https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/lebanon-receives-response-from-us-mediator-over-maritime-bor

Lebanon receives response from US mediator over maritime borders

Al Mayadeen correspondent reported Saturday that Lebanon received the written response from the US mediator, Amos Hochstein, regarding the indirect negotiations with the Israeli occupation over the demarcation of maritime borders.

This was preceded by the Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Elias Bou Saab, announcing that Lebanese President Michel Aoun is expected to receive the written response within 24 hours, adding that "the proposal will be studied, and if it meets the conditions, it will be positive and will be capitalized on."

The Lebanese Presidency quoted Bou Saab as saying that the written offer that will be sent by Hochstein is likely to reach Baabda soon.

On Monday, the Lebanese President spoke about breakthroughs on the issue of demarcation of the Lebanese southern maritime borders, assuring that Lebanon will receive the wealth it deserves and that this file is reaching its "Happy endings".

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati had previously stressed that Lebanon adheres to its sovereignty, wealth, and rights in its territorial waters, saying the country is nearing an agreement with the Israeli occupation on the demarcation of maritime borders.

A few days ago, Israeli media said Washington made a new offer to "Israel" and Lebanon on the demarcation of the maritime border, noting that "the settlement proposal is centered around line 23."

Israeli media pointed out that after the new US offer, the political and security circles in "Israel" seemed optimistic about the chances of reaching a final settlement of the maritime border file in the near future.

Calls to protest Lapid’s decision to sign deal with Lebanon: Reports

Israeli media outlets had reported that a group of Israeli settlers concerned about the agreement with Lebanon on maritime border demarcation will hold a protest near Israeli occupation Prime Minister Yair Lapid's house in "Ramat Aviv".

The protests come as Lebanese media reported that Lebanon and the Israeli occupation are close to reaching an agreement on the demarcation of the maritime borders, as per Israeli media.

The Israeli media added that "protesters will take other measures, including filing a petition or complaint by attorney Zahava Gur, and it is also expected that Dr. Udi Cohen will submit an opinion to be included in the petition."

The protesters believe that Lapid has no mandate to sign an agreement with Lebanon without a referendum or without a vote on the deal with Lebanon in the Knesset as required by Law, according to Israeli media.

Reports noted that Lapid might bypass Knesset by holding a secret vote on a border deal with Lebanon.

"Israel" made concessions in favor of Lebanon

Israeli Maariv newspaper had quoted Amos Yadlin, former IOF Military Intelligence Directorate, as saying that "Israel has made concessions in favor of Lebanon to demarcate the border to ward off the danger of escalation."

"Israel is showing leniency in the demarcation of the maritime borders," Yadlin considered.

Similarly, Israeli media reported that "Israel has stooped to the lowest level as it negotiates with Lebanon on the maritime borders under threat," adding that the Secretary-General of Hezbollah Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah "has put a gun to [Israel’s] head."

In the same context, the Israeli Channel 13 quoted Danny Danon, the former ambassador of the Israeli occupation to the United Nations, as saying that "Israel is on the verge of signing a heinous agreement without any debate in the Knesset or the government."

Danon added that "Nasrallah proved that he can force Israel to back down," stressing that "a new government must manage this agreement."

It is noteworthy that Sayyed Nasrallah had warned that "if Lebanon does not obtain the rights demanded by the Lebanese state, we are heading toward an escalation whether or not the nuclear agreement is signed."

On August 9, the Lebanese leader warned that any attempt to plunder any of Lebanon's wealth will be thwarted, indicating that the resistance party is waiting for the Israeli enemy's response to Lebanon's demands regarding border demarcation.

Israeli media has lately said that "Israel listens to Nasrallah's threats and put off extracting gas under technical pretexts."

It is noteworthy that former Israeli occupation Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had slammed Lapid, saying that the latter retreated following Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah's threats.

https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/cias-unworthy-spies-in-iran-left-behind-just-like-elsewhere

CIA's 'unworthy' spies in Iran left behind, just like elsewhere

In an investigative report by Reuters, the piece begins with a depicted moment of the spy being a few minutes away from leaving Iran when he was taken away.

