with endless accusations of "colluding" with Russia in winning the election to the White House last year, his decision to leash the dogs of war in Syria this week only lends more grist to the Russophobia rumor mill.The Washington Post headlined the news with: "Trump ends covert CIA program to arm anti-Assad rebels in Syria, a move sought by Moscow".Several other US media outlets followed suit, making snide comments that the move "will please the Kremlin" and that Trump was "appeasing Putin" by closing down the CIA covert operations in Syria.With contorted logic, US media spin that Trump's shuttering of the CIA program to train "moderate rebels" in Syria may now strengthen the hand of "extremists".The president is accused of capitulating to Putin on Syria. There are mutterings in the US media suggesting that this is what Trump talked about with Putin during their meetings in Hamburg at the G20 summit earlier this month. Especially, during the so-called "secret meeting" in front of 18 other heads of state while at dinner.It was Russia's principled decision at the end of 2015 to intervene in Syria, in accordance with international law, that began to bring the criminal conspiracy to an end. Two years on, the Syrian state is beginning to get the upper-hand over the foreign-backed militant groups that have ravaged the country. Russia's military support has been vital to that impending victory."The shuttering of the [CIA] program is also an acknowledgment of Washington's limited leverage and desire to remove Assad from power," noted the Washington Post.Rather than coming clean and admitting that the US has been engaged in a sordid, criminal war on Syria which it has finally lost, the American media are now spinning Trump's ending of CIA operations as a "concession" to Russia.For all his flaws, and there are many, at least Donald Trump knows when to admit that the US war in Syria is a loser. And despite the carping Russophobia trying to box him in, Trump appears ready to take the right decision to bring this criminal American war to an end.</s>US officials say that President Trump has decided to formally end the CIA program to arm Syrian rebel factions, a program that has been active for years, and highly criticized for having seen a lot of the US provided arms ending up in the hands of al-Qaeda and other Islamists.

This arms smuggling scheme had long-standing problems, and was frozen earlier this year because the rebel factions the US was supporting have been fighting one another increasingly, and have been less and less interested in fighting either ISIS or the Syrian government.

This move won’t end the US arming of the Kurdish YPG, as this scheme is wholly independent from the CIA program, and is being run directly by the Pentagon. The factions getting arms from the CIA are mostly based in Idlib, with some smaller groups along the Jordan border.

President Trump has been seen as sour on the CIA program since before he took office, complaining that the US didn’t have good enough intelligence on who the rebels are, and should focus on fighting ISIS. Still, it took quite a few months to finalize this decision.
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 Qatar, in particular, has a clear interest in dragging out the crisis, as it now stands, for as long as possible. A protracted confrontation surely heightens the risks of a dangerous miscalculation or misunderstanding. It means the costs to the Arab world will probably be maximised rather than minimised, especially since predatory opportunists such as Iran might find ways of exploiting the discord.

 As the contretemps developed last month, Qatar increasingly counted on hopes Washington would pressure all sides to not merely de-escalate, but also return to the prior status quo. The United States has an obvious interest in containing and quickly resolving any major clash between key allies.

 But while the Trump administration has indeed pushed the parties to resolve their dispute, it has not remained neutral. Both Donald Trump, the US president, and Rex Tillerson, the secretary of state, clearly said Washington wants Arab countries to ease their isolation of Doha, but insist that some longstanding Qatari policies and conduct must change.

 This is not only consistent between Mr Trump and Mr Tillerson, despite their radically different tones. It is also reflective of American objections to some Qatari policies and practices that date back well over a decade and were shared by the George W Bush and Barack Obama administrations. Most US concerns about Qatar aren’t sudden shifts, but instead reflect long-standing and bipartisan positions.

 Given that Washington even Washington is demanding Qatar submit to an evolving list of policy changes, Doha knows it must eventually concede. Despite its defiant affectation, Doha lacks any viable long-term options other than the eventual accommodation of its outraged neighbours and a friendlier, but still stern, Washington.

 Doha’s priority, beyond ensuring the stability of the regime and maintaining national morale, is thus to somehow minimise the price required to keep Washington sufficiently onside, and for an eventful rapprochement with its erstwhile Arab allies.

 Washington is likely to emerge as the “weak link” against which Doha must press to lower such costs, because US demands will be both decisive and easier to shift than Arab ones. This dispute is important, but neither familial nor existential, for Washington.

 The US nonetheless has a clear stake in the outcome since it shares many core concerns about Qatar’s conduct. And the quarrel among its allies may prove not merely uncomfortable, but increasingly problematic for Washington’s agenda. Relocating the massive US military presence in Qatar would be time-consuming, costly and potentially disruptive of American military plans. It is therefore highly implausible.

 The existing arrangements give Washington considerable leverage over Doha. But they also provide Qatar – especially when it’s trying to appear as cooperative as possible – many ways of reminding Washington of the benefits of the current configuration and manifest risks of any alternative, which would probably involve trying to change either the current military configuration or the Qatari regime.

 Qatar will therefore try to use a protracted crisis to maximise American discomfort and impatience, thereby pushing Washington towards merely urging a return by all parties to the status quo. Hence US demands for meaningful Qatari policy change could be minimised, or even practically eliminated.

 As the imbroglio drags on, the Arab bloc will be tempted to try to resolve it by applying more pressure. Yet the pressure on Qatar is already widely labelled disproportionate. Some measures, such as outlawing expressions of sympathy for Qatar, are being used to denigrate the campaign as spiteful or excessive.

 Arab states confronting Qatar did not do so without understanding the serious risks involved – including potential political openings for Iran and other malefactors, and the possibility of miscalculations, unintended consequences and unforeseen pitfalls. Such campaigns inevitably defy anyone’s rational plans or control.

 This is not a measure of Arab impulsiveness or caprice, but rather the determination with which these countries are once again pressuring Doha after the unfulfilled promises of 2014.

 Nevertheless, the Arab camp has allowed the crisis to metastasise far enough. Further escalation won’t benefit them.

 Qatar cannot sustain any significant additional pressure. It’s putting on a brave face, and as long as Turkey and Iran – and much more importantly Kuwait and Jordan – remain open to Qatar at many registers and numerous levels, for a time Doha can endure. But not indefinitely.

 While Qatar must eventually concede, in the near term neither side is likely to either back down or escalate. Indeed, dragging this out, especially to Washington’s growing chagrin, is Qatar’s best bet to minimise the depth of its eventual climbdown.</s>Despite a solid eight months of stories about President Trump considering ending the CIA program to arm Syrian rebels, yesterday’s announcement that he’s ending that program have the rebels claiming they were totally “blindsided” and never expected such a move.

Needless to say, they’re outraged by the decision, saying that the lack of US arms shipments would quickly lead to the collapse of the “moderate” Free Syrian Army, to the benefit of jihadist factions closely aligned with al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front.

This is a surprising claim, particularly for the Free Syrian Army to make, since one of the big knocks on them for years has been how closely aligned they themselves have been with Nusra, with claims that Nusra effectively had been using FSA as a cover to secure US arms.

The “moderate” Syrian rebels, to the extent they ever existed, was largely sidelined much earlier in the war, and as fighting in Idlib recently demonstrates, the real factions of influence left are all jihadists of various stripes. Indeed, a big part of why the US froze the CIA arms program earlier this year was that too many of the weapons were being used by jihadist groups against one another.
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Syrian rebels, who have benefited from the "covert" CIA military aid program, say they have not been officially informed of the U.S. decision to stop this aid, and add that its full impact depends on whether U.S. allies Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey continue to support their fight. A Free Syrian Army commander warns this decision risks triggering the collapse of the moderate opposition.