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    Wednesday briefing: Will Kyiv’s commitment to a ceasefire appease Trump – and pressure Putin?

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    Good morning. Just 11 days after Donald Trump kicked Volodymyr Zelenskyy out of the White House for being insufficiently grateful, negotiations over a ceasefire in Ukraine have taken on a new complexion again.After day-long talks in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, officials from Kyiv and Washington declared that they had agreed on an immediate 30-day ceasefire plan and called on Russia to do the same. The United States will now lift restrictions on military aid and intelligence sharing. And the deal to give the United States a 50% stake in revenues from Ukrainian minerals is back on the table.Ukraine is still a long way from a durable, secure peace, and in one sense the success of yesterday’s talks was predicated on a grim recognition – unlikely to be articulated – of how thoroughly Trump has sold out Zelenskyy and Ukraine. But it is also true that Moscow’s actions will now be judged against an unambiguous backdrop. Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, is expected to see Vladimir Putin in Moscow in the coming days – and, as Volodymyr Zelenskyy said yesterday, “Russia must show its readiness to end the war or continue the war. It is time for the full truth.”Today’s newsletter explains what happened at the talks, and what might happen next. Here are the headlines.Five big stories

    Trump tariffs | Donald Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum imports took effect on Wednesday “with no exceptions or exemptions”, as his campaign to reorder global trade norms in favour of the US stepped up. In chaotic developments on Wednesday, the US threatened to double tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminium but then reversed course.

    UK news | A BBC presenter whose family were murdered by a misogynist with a crossbow has said he hopes women can be inspired by how his daughter ended her relationship with her killer. On the day that Kyle Clifford was sentenced to a whole-life order for the triple murder last year, John Hunt described the former soldier as a psychopath disguised as an ordinary human being.

    North Sea collision | A 59-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter in connection with the shipping collision in the North Sea. Humberside police said they had opened a criminal investigation into the collision, in which one seaman is believed to have died.

    Phillipines | The former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte has left Manila on a plane headed to The Hague, hours after he was served with an arrest warrant from the international criminal court over the killings resulting from his “war on drugs”.