In late 2010, Gholamreza Hosseini was at Imam Khomeini Airport in Tehran, preparing for a flight to Bangkok, where the Iranian industrial engineer would be introduced to his Central Intelligence Agency handlers. The airport ATM machine rejected his card as invalid before he could pay his exit tax to leave the country.

Moments later, a security officer asked to see Hosseini’s passport before escorting him away.

Hosseini stated, according to the report, that he was taken to an empty VIP lounge and told to sit on a couch facing a wall. Hosseini reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out a memory card containing state secrets that could land him in jail. He stuffed the card into his mouth, chewed it up, and swallowed it.

Ministry of Intelligence agents entered the room, according to Reuters, and the interrogation began. His denials and the destruction of the data were worthless; they seemed to know everything already.

“These are things I never told anyone in the world,” Hosseini told Reuters. As his mind raced, Hosseini even wondered whether the CIA itself had sold him out.

Hosseini, who had been imprisoned for nearly a decade and was speaking out for the first time, said he never heard from the CIA again after his release in 2019.

CIA 'negligence' or 'indifference'?

Hosseini's experience with carelessness and abandonment was not unusual. Interviews with six Iranian former CIA informants exposed the agency's carelessness during its intense drive to gather intelligence in Iran, as reported by Reuters.

The CIA directed him to drop his information in Turkey, according to one informant, at a location known to the agency to be under Iranian surveillance. Another man, a former government employee who traveled to Abu Dhabi to apply for a US visa, claims a CIA officer there tried to persuade him to spy for the US, which led to his arrest when he returned to Iran.

Reuters stated that such aggressive CIA actions put Iranian spies in danger, with little chance of obtaining critical intelligence. Even years after these men were apprehended, the agency provided no assistance to the informants or their families, according to the six Iranians.

According to the report, former CIA counterintelligence chief James Olson said he was allegedly unaware of these specific cases. He argued that any unnecessary compromise of sources by the agency would be a "professional and ethical failure."

The men were imprisoned as part of an Iranian counterintelligence operation that began in 2009, according to news reports and three former US national security officials. According to state media reports, Tehran's spy hunt ended up with the capture of dozens of CIA informants.

Part 1

>>17614513

Espionage convicts

Reuters interviewed six Iranians convicted of espionage by the Iranian government between 2009 and 2015.

The news agency interviewed 10 former US intelligence officials with knowledge of Iran operations, reviewed Iranian government records and news reports, and interviewed people who knew the spies to verify their claims.

The CIA declined to comment specifically on Reuters' findings or on the intelligence agency's operations in Iran.

An analysis by two independent cybersecurity specialists found that the now-defunct covert online communication system that Hosseini used – located by Reuters in an internet archive – may have exposed at least 20 other Iranian spies and potentially hundreds of other collaborators operating in other countries around the world.

Communication system

This messaging platform, according to Reuters, which was operational until 2013, was concealed within rudimentary news and hobby websites where spies could connect with the CIA. Four former US officials confirmed its existence to Reuters.

Years later, the agency is still haunted by these failures. CIA leadership warned in a series of internal cables last year that it had lost most of its network of spies in Iran and that sloppy tradecraft continues to jeopardize the agency's plans worldwide, according to The New York Times.

The CIA considers Iran one of its most difficult targets.

Four former intelligence officers interviewed by Reuters revealed that the agency is willing to take greater risks with sources when spying on Iran.

Washington has long used the Islamic Republic's nuclear energy as a pretext to further isolate and stifle the country, but Iran has repeatedly denied any such claims and maintained that its programs are for peaceful purposes only.

“This is a very serious, very serious intelligence goal to penetrate Iran’s nuclear weapons program. You don’t get a much higher priority than that,” said James Lawler, a former CIA officer whose focus included weapons of mass destruction - which the US never found in Iraq despite its claims of their presence to invade and occupy the country - and Iran.

“So when they do the risk-versus-gain analysis, you’ve got to consider the incredible amount of gain.”

What is the spy game?

For the first time, six informants were interviewed by Reuters and provided an unprecedented firsthand account of the deadly spy game from the perspective of Iranians who served as CIA foot soldiers.

The six Iranians served prison terms ranging from five to 10 years. Four of them, including Hosseini, stayed in Iran after their release, whereas two fled the country and have since become stateless refugees.

