A superb and indispensable new book shows that Saudi Arabia is now a murderous, one-man dictatorship — with U.S. elite complicity. Ben Hubbard of the NYT shows how the Crown Prince has cracked down on all opposition within the royal family, almost certainly ordered Khashoggi’s murder, and meantime seduced much of the western media.

The only country that supports Trump’s assassination of Soleimani is Israel. And no surprise, because the killing bogs America down in Israel’s regional conflicts in the Middle East and the “obsession” with Iran is “just not in the American interest,” says Ilan Goldenberg, formerly a foreign policy aide in the Obama administration.

Tom Friedman of the New York Times says he supported Iraq war in part to keep Israel from being surrounded by chaos in Arab world. He assures a pro-Israel audience, “Israel had me at hello. Whatever you think folks– don’t worry. In times of crisis, I know where I will be. When the Jewish state is under threat–” Though he worries if the next foreign affairs columnist will get a “buzz” for Israel.

The author of “Mornings in Jenin” was disinvited from a series of literary panels in Kuwait after criticizing the government of Saudi Arabia and Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman on social media.

The Iran/Saudi Arabia/Yemen crisis may break into war and damage the global economy, but U.S. mainstream media leaves out Israel’s deep involvement.

The successful Yemeni rebel drone attack shows that the disastrous Trump-Israel-Saudi Arabia alliance could trigger a global economic crisis. The New York Times report was more concerned with the impact on the global oil price than with the human cost of the Saudi-led war against Yemen, which is a root cause of the attack.

In an interview on July 26, Vermont Senator and presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders said he would “absolutely” consider cutting military aid to Israel as leverage to change their government’s actions.

After an emergency summit in Saudi Arabia, the 57 countries of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation called for a boycott of nations that move their embassies to Jerusalem. Saudi King Salman said, “The Palestinian cause is the cornerstone” of the organization, in a statement that appeared to be a setback to Jared Kushner’s peace plan that is said to skip over the question of Palestinian sovereignty.

National Security Advisor John Bolton recently dubbed Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua a “troika of tyranny,” but Danny Sjursen says the Middle East is where the genuine all-American troika of tyranny resides. “The kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the military junta in Egypt, and the colonizing state of Israel — all countries that eschew real democracy and are working together to rain chaos on an already unstable region,” Sjursen writes.

Palestinian officials are doubling down on their plans to boycott a US-led conference in Bahrain next month aimed at garnering regional support for President Donald Trump’s peace plan. However, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, two major regional players, announced Tuesday evening that they would be sending delegations to participate. The Saudis and the Emiratis, who in recent years have significantly warmed relations with Israel, are the first two Arab powers to announce participation in the event.