Saudi Arabia to be Trump’s 1st stop on first foreign trip

May 5, 2017

Washington, May 5: Promoting an agenda of “tolerance,” “burden sharing” and “countering both Iran and Daesh,” senior US officials announced that Saudi Arabia will be the first stop for US President Donald Trump on his debut foreign visit since taking office in January.

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This is the first time ever that a US president has made Saudi Arabia a first stop on a maiden foreign trip after taking office.

The visit is expected to take place in late May and will convene in Riyadh in a Muslim leaders’ summit with Trump, according to US officials who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity.

From Saudi Arabia, Trump will travel to Israel, and then to the Vatican where he will meet Pope Francis.

Trump is expected to travel to Brussels to participate in North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) summit. He will conclude the trip by attending the G-7 summit in Italy on May 26-27.

In announcing his trip from the Rose Garden at the White House, Trump stressed a message of “tolerance is the cornerstone of peace.”

He said: “That is why I am proud to make a major and historic announcement this morning and share with you that my first foreign trip as president of the United States will be to Saudi Arabia, then Israel, and then to a place that my cardinals love very much, Rome.”

Trump said he hoped to lay “a new foundation of cooperation and support with our Muslim allies to combat extremism, terrorism and violence, and to embrace a more just and hopeful future for young Muslims in their countries.” Trump referenced a more flexible foreign policy in dealing with governments in the region. “Our task is not to dictate to others how to live but to build a coalition of friends and partners who share the goal of fighting terrorism and bringing safety, opportunity and stability to the Middle East,” he said.

“This is the first country the US president visits on his tour of the region, also his first, which attests to the importance attached to Saudi Arabia,” Hamdan Al-Shehri, a Riyadh-based Saudi political analyst, told Arab News on Thursday.

“It sends the strong message that the Saudi-US relations are solid and that the two sides are keen to boost cooperation, especially in view of the more recent political and military developments in the Middle East,” he added.

He noted that the two sides will discuss several issues of common concern, including the Syrian crisis and the important role Saudi Arabia has been playing in trying to find a political solution to it.

The situation in Yemen and the Iranian intervention in the region, by supporting the Houthi militias in Yemen and the Syrian regime, which is a major contributor to the spread of terrorism, are also hot topics the two sides are expected to discuss during the visit, said Al-Shehri.

“Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s earlier visit to the US no doubt contributed to shaping the US approach to the Middle East.

During his visit, the deputy crown prince highlighted the opportunities the previous US administration wasted to address the crises in the region and put things back on track, particularly that now, there is need for a stronger US political involvement to balance the Russian and other countries’ presence in the region,” he said. US senior officials in a briefing about the visit said planning for trip to Saudi Arabia “started after the election” in November. They referenced a “big opportunity” and “new page of engagement” between the US and its Arab partners.

One official said Arab allies have shown “eagerness” to work with Trump and had felt “being abandoned” under his predecessor, Barack Obama, with a sense “that the US is withdrawing from the region.”

The officials promised a more robust US engagement focused on countering both Iran and Daesh, and fostering “tolerance among the three religions,” which explains the first three stops in Muslim, Jewish and Christian holy places.

“What this trip will show is that the president, as he lays out his agenda, America First, is fully compatible with American leadership in the world,” stressed one official.

The Trump administration did not close the door on a possible trilateral summit in Jerusalem between Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. It would mark the first such meeting since peace negotiations were brought to halt in 2014.

The White House statement announcing the visit said: “President Trump has accepted the invitation of King Salman bin Abd Al-Aziz, the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, to visit the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia later this month.”

It added that “the visit will reaffirm the strong partnership between the United States and Saudi Arabia and allow the leaders to discuss issues of strategic concern, including efforts to defeat terrorist groups and discredit radical ideologies.”

The statement said while in Israel Trump “will discuss a range of regional issues, including the need to counter the threats posed by Iran and its proxies, and by ISIS (Daesh) and other terrorist groups.”

Visiting Israel on the first trip also marks a reversal from Obama who visited Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Egypt in the first year in 2009.

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News Network
November 12,2024

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The Palestinian Hamas resistance movement says its fighters have killed at least 20 Israeli soldiers in northern parts of the besieged Gaza Strip in just two days, in retaliation for the occupying regime’s genocidal war on the Palestinian territory.

In a statement on Monday evening, Hamas said that fighters of its military wing, al-Qassam Brigades, “killed at least five occupation soldiers” in northern parts of the coastal territory earlier in the day.

It added that Hamas fighters also killed 15 Israeli soldiers in the war-ravaged region on Sunday.

The resistance movement’s “qualitative operation … confirms once again the failure of the criminal Zionist entity to suppress and eradicate the Palestinian resistance, which continues to direct qualitative strikes against its terrorist soldiers,” Hamas further said on its Telegram channel.

Palestinians have increased their resistance operations in the face of intensified Israeli aggression in northern Gaza that has claimed the lives of more than 1,000 over the past weeks.

“Our valiant resistance is waging a war of attrition with the criminal enemy, inflicting daily losses on its soldiers and vehicles, and all of [Israeli prime minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s bets and dreams of achieving any of his goals are failing,” the Gaza-based resistance movement added.