The six men acknowledged that their CIA handlers never made firm promises to help if they were caught.

The espionage busts may jeopardize the CIA's credibility as it attempts to rebuild its spy network in Iran. “It’s a stain on the US government,” Hosseini told Reuters.

Tammy Kupperman Thorp, a CIA spokeswoman, declined to comment on Hosseini, other captured Iranians, or any aspect of how the agency conducts operations.

She felt obligated, however, to defend the CIA's claims of protecting "the people who work with us very seriously, and we know that many do so bravely at great personal risk."

Part 2

>>17614520

How did Hosseini become a spy?

Hussaini studied industrial engineering at the prestigious Amirkabir University of Technology. Hosseini claims that a professor there introduced him to a former student with ties to the Iranian government, who later became his business partner.

He founded an engineering firm in 2001 alongside a former student with alleged ties to the Iranian government. The company provided services to help businesses optimize their energy consumption.

One day in 2007, he said he opened the CIA public website and clicked the link to contact the agency, “I’m an engineer who has worked at the nuclear site Natanz and I have information,” he wrote in Persian.

A month later, to his surprise, Hosseini said he received an email back from the CIA.

Agent I

Hosseini stated that three months after that contact, he flew to Dubai and met Chris, who was speaking in English while her colleague translated in Persian. Chris told him they were the people Hosseini had been exchanging messages with on Google's chat platform for the past few months.

When asked about his work, Hussaini said his company was a subcontractor of Kalaye Electric, a company sanctioned by the US government in 2007. He went on to say that he was looking for more contracts at other sensitive nuclear and military sites.

Hosseini also claimed that his company had several years earlier worked on contracts to optimize the flow of electricity at the Natanz site.

The three met again the next day, this time in Hosseini's hotel room overlooking the Gulf. Hosseini spread out a maze-like map across his desk, displaying the electricity connected to the Natanz nuclear facility.

Despite being several years old, the map's notations of the amount of power flowing into the facility provided Washington with a baseline to estimate the number of centrifuges currently active, according to Hosseini.

Hosseini claimed he had no idea Natanz was being pursued by US authorities at the time. Security analysts concluded that the same year, Washington and "Israel" launched a cyberweapon that would sabotage those very centrifuges, infecting them with a virus that would cripple uranium enrichment at Natanz for years to come.

In subsequent meetings, Hosseini said the CIA asked him to focus on a broader US goal: identifying potential critical points in Iran's national electric grid that, if hit by a missile or saboteurs, would cause long and paralyzing blackouts.

Agent II

Hosseini claims that as the relationship progressed, Chris was replaced by a male handler who was accompanied by officials described as more senior in the CIA's Iran operations, as well as technical experts who could keep up with his engineering jargon.

Hosseini was inspired by his new role. He raced to secure contracts that would give him greater access to the intelligence sought by the CIA. He claimed his firm had a contract with a unit of Setad, the sprawling business conglomerate allegedly affiliated with Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to assess the electrical needs of a massive shopping and commercial building project in Tehran's northwestern outskirts.

He was later given access to maps that showed how electricity was routed to nuclear and military sites, as well as how critical points of the network could be hacked.

Thirsty for information; the CIA wanted more

Hosseini said he met with an older CIA officer and others at a hotel in Dubai in August 2008, a year after becoming a spy.

“We need to expand the commitment,” Hosseini recounted the officer saying.

A CIA officer in the meeting then showed Hosseini a covert communications system he could use to contact his handlers: Iraniangoals.com, a rudimentary Persian-language soccer news website. Entering a password into the search bar brought up a secret messaging window, allowing Hosseini to send and receive information from the CIA.

What Hosseini didn't realize was that the world's most powerful intelligence agency had provided him with a tool that would almost certainly lead to his capture. A flaw in a web-based covert communications system led to the arrest of dozens of CIA informants in Iran and China in 2018, according to Yahoo News.

Communication web crash

Reuters discovered Iraniangoals.com, the secret CIA communications site identified by Hosseini, in an internet archive where it is still publicly accessible. The news agency then asked two independent cyber analysts – Bill Marczak of the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab and Zach Edwards of Victory Medium – to probe how Iran may have used weaknesses in the CIA’s own technology to unmask Hosseini and other CIA informants.