    Climate crisis | Climate whiplash is already hitting major cities around the world, bringing deadly swings between extreme wet and dry weather as the climate crisis intensifies, a report has revealed. Dozens more cities, including Lucknow, Madrid and Riyadh, have suffered a climate “flip” in the last 20 years.
    In depth: Is this really an end to the White House’s ‘Mean Girls’ view of the Ukraine crisis?View image in fullscreenOne measure of the public shift in tone between Ukraine and the United States came in US secretary of state Marco Rubio’s comments after the talks in Jeddah yesterday. Previously, he has attacked Zelenskyy over the notorious Oval Office meeting, saying that “he found every opportunity to try to ‘Ukraine-splain’ on every issue”. Yesterday, he said: “What’s back on track here hopefully is peace. This is not Mean Girls.”That represents a significant success for Ukraine – but it has come at a cost. Here’s what emerged from the talks, and where it leaves the key players.Jeddah talks | Success for Ukraine – but significant concessionsUkraine went into the talks saying that it was ready to consider a ceasefire in the air and at sea, but not on the ground – arguing that a full ceasefire without more permanent guarantees would simply allow Russia to regroup. It also said that any ceasefire would have to include security guarantees.By that measure, Kyiv made significant concessions yesterday. A joint statement from Ukraine and the United States said that “Ukraine expressed readiness to accept the U.S. proposal to enact an immediate, interim 30-day cease-fire”, including on the ground, if Russia would make the same commitment.And there was no mention of security guarantees in the joint statement: while US national security adviser Michael Waltz said that “we … got into substantive details on how this war is going to permanently end, what type of guarantees they’re going to have for their long term security and prosperity”, that may simply be a reference to the minerals deal which now appears to be back on the table.But Ukraine made real progress – securing an immediate end to the suspension of intelligence sharing and military assistance, and extracting Rubio’s recognition that Russia now has to take its own steps toward peace. Perhaps just as significant is the possibility that Trump will be better disposed toward Kyiv, at least for now. He has said that he is now open to Zelenskyy returning to the White House, and said of a ceasefire: “Ukraine has agreed to it. Hopefully President Putin will agree to that also.”Pressure on Russia | A new equation for Putin to resolveThe phrase used by Marco Rubio, and repeated by Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron, was that “the ball is now in Russia’s court”. Donald Trump had his own corny analogy, saying that he would speak to Vladimir Putin about the ceasefire proposal this week and adding: “It takes two to tango”.But in its first substantive responses to the developments from Jeddah, Moscow did not present itself as an enthusiastic dance partner this morning. Foreign minister Sergei Lavrov was reported by Russian news agencies to have said that Russia will not make compromises that would “jeopardise people’s lives”. And Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said: “The shaping of the position of the Russian Federation does not take place abroad due to some agreements or efforts of some parties.”Russia has always had its own conditions attached to any steps towards peace. In this piece, Dan Sabbagh explains that while Russia has been talking about a ceasefire, it has said that it must be accompanied by elections in Ukraine.Kyiv will now hope that yesterday’s developments have sufficiently soothed Trump’s irritation with Zelenskyy that he will now look more sceptically at Russian claims that it is Ukraine that is blocking a ceasefire. They do appear to have removed some of the ambiguity around which side is holding up that process.While Russia has made no serious moves to show that its position is held in good faith, Vladimir Putin must now decide whether the favourable position he now holds with Trump will come under threat if he obstructs the proposals that have emerged from Jeddah – or whether he cares. Russia may also calculate that it can feint towards a ceasefire while making additional demands and continuing to attack Ukraine – and still persuade the White House that it wants peace.European reaction | Key questions over any international forceMeanwhile, in Paris, military chiefs of staff from more than 30 European and Nato countries held talks on an international security force. French president Emmanuel Macron, who addressed the meeting, said that “it was the moment for Europe to exert its full weight, for Ukraine and for itself”. Defence ministers from the five leading military powers in Europe – the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Poland – will hold further talks today.Paris also said that any security guarantees “should not be separated from Nato and its capabilities” and should be “credible and long-term”. But the Associated Press reported that there is no definitive plan for military options yet. Here are some of the key questions that remain unanswered: Would the force be “peacekeepers”, intended to monitor breaches of the ceasefire and keep the two sides apart; a “tripwire”, a small force whose sheer presence would create a threat of escalation in the event of a Russian advance; or a much larger “deterrent”? This post by the leading defence analyst Lawrence Freedman sets out the case for each; there is little sense that Nato countries have the will or capacity for a full-scale deterrent force. Can the US be persuaded to guarantee the kind of “backstop” – a commitment to US military action if a tripwire force came under attack – to deter Russia from a new offensive? Trump has offered little comfort on this point so far. In this piece, the International Crisis Group argues that it is counterproductive for Ukraine and Europe to pursue this idea, but the reference to Nato’s role may suggest that it is still theoretically in play. Would Russia sign up to any deal involving European troops on the ground in Ukraine? Moscow has emphatically refused to countenance such an arrangement, a point reiterated by Lavrov this morning; Trump has claimed, with little evidence, that Putin is prepared to consider the idea. In this piece on the security analysis site War on the Rocks, Jack Watling and Michael Kofman argue that the most important thing is that no peace deal excludes the possibility, even if it is not explicitly endorsed.Military exchanges | Frantic attempts to maximise leverage for talksBoth sides are still seeking leverage in anticipation of ceasefire negotiations. Ukraine launched drone attacks on 10 Russian regions including Moscow yesterday, the biggest such operation it has conducted since the start of the war. Andriy Kovalenko, a Ukrainian national security council official, said that “this is an additional signal to Putin that he should also be interested in a ceasefire in the air”.But – despite Ukraine’s formidable drone production capacity, with the country’s armed forces expecting to buy 4.5m drones from domestic suppliers this year – such attacks are always likely to be confined to psychological operations rather than a route to significant tactical advantages.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionRussia, meanwhile, has continued with aggressive ground operations. A situation report from the Institute for the Study of War published on Monday set out the recent success of Russian and North Korean forces taking back Russian territory in Kursk oblast, and the most recent reports suggest that Ukrainian forces are now under threat in the village of Sudzha, their last significant foothold.But the ISW also notes that in most areas within Ukraine, Russia has failed to make significant recent gains. If the land offensive within Ukraine remains at an impasse, the Kremlin has dramatically stepped up aerial attacks, with massive ballistic missile and drone strikes aimed at critical infrastructure last week. In the aftermath of that attack, Trump said that he was considering new sanctions on Russia. None have yet come into force.What else we’ve been readingView image in fullscreen