Hamas also vowed that Israel’s ongoing crimes and aggression against Gaza would be met with increased resistance and painful strikes, which will continue until the aggression against Palestinians ends and the regime fully withdraws from the blockaded territory.

As the war in Gaza enters its 14th month, the Health Ministry reports that Israeli attacks have killed at least 43,603 Palestinians and wounded 102,929 others.

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News Network
November 10,2024

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The media office in the Gaza Strip, where the Israeli regime has been waging a genocidal war since last October, says as many as 188 Palestinian journalists have been killed since the onset of the brutal military onslaught.

The office provided the figure on Saturday, naming four journalists as the most recent victims of the onslaught.

It identified the foursome as Zahraa Mohammad Abu Sukheil, Ahmad Mohammad Abu Sukheil, Mustafa Khadr Bahar, and Abdel Rahman Khadr Bahar.

The office said it “strongly condemns the targeting, killing, and assassination of Palestinian journalists by the Israeli occupation and holds it fully responsible for committing this heinous crime.”

“We call on the international community, international organizations, and those involved in journalistic work worldwide to take action against the occupation, pursue it in international courts for its ongoing crimes, and pressure it to halt the genocide and the targeted killings of Palestinian journalists,” it said.

Earlier in the day, the office said the Israeli regime had bombed the tents sheltering journalists and displaced persons at the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Hospital in the city of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza for the ninth consecutive time.

The atrocity that claimed the lives of two people and injured 26 others came as part of “the genocidal crimes committed by the Israeli occupation army against hospitals, civilians, and displaced persons,” it said.

The media office held the regime and the United States, its biggest ally, as well as other countries aiding the genocide fully responsible for such systematic crimes.

At least 43,552 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed and 102,765 others wounded since the launch of the war that followed a retaliatory operation by Gaza’s resistance groups.

The fatalities include 44 people, who were killed across the coastal sliver, in the most recent phase of the military onslaught.

As many as 24 of the victims were killed in the northern part of the territory, where the regime has markedly intensified its deadly attacks for weeks.

They included an eight-year-old child and a five-year-old one, who lost their lives after Israeli warplanes targeted a group of minors filling up jerry cans with water alongside their mother at the Jabalia Refugee camp.

Gaza’s heath ministry, meanwhile, said a number of victims remained under the rubble and in the streets following Israeli airstrikes, saying ambulances and civil defense teams could not reach them due to the sheer extent of the destruction caused by the raids and obstruction caused by the regime.

Also on Saturday, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report, a United Nations-backed assessment, warned that famine was looming in northern Gaza amid escalated Israeli aggression and the regime’s near-total siege of the targeted areas.

The alert from the Famine Review Committee warned of "an imminent and substantial likelihood of famine occurring, due to the rapidly deteriorating situation in the Gaza Strip."

On October 17, the body projected that the number of people in Gaza facing "catastrophic" food insecurity between November and April 2025 would reach 345,000, or 16 percent of the population.

The IPC report classified that figure as Phase 5 -- a situation when "starvation, death, destitution, and extremely critical acute malnutrition levels are evident."

The Israeli military, however, questioned the report's credibility.

"To date, all assessments by the IPC have proven incorrect and inconsistent with the situation on the ground," the army said in a statement, denouncing "partial, biased data and superficial sources with vested interests."

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News Network
November 15,2024

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Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) has killed or captured 69 terrorists linked to the Israeli spy agency Mossad during a major counterterrorism drill in the country's southeast, its spokesman says.  

General Ahmad Shafaei, the spokesman for the “Martyrs of Security” drill, said Friday that a total of 23 terrorists have been killed and another 46 arrested in various clean-up operations ever since the IRGC Ground Force launched it in the Sistan and Baluchestan province on November 1.

Seven terrorists have also turned themselves in during the period.

“The undeniable fact about terrorists is that they rely on arrogant powers, particularly the intelligence service of the wicked and vicious Zionist regime," Shafaei said.

“Unfortunately, weapons and munitions at terrorists’ disposal are among the most sophisticated ones in the world. This accounts for their heavy dependence.” 

The official stated that several members of the disbanded terror teams were non-Iranian nationals, who had been hired by foreign intelligence agencies to carry out acts of sabotage and terror inside Iran.

In a most recent operation, six terrorists were arrested and four others were eliminated, three of whom were non-Iranians, he added. 

On October 26, ten members of Iran's law enforcement forces were killed in a terrorist attack in the Gohar Kuh district of Taftan in the Sistan and Baluchestan province.

The so-called Jaish al-Adl terrorist group claimed responsibility for the assault, which was one of the deadliest in the province in recent months.

The group has carried out numerous terrorist attacks in Iran, primarily in Sistan and Baluchestan.

Its tactics include the abduction of border guards as well as targeting civilians and police stations within the province to incite chaos and disorder.

In January, Iran launched a military operation during which the headquarters of the Pakistan-based terrorist group was targeted in missile strikes, destroying its infrastructure.

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