Part 3

>>17614534

Marczak and Edwards quickly discovered that the secret messaging window hidden within Iraniangoals.com could be found by right-clicking on the page and bringing up the website's coding.

This code contained descriptions of secret functions, including the words "message" and "compose" - obvious hints that the site had a messaging capability. The search barcoding that activated the secret messaging software was labeled "password".

Iraniangoals.com, far from being customized, high-end spycraft, was one of the hundreds of websites mass-produced by the CIA to provide its sources with, the independent analysts concluded. These rudimentary websites were devoted to topics such as beauty, fitness, and entertainment, with one dedicated to the late American talk show host Johnny Carson.

According to two former CIA officials, each fake website was assigned to only one spy in order to limit the exposure of the entire network if any single agent was captured.

However, the CIA made identifying those sites simple, according to independent analysts. Marczak discovered over 350 websites that used the same secret messaging system and had all been archived for at least nine years. Edwards' findings and methodology were confirmed.

As a result, many of these websites' numerical identifiers, or IP addresses, were sequential, much like houses on the same street.

“The CIA really failed with this,” said Marczak, the Citizen Lab researcher. The covert messaging system, he said, “stuck out like a sore thumb.”

Furthermore, some sites had names that were strikingly similar. For example, while Hosseini was communicating with the CIA via Iraniangoals.com, another informant's website, Iraniangoalkicks.com, was created. The analysts discovered that at least two dozen of the 350-plus sites produced by the CIA appeared to be messaging platforms for Iranian operatives.

Overall, the discovery of a single spy using one of these websites allowed Iranian intelligence to discover additional pages used by other CIA informants. Once those locations were identified, apprehending the operatives who used them would have been simple.

The CIA used the same row of bushes for its informants all over the world. According to the analysts, any attentive espionage rival would have detected them all. CIA spokeswoman Thorp declined to comment on the system.

Reuters confirmed the nature of the CIA's cookie-cutter website intelligence failure with three former national security officials.

According to former US officials, the agency was not fully aware that this system had been compromised until 2013 when many of its agents went missing. They claimed that the mass-produced sites were for sources who were either not fully vetted or had limited, albeit potentially valuable, access to state secrets.

“This is for a person viewed as not worth the investment of advanced tradecraft,” one of the former CIA officials said.

Part 4 - End

https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/baltic-pipe-starts-pumping-gas-from-norway-into-poland

Baltic Pipe starts pumping gas from Norway into Poland

The Baltic Pipe gas pipeline has started pumping oil gas from the Norwegian shelf into Poland via Denmark, Polish gas pipeline operator GAZ-System said on Saturday, just a few days after the incidents that disabled Russia's Nord Stream pipeline into Europe.

"As promised more than 6 years ago, we have kept our word. Today at 6.10 a.m. [04:10 GMT], gas started to be transported to Poland via BalticPipe," the operator wrote on Twitter, adding that its initial capacity would be up to 62.4 million cubic meters per day.

The pipeline is expected to reach its full capacity of 10 billion cubic meters per year by the beginning of 2023.

Poland had Russian energy cut off from it after Warsaw refused to comply with Moscow's demand to have its energy supplies paid for in Russian rubles. Poland was receiving around 10 billion cubic meters of Russian gas per year through the Yamal-Europe pipeline.

The Polish energy sector hopes to compensate for the lost supply of Russian gas via Norway through Denmark. Developed back in 2017, the project is the result of Warsaw and Copenhagen signing a memorandum on its construction.

The Baltic Pipe was inaugurated on September 27 with the participation of Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and his Danish counterpart, Mette Frederiksen.

European Parliament member and former Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski tweeted "Thank you, USA," along with a picture of the massive gas spill in the Baltic Sea. Off the shore of the Danish island of Bornholm, both pipelines sustained significant damage in what is now largely seen as a premeditated attack.

He later deleted the tweet posted in the aftermath of the explosions that affected Russia's Nord Stream 1 and 2 natural gas pipelines earlier in the week.

He had no reservations about who could have been responsible for Monday's Nord Stream pipeline explosion that shut off Germany from Russian gas.

