ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

Five civilians were killed and eight wounded on Monday in an air raid on a rebel-held town in south Yemen, an official said, days after the United Nations agreed to investigate war crimes in the country. Speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, the government official said the raid targeted the Barh district in the southern province of Taez, which is largely controlled by Yemen’s Saudi-backed government.Barh, however, is held by the country’s Shia Houthi rebels, who are allied with Iran. The rebel-run Saba news agency said Saudi Arabia was behind the raid. Saudi officials did not comment on the news on Monday. Allied with former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, the Houthis for years have been locked in a war with the government of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi, in turn supported by an Arab military coalition led by Saudi Arabia. More than 8,500 people have been killed and nearly 49,000 wounded since the Saudi-led coalition joined the Yemen war in 2015. The UN Human Rights Council las...

FILE IMAGE: Staff Sgt. Aaron Allmon, US Air Force By  Rep. Ron Paul ; Originally appeared at  Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity Now that the defeat of ISIS in Syria appears imminent, with the Syrian army clearing out some of the last ISIS strongholds in the east, Washington’s interventionists are searching for new excuses to maintain the illegal US military presence in the country. Their original rationale for intervention has long been exposed as another lie. Remember that President Obama initially involved the US military in Iraq and Syria to “prevent genocide” of the Yazidis and promised the operation would not drift into US “boots on the ground.” That was three years ago and the US military became steadily more involved while Congress continued to dodge its Constitutional obligations. The US even built military bases in Syria despite having no permission to do so! Imagine if Syria started building military bases here in the US against our wishes. Afte...

With the Trump administration lately focused mostly on domestic policy – even as Mueller’s ongoing Russian probe continues to hang over Trump’s head – US power and influence in the Middle East has found itself in retreat, a continuation of unsuccessful and/or failed policies implemented by the Obama administration, resulting in a power vacuum that has to be filled, and one country has emerged willing to take America’s spot. As  Bloomberg writes today , “the Israelis and Turks, the Egyptians and Jordanians –  they’re all beating a path to the Kremlin in the hope that Vladimir Putin, the new master of the Middle East ,  can secure their interests and fix their problems .” And now, none other than Saudi Arabia is the latest to make friendly overtures toward the Kremlin, when Saudi King Salman visits Moscow on Wednesday,  the first monarch of the oil-rich kingdom to do so . At the top of his agenda will be reining in Iran, a close Russian ally seen as a deadly foe b...