    Anastacia talks to Paula Cocozza about her life, from mutilating her sister’s dolls, to chart-topping success and her “toxic titties” – despite overcoming breast cancer twice, she’s lost none of the exuberance that propelled her musical success. Toby Moses, head of newsletters

    After the arrest of Rodrigo Duterte yesterday, it’s worth going back to coverage of the horrors exacted by his “war on drugs” in the Philippines. This wrenching 2018 piece by his biographer Jonathan Miller tells the story of one family that lost a father and child in the crackdown. Archie

    David Squires is in typically excellent form skewering the Fifa president’s transparent attempt to cosy up to the new king in the White House. The combo of Donald Trump and Gianni Infantino is a truly horrifying glimpse at the world we live in. Toby

    Marina Hyde ponders the reaction of a Southampton fan in 2009 to the subsequent rise of Rupert Lowe: “In 16 years’ time, the richest man in the world – who’s the unofficial vice-president to Donald Trump, yes, the one off the US Apprentice – will say that Rupert Lowe should be prime minister of the United Kingdom.” Rupert Lowe?! RUPERT LOWE?!?!?! I honestly think the resultant psychiatric eruption would blow the roof off the mall.” This is correct. Archie

    What happens when gen Z and millennials swap jeans? It’s the question everyone’s asking, and luckily we have the answer, with Emma Loffhagen trading trousers with her older colleague, our fashion editor Morwenna Ferrier: “After a few hours of wearing them, I’ve never known comfort like it. I’m just not sure it’s very dignified to be aggressively on trend at my age.” Toby
    SportView image in fullscreenFootball | Gianluigi Donnarumma saved two penalties as PSG beat Liverpool 4-1 in a shootout to send the Paris side through to the quarter-finals. Darwin Nunez and Curtis Jones were both denied from the spot after PSG won the second leg 1-0.Horse racing | Jeremy Scott’s mare Golden Ace emerged as one of the most unexpected of all Champion Hurdle winners on day one of the Cheltenham festival. Golden Ace, a 25-1 shot, won after 2023 and 2024 champions Constitution Hill and State Man were fallers.Football | Manchester United have confirmed their intention to build a new 100,000-capacity stadium in the Old Trafford area, leaving their home of 115 years. Officials claim that the project, which United co-owner Jim Ratcliffe compared to the Eiffel Tower, will create as many as 92,000 jobs and 17,000 new homes in Greater Manchester.The front pagesView image in fullscreenThe Guardian leads with “US says ‘ball in Russia’s court’ as Ukraine agrees 30-day ceasefire”. The deal dominated UK headlines on Wednesday with the Times running with “Kyiv open to ceasefire as Trump restarts aid,” the i with “Ceasefire in Ukraine – if Putin agrees,” and the Daily Mail “Ukraine agrees ceasefire deal.” “Putin told to agree Ukraine ceasefire,” was the take IN the Telegraph.“Trump ratchets up Canada trade war with 50% aluminium and steel tariffs,” writes the Financial Times. The Express follows the latest on the crossbow killer with the headline: “‘I am so proud of all my girls’”. The Mirror runs with “Jail … then hell” and the Metro: “‘They’ll roll out the red carpet in hell’”.Today in FocusView image in fullscreenCan Canada’s ‘rockstar banker’ PM take on Trump and win?The former governor of the Bank of England has a new role – saving his country from becoming America’s 51st state. Leyland Cecco reportsCartoon of the day | Rebecca HendinView image in fullscreenThe UpsideA bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all badView image in fullscreenThe Guardianas del Conchalito are a group of women who ignored calls to “get back to the kitchen” to create a sustainable shellfish project in Mexico. In 2017, the women were hanging out in La Paz, in the Mexican state of Baja California, and gazing at a polluted mangrove plantation. Drug dealers and tourism were ruining the area, and illegal fishing was depleting the shellfish population. “The mangroves were dying, the trash was everywhere,” Graciela “Chela” Olachea, told the Guardian’s Joanna Moorhead. The women cleaned up the mangrove and sought out funders to help make it sustainable, turning the Guardianas del Conchalito into a legally recognised community cooperative that pays members a living wage. But the project hasn’t only transformed the mangroves, it’s transformed thewomen’s lives. As Guardianas member Rosa María Hale Romero put it: “I used to ask my husband’s permission if I wanted to leave the house. Now if I go out, I just tell him: ‘I’ll be back.’ And instead of me serving him, he brings me my coffee.”Bored at work?And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow.