However, Sikorski did not delete another tweet that read "As we say in Polish, a small thing, but so much joy" with the same picture of the bubbling water attached.

The Swedish National Seismic Network (SNSN) reported powerful underwater explosions in the area of gas leaks from the Nord Stream pipeline on Tuesday.

SNSN Director Bjorn Lund said as quoted by SVT that "there are no doubts that these were explosions."

Denmark's maritime traffic agency and Sweden's Maritime Authority reported on Monday a "dangerous" gas leak in the Baltic Sea close to the route of the inactive Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which experienced an unexplained drop in pressure.

The leak, southeast of the Danish island of Bornholm, "is dangerous for maritime traffic" and "navigation is prohibited within a five nautical mile radius of the reported position," the agency warned in a notice to ships.

It was revealed days later that US military helicopters habitually and on numerous occasions circled for hours over the site of the Nord Stream pipelines incident near Bornholm Island earlier in September.

Flightradar24 data showed that earlier in September a US Navy Sikorsky MH-60R Seahawk helicopter spent hours loitering over the location of the damaged natural gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea near Bornholm for several days in a row, September 1, 2, and 3, in particular.

https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/natos-public-unity-fa%C3%A7ade-veils-underlying-fissures—report

NATO's public unity façade veils underlying 'fissures' - Reports

British newspaper The Hill published a report revealing "troubling indicators" of the collapse of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), due to Ukraine, and emphasizing that the alliance "has been anything but unified on questions of war and peace."

"As these economic woes engulf NATO countries, generating attendant political instability, the fissures in the alliance’s “unity” regarding Ukraine may continue to multiply," the report written by journalist William Moloney said.

The report provides several examples proving the collapse of NATO's unity, starting with Turkey's stance toward the accession of Finland and Sweden to the alliance, as Ankara blocked the way for the two countries to join the alliance, "until at least 2023."

Another example the report provided is Ukraine's export of large amounts of grain to Europe at cut-rate prices, "which reportedly has antagonized European farmers and generated street protests from France to Bulgaria."

Europe's memories of the Biden administration's sudden withdrawal from Afghanistan without consulting with NATO allies "haven’t faded and clearly contribute to current anxieties about our [the US'] potential for unpredictability and unreliability as an ally," the journalist added.

According to the report, observers of NATO "have noted that over the past 20 years, beginning with the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, the alliance has been anything but unified on questions of war and peace."

The report also touched on the energy crisis triggered by the war in Ukraine and the western sanctions on Russia and emphasized how "far too dependent" Europe had become on Russia's energy resources.

>>17614630

https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/mwm:-why-wont-germany-us-send-leopard-ii-abrams-tanks-to-ukr

MWM: Why won't Germany, US send Leopard II, Abrams tanks to Ukraine?

An article published by Military Watch Magazine on September 30 details some of the reasons why it is improbable that the US and Germany would deliver Leopard II or Abrams Tanks to Ukraine.

It was reported yesterday that the White House might sign an order that would provide Ukraine with the most up-to-date Abrams and Leopard tanks.

During a press briefing on Friday, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters "I'm not ruling anything out. I will say, I don't have any announcement on US tanks today, and in terms of German tanks, I will refer you to the Germans who are in their own consultations with Ukrainians"

The article published by Military Watch Magazine on September 30 details five reasons explaining why it is unlikely that Ukraine may be armored with Leopard II or Abrams Tanks to Ukraine.

1 - Fear of it falling into Russian hands

The first reason is that NATO and its allies rely heavily on these tanks wherein tanks are among the "easier pieces of equipment to capture due to their frontline roles, as opposed to artillery or aircraft which can still contribute to operations when based far behind friendly lines."

If the tanks fell into the hands of Russian forces, the latter would immensely benefit from studying the technology invested in the production of these tanks.

So it is better to avoid that risk, the article states, just as Russia compromised its most valuable tanks through capture.

Yet Ukraine's outdated tanks remain of little value to Russia in terms of intelligence.

2 - Aleppo scenario was 'shocking'

The second reason, as stated by the article, is that the effectiveness of these tanks is still being questioned because of prior performances that saw both the Abrams and Leopard II suffer heavy losses against non-state actors, such as the Turkish Leopard IIs and Iraqi Abrams tanks both having taken heavy losses to Islamic State and other militia groups.

