Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s enthusiasm for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia illustrates the worst of U.S. foreign policy. As secretary of state under President Donald Trump, Pompeo acted as if he were a mob consigliere for the KSA’s Mohammed “Slice‘n’Dice” bin Salman. Even the CIA blamed MbS for the murder and dismemberment of U.S. resident and dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018.

Saudi-led coalition shelling in Saada’s Shadaa district reportedly killed two civilians and injured four on 22 January, an Al-Mayadeen correspondent said.

The news was also reported by Yemen’s Al-Masirah TV, affiliated with the Ansarallah resistance movement and the National Salvation Government (NSG) based in Sanaa.

According to Al-Masirah, these latest Saudi truce violations have sent the death toll from coalition shelling in Saada this month up to seven, with 91 injured so far.

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Thursday in the first high-level US visit to the country since the new Israeli government was sworn in.

Earlier this month, former NY Fed repo guru Zoltan Pozsar wrote one of his most important reports of 2022, in which he described how Putin could unleash hell on the Western financial system by demanding that instead of dollars, Russian oil exporters are paid in gold, effectively pegging oil to gold and launching Petrogold.

Saudi oil giant Aramco expects the Chinese reopening and a pick-up in jet fuel demand to lead to a rebound in global oil demand this year, Amin Nasser, the CEO of the world’s biggest oil firm, told Bloomberg in an interview published on Wednesday.

“We are very optimistic in terms of demand coming back to the market,” Nasser told Bloomberg on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos. 

Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest crude oil exporter, is open to discussing oil trade settlements in currencies other than the U.S. dollar, Saudi Minister of Finance, Mohammed Al-Jadaan, told Bloomberg TV in an interview in Davos on Tuesday.

The Saudi signal that it could be open to talks about oil trade arranged in non-dollar currencies could be another threat to the current dominance of the U.S. dollar in global oil trade.

 Pakistan’s new army chief has held talks with top Saudi officials, including the defence minister, on his first official trip to the Gulf kingdom as the South Asian country faces an unprecedented economic crisis.

General Syed Asim Munir, who took charge in November, has followed in the footsteps of his predecessors in visiting Saudi Arabia – a close defence and economic ally – on his maiden overseas trip. He will also visit the United Arab Emirates during the nearly one-week trip.