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      Trump is using the presidency to seek golf deals – hardly anyone’s paying attention | Mohamad Bazzi

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      In his first month in office, Donald Trump destroyed federal agencies, fired thousands of government workers and unleashed dozens of executive orders. The US president also found time to try to broker an agreement between two rival golf tournaments, the US-based PGA Tour and the LIV Golf league, funded by Saudi Arabia.If concluded, the deal would directly benefit Trump’s family business, which owns and manages golf courses around the world. And it would be the latest example of Trump using the presidency to advance his personal interests.On 20 February, Trump hosted a meeting at the White House between Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, and Yasir al-Rumayyan, chair of LIV Golf and head of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, along with the golf star Tiger Woods. It was the second meeting convened by Trump at the White House this month with PGA Tour officials involved in negotiating with the Saudi wealth fund. A day before his latest attempt at high-level golf diplomacy, Trump travelled to Miami to speak at a conference organized by the Saudi Public Investment Fund, which is managed by Al-Rumayyan but ultimately controlled by the kingdom’s de facto ruler and crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.Trump’s sports diplomacy in the Oval Office and cozying up to Saudi investors in Miami did not get much attention compared with his whirlwind of executive orders and new policies. But these incidents encapsulate Trump’s transactional and corrupt approach to governing – and the ways that wealthy autocrats including Prince Mohammed will be able to exploit the US president. While Trump will often boast he is making good deals for the US, his relationship with Saudi Arabia and its crown prince is largely built on benefits for Trump’s family and its extensive business interests.During Trump’s first term, the Trump Organization had dealings with Saudi Arabia that posed a potential conflict of interest for the president, especially after Saudi government lobbyists spent more than $270,000 on rooms at the Trump International hotel in downtown Washington. Now with no guardrails from Congress or the courts, the Trump family business is plowing ahead with new agreements that could reap tens of millions of dollars in profit from Saudi-linked real estate and golf ventures.In December, a month after Trump was elected to a second term, the Trump Organization announced several real estate projects in Saudi Arabia, including a Trump Tower in the capital, Riyadh, and another $530m residential tower in the city of Jeddah. The projects are branding deals for Trump’s family business with Dar Global, an international subsidiary of Dar Al Arkan, one of the largest real estate companies in Saudi Arabia. While Dar Al Arkan is a private company, it relies on large Saudi government contracts and the crown prince’s goodwill.After a mob of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, the Trump Organization lost a series of real estate partnerships and other deals in the US. During Trump’s years out of power, Saudi Arabia became one of the few consistent sources of new deals and growth for the Trump brand, which was considered toxic by many US customers and businesses. Aside from real estate branding agreements with Saudi companies, Trump convinced the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund to host the LIV professional golf tour at several of his golf courses, including those in Washington, Miami and Bedminster, New Jersey. After the assault on the Capitol, the PGA of America, which is a separate organization from the PGA Tour and runs one of golf’s most important tournaments, the PGA Championship, cancelled a 2022 tournament at Trump’s golf club in New Jersey. The LIV Golf tournaments brought Trump’s properties back into the professional golfing circuit and provided millions of dollars in revenue for the Trump family business.In November 2022, as Trump was preparing to announce his presidential campaign, the Trump Organization finalized a deal with Dar Al Arkan and the government of Oman to be part of a multibillion-dollar real estate development in Oman. While the Trump Organization is not expected to contribute funds toward the project’s development, it will earn millions of dollars in licensing fees for a Trump-branded hotel and golf course – and will be paid millions more in management fees for up to 30 years. The project raised concerns that if Trump was re-elected, he would violate the US constitution’s emoluments clause by profiting from being in a partnership with the government of Oman, a longtime US ally, and a real estate firm with close ties to the Saudi government. (A report released by Democrats in Congress last year found that Trump’s businesses had received $7.8m from at least 20 foreign governments during his first term as president.)As Saudi Arabia helped keep Trump’s family business afloat after the Capitol insurrection, it provided even more crucial support to Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser during the first Trump administration. Six months after Kushner left the White House in 2021, his newly created firm, Affinity Partners, secured a $2bn investment from the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund. Prince Mohammed overruled a panel of advisers who had recommended against investing in Kushner’s company, citing its lack of experience and track record in private equity. The advisers warned that due diligence had found the firm’s early operations “unsatisfactory in all aspects”, but internal documents leaked to the New York Times showed that the prince and his aides were more concerned with using the investment as part of a “strategic relationship” with Kushner.Why was Prince Mohammed so eager to invest in Trump and Kushner’s businesses, even when they were out of power? The prince was betting on a second Trump term – and he was rewarding Trump’s steadfast support throughout his presidency. The Trump administration helped Prince Mohammed survive a severe challenge to his rule: fallout from the assassination of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. In October 2018, Khashoggi was ambushed inside Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul by a 15-member hit team, who suffocated the Saudi journalist and dismembered his body with a bone saw.As the international outcry over Khashoggi’s killing intensified and members of Congress demanded sanctions against Prince Mohammed and other Saudi officials, Trump and Kushner never wavered in their support for the prince and his regime. While Saudi officials at first tried to claim that Khashoggi had left the consulate alive, the crown prince eventually blamed rogue operatives for the assassination. But a US intelligence report, which Trump refused to release, found that Prince Mohammed had ordered Khashoggi’s killing.The president later made sure to remind Prince Mohammed that he owed Trump for defending him after Khashoggi’s assassination. In interviews with the journalist Bob Woodward in early 2020, Trump boasted: “I saved his ass”– meaning he protected the crown prince from a backlash in Congress. “I was able to get Congress to leave him alone,” Trump told Woodward. “I was able to get them to stop.”Today, the president is trying to reap more benefits based on his protection of Prince Mohammed – beyond what Kushner and the Trump Organization have already amassed from Saudi investments during Trump’s time out of office. Trump is corrupting the presidency by using it to negotiate international golf agreements and other deals that will ultimately enrich his family – and hardly anyone is objecting.

      Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a journalism professor at New York University More

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      Trump’s bullshit blitz has Europe on its knees | Stewart Lee

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      Was it really only a month ago that the pole-dancer patron, fridge explorer, Brexit get-doer, model bus maker, sofa-strainer, wall-spaffer, current Daily Mail columnist and former British prime minister Boris Johnson eulogised the inauguration of Donald Trump in the Mail, recounting how, as the “invisible pulse of power surged” from the battered bible into the hand of Trump: “I saw the moment the world’s wokerati had worked so hard to prevent.”I hope Johnson is pleased with the way things have worked out. Because now the foolish wokerati have been schooled beyond Johnson’s wettest dreams. It’s the Trump-Putin-bin Salman party! An adjudicated sex offender and convicted fraudster, and a man who sanctioned a chemical warfare hit, killing a British citizen on British soil, have met at the luxury Saudia Arabian hotel of another man, who, according to the US, reportedly approved the murder and subsequent dismemberment of a journalist, to discuss the similarly brutal dismemberment of Ukraine, without consulting either Ukraine itself or the countries most directly affected by the legitimisation of Putin’s territorial anxieties. Don’t worry, Poland! Stable genius Trump has got this covered, so break out the bone saws, pop the cork on the novichok and grab the girls by the pussy! There are 1970s Italian slasher films with less gruesome plotlines. Well said, Boris Johnson! That’s certainly stuck it to the wokerati!If only Johnson, and Trump’s other cheerleaders in the rightwing press and on the right of the house, could be brave enough to call out Trump for what he is. If only Johnson had the moral courage of Ed Davey from the Liberal Democrats. In what newly warped reality does that sentence even exist? But, on balance, the whitewashing of the deaths of tens of thousands of Ukrainians is a small price to pay for the delight Trump has bought to the smiling faces of people who hate the transgender community, wild swimming enthusiasts and Guardian readers. Sniffing mineral rights in the air, like the smell of napalm in the morning, Trump has grabbed Ukraine by the pussy and he ain’t gonna let go. Trump is, unequivocally, the worst thing to happen to human civilisation since Hitler. And Ricky Gervais’s After Life.European politicians more rational and less self-serving than Johnson are trying to formulate the correct response to Trump’s rapid and reckless redrawing of the postwar world disorder in his own, and Russia’s, interests. The correct response is to shit your pants. On Tuesday, Trump even blamed Ukraine itself for being invaded, which is a bit like blaming E Jean Carroll herself for being sexually abused in a department store changing room. Couldn’t she have cut a pre-emptive deal before things escalated? Victims! Always blaming someone else. But Trump has put the idea that the invasion of Ukraine is Ukraine’s fault out there now, on the world stage, amplified by his collaborators in the tech bro media, and it will gradually calcify into one of those persistent alternative facts. By Wednesday he’d called Zelenskyy a dictator (and a mediocre comedian, which in my opinion is even worse).And it’s that kind of reshaping of reality that needs a coherent European response. Recently, the US vice-president, JD Vance, who has the exact same face-beard as the main male oppressor in the TV adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale, came and told the Munich security conference that Scotland had made it illegal to pray silently in your own home. Many things are illegal in Scotland. Fruit, for example, and cushions, which are deemed too soft by the Scottish Cushion Committee. But not silent private prayer. Largely ignoring dead-in-the-water Ukraine, Vance also told Europe we had some kind of moral duty to allow unchecked, factually inaccurate bullshit to clog our infosphere via Trump’s tech bro acolytes’ social media platforms, his inflammatory comments about illegal Scottish prayer in the same speech proving exactly why such regulation is required. And I think he knows this.Predictably, Vancewas one of the three main early investors in Rumble, the social media site for all the people whose conspiratorial untruths and borderline criminality make them too toxic for other social media sites – Russell Brand, Alex Jones and Darth Vader etc – so he personally stood to profit from this sort of popularisation of inflammatory actionable crap. As did fellow Rumble original main investor Peter Thiel, the man behind Palantir, the big tech company Wriggling Wes Streeting is keen to hand all our NHS data to, revealing an interlocking and endless web of bad influence that only “cat woman” Carole Cadwalladr had the persistence of vision to apprehend, and she’s currently shunting off to a subscription Substack site, a crowdfunded Cassandra in an era busy eating its own brainstem.For a brief period around teatime on Monday, Keir Starmer, who once left his “village and went to the city of Leeds” and “discovered a whole new world of indie bands – like Orange Juice and the Wedding Present” delusionally imagined he could be some kind of go-between twixt observable reality and Trump. But did West Yorkshire jangle-pop pioneers the Wedding Present radically retool their signature sound for 1991’s Seamonsters album just so Starmer could become a Neville Chamberlain for the cover-mounted fanzine flexidisc generation?We have staved off outright fascism throughout most of Europe pretty well for 80 years now, but outright fascism in Europe was never quite so well funded and promoted as it is now, since the US government and the social media platforms that do its bidding decided backing outright fascism was a good way to smash the EU. Think what Hitler could have achieved if he’d had Twitter, currently X, and Google at his disposal. He wouldn’t have needed the V2 rocket, Lord Haw-Haw and Hugo Boss. He could have razed half of Europe with a Hulk Hogan meme, some persuasive online misinformation and a dozen jauntily askew baseball caps.