The Turkish tanks were heavily criticized by media reports across the world, some going as far as saying that they were “not so good armor after all," as described by the National Interest.

3 - Material cost

The third reason highlighted in the article is that they are too expensive, with some older variants of the M1 and Leopard II being far more expensive than the soviet made vehicles already provided to Ukraine.

The US-made Abrams for instance uses maintenance-heavy and fuel-hungry turbine engines.

4 - none compatibility

Fourth, the tanks are not as compatible with Ukraine’s existing weapon backlogs as the integration of new calibers of ammunition would generate serious issues.

5 - Worse mobility and logistics

Finally, the fifth reason is that the heavy weight of these tanks does not allow for move easily across bridges or brittle roads.

"Although Spain, the Netherlands, Norway, and Greece all use the Leopard II, none have filed for permission from Germany to supply them to Ukraine nor have Abrams operators shown any greater inclination to supply modern armor," the article mentions.

The article added that the use of older Leopard I and M60 from the early 1960s by Ukrainian forces wouldn't amount to any real losses as the capabilities of these armors is already very limited.

"Although Kiev is expected to continue to request deliveries of modern Western armor, this remains unlikely to materialize for the foreseeable future and potentially long after the war is over should the possibility of a resumption of hostilities with Russia remain," the article concluded.

https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/critics-fear-mbs-is-after-legal-cover-immunity-by-assuming-p

Critics fear MBS is after legal cover, immunity by assuming PM title

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's new title as Prime Minister, announced this week, may be more significant outside the Kingdom than inside, where he enjoys utmost power.

The royal decree whereby the Saudi prince was appointed as the country's Prime Minister came just days before a deadline for US President Joe Biden's administration to decide whether Prince Mohammed is eligible for immunity from lawsuits filed in US courts.

The 37-year-old de facto ruler of the world's largest crude exporter has been slammed by numerous lawsuits in recent years, most notably over the 2018 killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Kingdom's Istanbul consulate, which earned him the "pariah" title in the west, although temporarily.

In court filings, his lawyers claim that being "at the apex of Saudi Arabia's government" qualifies him for legal immunity.

Human rights activists and government critics speculated this week that making MBS Prime Minister was a blatant attempt to bolster the immunity claim and avoid legal consequences.

The executive director of the NGO Khashoggi founded, Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), Sarah Leah Whitson, told AFP that it was a "last-ditch effort to conjure up a new title for him" – in other words, a "title-washing ploy."

Saudi officials did not respond to requests for comment about the move.

Khashoggi conspiracy: Kidnapped, bound, drugged, tortured, and assassinated

Two years after Khashoggi's death, DAWN filed in October 2020 a complaint in the United States along with Khashoggi's fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, accusing Bin Salman of involvement in a "conspiracy" that led to Khashoggi being kidnapped, bound, drugged, tortured and assassinated.

Last year, Biden declassified an intelligence report that revealed Prince Mohammed had approved the operation against Khashoggi, which Saudi officials continue to deny.

The legal threats to Bin Salman in US courts go beyond Khashoggi.

He was also named in a lawsuit filed by Saad Al-Jabri, a former top intelligence official who fell out of favor as the crown prince maneuvered his way to the throne in 2017.

In the complaint, he is accused of attempting to entice Al-Jabri back to Saudi Arabia from exile in Canada, then "deploying a hit squad" to kill him on Canadian soil. The plot was indeed foiled, but only because the hired hitmen were turned denied entry.

The issue of immunity climaxed this summer when a US judge gave Biden's administration until August 1 to determine whether Prince Mohammed qualified for immunity or not.

After Biden visited Saudi Arabia in July, abandoning a previous pledge to turn Saudi Arabia into a "pariah", his administration requested an additional 60 days to decide.

The new deadline falls no later than Monday.

The Kingdom in MBS' palm

Prior to this week's announcement, Bin Salman, served as Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister, overseeing major portfolios ranging from energy to security and beyond.

A Saudi political expert at the University of Birmingham, Umar Karim, said little is expected to change within the kingdom as a result of his new title.

