بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
Headline News 25/11/2020
Headlines:
Iran Tells Iraq Factions ‘No Attacks on US Targets until Trump is Gone’
Saudis Secretly Welcome Netanyahu
Oil-Rich Kuwait Faces Looming Debt Crisis
Details:
Iran Tells Iraq Factions ‘No Attacks on US Targets until Trump is Gone’
Terrified that Donald Trump could launch a new Middle East war, Iran dispatched one of its top generals to Baghdad last week to order allied Iraqi factions to cease all attacks until Joe Biden is in the White House, paramilitary commanders told Middle East Eye. Arriving 24 hours after a barrage of rockets targeted the US embassy in Baghdad’s Green Zone, Brigadier General Ismail Qaani was explicit in his instructions to paramilitary leaders on Wednesday. “Qaani made it clear that Trump wants to drag the region into an open war before leaving, to take revenge on his opponents over losing the election, and it is not in our interest to give him any justification to start such a war,” a senior commander of a Shia armed faction, who was among those briefed about what was said at the meeting, told MEE.
Saudis Secretly Welcome Netanyahu
Despite attempts by the Saudi media to hide the visit by Zionist leader Benjamin Netanyahu to Saudi Arabia on Sunday 22nd November, the Jewish entity’s Education MinisterYoav Gallant confirmed reports from domestic media that Netanyahu met Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on and also met with the outgoing US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Gallant spoke of a “great success”. A journalist for the Haaretz published aviation data that documented the flight of a business plane from Tel Aviv to the Saudi Arabian city of Neom on the Red Sea. ‘Israeli’ media reported that Netanyahu was accompanied on his trip by foreign intelligence chief Joseph (Yossi) Cohen. The Saudi regime has always had an intelligence and defence relationship with the Zionists, it is now just making it public.
Oil-Rich Kuwait Faces Looming Debt Crisis
Kuwait, one of the world’s wealthiest countries, is facing a debt crisis. The pandemic has sent the price of oil crashing to all-time lows and pushed the petrostate towards a reckoning with its long time largesse, just as a parliamentary election approaches in December. Like other Gulf sheikhdoms, Kuwait provides jobs to around 90% of citizens on the public payroll, along with generous benefits and subsidies, from cheap electricity and petrol to free healthcare and education. With crude oil prices just above $40 a barrel, other nearby Arab states took on debt, trimmed subsidies or introduced taxes to sustain their spending. Kuwait, however, did none of that. Its breakeven price for this year’s budget was $86 a barrel, double current sales figures, putting its finances under strain.