      Stewart Lee tours Stewart Lee vs the Man-Wulf this year, with a Royal Festival Hall run in July. He appears in a benefit show for Just Stop Oil at Walthamstow Trades Hall, London, on 8 April More

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      Washington Post condemns Pompeo for ‘vile’ Khashoggi ‘falsehoods’

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      Washington Post condemns Pompeo for ‘vile’ Khashoggi ‘falsehoods’Fred Ryan says former secretary of state ‘outrageously misrepresents’ Post journalist murdered by Saudi Arabian regime The publisher of the Washington Post, Fred Ryan, has blasted the former secretary of state Mike Pompeo for “outrageously misrepresenting” and “spreading vile falsehoods” about Jamal Khashoggi, the Post columnist murdered by the Saudi Arabian regime in 2018.Nikki Haley plotted with Kushner and Ivanka to be Trump vice-president, Pompeo book saysRead more“It is shameful that Pompeo would spread vile falsehoods to dishonor a courageous man’s life and service and his commitment to principles Americans hold dear as a ploy to sell books,” Ryan said.Pompeo’s memoir of his time in Donald Trump’s presidential administration, Never Give an Inch, was published on Tuesday.One of a slew of books from likely contenders for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination – if in this case one who barely registers in polling – the book recounts Pompeo’s time as CIA director and secretary of state under Trump.The Guardian obtained and reported a copy last week. In its own review, published on Tuesday, the Post called Pompeo’s book “vicious … a master class in the performative anger poisoning American politics”.The reviewer, the Pulitzer prize-winning reporter Tim Weiner, added: “Hatred animates this book. It’s got more venom than a quiver of cobras.”The murder of Khashoggi caused outrage around the world and stoked criticism of the Trump White House over its reluctance to criticise the Saudi regime, particularly the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who grew close to Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser.US intelligence believes the prince approved the killing of Khashoggi, whose remains have not been found.On the page, Pompeo deplores Khashoggi’s murder. But he also writes that Khashoggi was not a journalist but “an activist who had supported the losing team” and criticises what he calls “faux outrage” over a killing that “made the media madder than a vegan in a slaughterhouse”.On Monday, Khashoggi’s widow, Hanan Elatr Khashoggi, told NBC News: “Whatever [Pompeo] mentions about my husband, he doesn’t know my husband. He should be silent and shut up the lies about my husband. It is such bad information and the wrong information … This is not acceptable.”Elatr Khashoggi also said she wanted “to silence all of these people who publish books, disparage my husband and collect money from it”.On Tuesday, Ryan said it was “shocking and disappointing to see Mike Pompeo’s book so outrageously misrepresent the life and work of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.“As the CIA – which Pompeo once directed – concluded, Jamal was brutally murdered on the orders of Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman. His only offense was exposing corruption and oppression among those in power – work that good journalists around the world do every day.”Pompeo responded on Twitter, writing: “Americans are safer because we didn’t label Saudi Arabia a pariah state. I never let the media bully me. Just because someone is a part-time stringer for the Washington Post doesn’t make their life more important than our military serving in dangerous places protecting us all. I never forgot that.”Ryan said Khashoggi, who wrote for the Post while resident in the US, “dedicated himself to the values of free speech and a free press and held himself to the highest professional standards. For this devotion, he paid the ultimate price.”TopicsBooksMike PompeoJamal KhashoggiPolitics booksUS politicsTrump administrationUS foreign policynewsReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      Biden administration ‘dragged feet’ on Mohammed bin Salman immunity ruling

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      Biden administration ‘dragged feet’ on Mohammed bin Salman immunity rulingLegal experts raise questions about run-up to granting immunity in civil case involving murder of journalist When the Biden administration filed a legal brief last week calling for the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, to be granted sovereign immunity in a civil case involving the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, it said it was strictly a legal determination that did not reflect its views on the “heinous” killing.“In every case, we simply follow the law. And that’s what we did,” Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, later said.But a close examination of the Biden administration’s actions, including interviews with legal experts and people who closely followed the matter, suggest the controversial decision was anything but straightforward.Beginning last summer, the administration’s decision to delay action and seek months of legal extensions before submitting its views on the matter before a US judge offered Saudi Arabia an unprecedented opportunity to protect Prince Mohammed through a legal manoeuvre that put him above the law and out of the reach of the US legal system. Once this had happened, the Biden administration in effect said its hands were tied.