"MBS was already completely in control, and there was no threat as such to him that could be countered by him becoming prime minister," Karim said.

At the same time, it is unclear whether becoming Prime Minister will significantly strengthen Bin Salman's claim to immunity, given that King Salman continues to be King of Saudi Arabia.

>>17614691

>>17614722

Justice

https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/putin-to-xi:-russian-chinese-relations-developing-dynamicall

Putin to Xi: Russian-Chinese relations developing dynamically

Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on the 73rd anniversary of China's National Day, saying that Beijing and Moscow develop all-round partnership despite the complicated international situation in different areas, the Kremlin said on Saturday.

In a statement, the Kremlin pointed out that "Russian-Chinese relations are developing dynamically in the spirit of all-round partnership and strategic interaction."

"Despite the complicated international situation, we are cooperating successfully in the most diverse areas, pooling our efforts to build a more democratic and equitable world order and to counter modern threats and challenges," the statement read.

The Russian President reaffirmed Moscow's readiness to continue the bilateral dialogue and close joint work with Beijing for the benefit of the friendly nations of Russia and China, the Kremlin statement highlighted.

Russia-China gas trade reaches all-time high

It is noteworthy that the Russian Embassy in China said on September 21 that the trade of coal and natural gas exports to China reached a historical peak in the month of August.

"China imported a total of $409.37 million worth of natural gas from Russia in August, according to China's General Administration of Customs (GACC). This figure is the highest since at least January 2017, the maximum available observation period of Chinese customs," the mission said on Telegram.

Exports of Russian coal to China also reached 8.5 million tonnes in August, the highest in five years according to the mission, whereas in July, the supply increased by 15%, with a 57% year-on-year growth rate.

When the Ukrainian issue initially began in 2014, Russia and China signed a 30-year gas deal worth $400 billion which was needed to make feasible the construction of the "Power of Siberia," the Gazprom-operated pipeline in Eastern Siberia that transports natural gas from Yakutia to Primorsky Krai and China.

Part 1

>>17614797

This 30-year-long project, which Russian President Vladimir Putin called the "world's biggest construction project," is expected to bring $400 billion (€363 billion) into Russia's economy.

"This step takes Russo-Chinese strategic cooperation in energy to a qualitatively new level and brings us closer to fulfilling the task, set together with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, of taking bilateral trade to $200 billion (€181 billion) by 2024," said Putin when the pipeline was launched in 2019.

In February 2022, Putin and Xi Jinping again reaffirmed the goal of reaching $200 billion in bilateral trade by 2024 after the previous threshold of $100 billion was attained in 2018.

Last year, the trade turnover between the two countries went up 35.8%, standing at a record $146.887 billion.

On September 9, chairman of the Chinese Standing Committee Li Zhanshu said that annual trade between the two countries may reach a record of $200 billion by the end of 2022, which would mean a 37% increase in annual bilateral trade.

Beijing criticized Western anti-Russia sanctions, arms deliveries to Kiev

Since being slammed with unprecedented Western sanctions over the war in Ukraine, Russia has moved to strengthen connections with Asian countries, particularly China. Adding to Sino-Western tensions, Beijing criticized Western sanctions and arms deliveries to Kiev.

In mid-September, China's foreign policy official Yang Jiechi indicated that his country was ready to work with Russia with the aim to promote shared interests and a common vision of fairer world order.

"China is ready to work together with Russia to fill high-level strategic cooperation between the two countries with new meaning, protect shared interests and promote a fairer and more reasonable world order," Yang said.

He highlighted that the two sides' ties had been moving forward steadily along the right path under presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, with the two countries backing each other in securing their interests and cooperating at the international level.

Russia, China agree to deepen defense cooperation, joint exercises

On September 19, Moscow's Security Council stressed that Russia and China agree to deepen defense cooperation with a focus on holding joint exercises.

"The sides agreed on further military cooperation with a focus on joint exercises and patrols, as well as on strengthening contacts between the General Staffs," the Council affirmed.

In early September, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin told a news briefing for foreign military attachés that Russia and China have practiced joint operations by warships and aircraft during the Vostok-2022 strategic command and staff exercise.

He stressed that "the joint use of aircraft and warships by Russia and China was the main feature of the exercise."

Part 2