“If you look at the sequence of events, it is hard not to see this was a battle between Biden and Mohammed bin Salman playing out,” said one close observer, who asked not to be named so they could speak candidly. “I would hate to imagine that there was bartering over our judicial system and that integrity was up for grabs.”The US government was first invited to get involved in the civil case against Prince Mohammed on 1 July by the US district court judge John Bates. At the centre of the request was a lawsuit filed in 2020 against the crown prince and his associates by Hatice Cengiz, Khashoggi’s fiancee, which accused Prince Mohammed and his associates of conspiring with premeditation to kidnap, torture and murder Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.Bates’s request was straightforward. He gave the administration 30 days – until 1 August – to submit a “statement of interest” and weigh in on whether the heir to the Saudi throne ought to be granted sovereign immunity in the case, or tell the court that it did not wish to make a statement. He also wanted the administration to weigh in on how the court might reconcile protections that are given to foreign leaders and those who are using a US law that allows victims of torture or extrajudicial killings to hold perpetrators accountable.At that time, Prince Mohammed was – clearly – not a sovereign. In Saudi Arabia, that distinction belonged at the time solely to his father, King Salman.Harold Koh, a former legal adviser to the state department during the Obama administration who is now a professor of international law at Yale Law School, said the US had competing interests at the time. On the one hand, the US asserts reciprocal principles of immunity so that its own head of state will be offered protection from legal courts. But that had to be weighed against Biden’s statements about human rights being at the centre of his administration’s foreign policy and “autocrats understanding that the president means what he says”.“All things considered, silence would have been the better way to balance those competing national interests,” Koh said, adding that there would have been “ample precedent” for the state department to stay silent.On 15 July, Joe Biden met Prince Mohammed in Jeddah, a meeting that started with a fist bump and was meant to “reset” his relationship with a leader he once called a pariah. It would later emerge that the meeting was also the start of a campaign by the administration to try to persuade the Saudis not to cut oil production before the US midterm elections.Back in Washington, just a few days later on 18 July, the US asked Judge Bates for an extension, saying it needed time to consult multiple entities within the administration with respect to “complex issues of international and domestic law”. The court agreed, giving the US until 3 October to respond.Weeks later, on 23 September, Brett McGurk, a Middle East policy coordinator for the US National Security Council (NSC), and Amos Hochstein, a US senior adviser for energy security, visited Jeddah again, ostensibly to discuss energy policies.Days later, on 27 September, the Saudi royal court announced that Prince Mohammed had been named prime minister, a role that had been and usually is held by the Saudi king. Observers noted that the apparent promotion did not confer any major new duties or powers to Mohammed bin Salman. Human rights defenders saw it as a ploy to influence the US recommendation on sovereign immunity, which was due about a week later.The US government, citing “changed circumstances”, requested a second extension to prepare its response and was granted one, until 17 November. A few days after it missed its 3 October deadline, Opec+ announced it was cutting oil production by 2m barrels a day, in what was seen by Democrats as an attempt by the kingdom to interfere with the US election and side with Russia over US interests.Biden promised that Saudi Arabia would face “consequences” for the decision, but has not articulated any specific actions he planned to take against the kingdom. On 17 November, just hours before a midnight deadline, the administration filed a notice that it believed Prince Mohammed, as prime minister, deserved to be treated as a sovereign as a standard matter of international law.An NSC spokesperson told the Guardian that the US president was briefed on the immunity decision, which was based on “well-established principles of common law”.When the Guardian asked the spokesperson if any US official ever suggested to Saudi Arabia that Prince Mohammed could be appointed prime minister before the matter was public, the spokesperson said: “This was an independent decision made by Saudi Arabia.”People familiar with the matter say legal questions about Prince Mohammed’s status were hotly debated inside the state department, where views about the best course of action differed.In debates within the administration, senior officials such as McGurk who have sought to promote the rehabilitation of the Saudi-US relationship have edged out policy objectives focused on human rights.“This administration made the decision it did because Mohammed bin Salman is prime minister. But they dragged their feet so much … This was clearly a policy decision in that they waited and stalled,” said one person who has advocated for human rights to have more prominence in decisions around policy.Leaders like Prince Mohammed were “legitimately worried” when Biden first came into office and vowed to make the Saudi heir accountable for human rights violations.“And when they got into office, the execution was not there,” the person said. Even when Biden made the decision to release a declassified intelligence report that found Prince Mohammed had likely ordered the murder, there were no sanctions against him.The person added: “That set the stage and indicated the rhetoric was not matched by substance.”TopicsMohammed bin SalmanSaudi ArabiaBiden administrationUS foreign policyUS politicsMiddle East and north AfricanewsReuse this content More

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      Saudi Arabia has screwed over the US – and the world – yet again. Enough is enough | Mohamad Bazzi

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      Saudi Arabia has screwed over the US – and the world – yet again. Enough is enoughMohamad BazziBy gouging global oil prices, Saudi Arabia has humiliated Biden and boosted Putin. The US must end this unofficial alliance In July, Joe Biden traveled to Saudi Arabia and shared a fist bump with the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. As a presidential candidate, Biden had promised to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” for its human rights abuses and its seven-year war against Yemen. But a devastating global pandemic and Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine forced him to set these concerns aside in favor of realpolitik. Biden needed the Saudis to increase oil production in order to lower gasoline prices for American consumers, so he swallowed his pride and treated the crown prince as the world leader he aspires to be.Unfortunately for Biden, that cringe-inducing fist bump photo op has backfired in spectacular fashion.Earlier this month, the Saudi-led Opec+ energy cartel agreed to cut oil production by 2m barrels a day, which will mean higher fuel prices this fall and winter. In the days leading up to the vote, the Biden administration invested significant political capital in its efforts to dissuade Saudi Arabia and its allies from cutting production. In the end, Biden’s wooing of Prince Mohammed yielded nothing but a 2% reduction of the world’s oil supply.In fact, the prince has inflicted political damage on the Biden administration a month before the US midterm elections. After soaring to $5 a gallon in June, US gasoline prices fell for more than three months. Now they are rising once again, increasing by an average of 12 cents a gallon over the past week, to $3.92.Rising prices threaten the Democrats’ hopes of maintaining control over both houses of Congress after the November elections. The prince and his Gulf allies clearly preferred dealing with Donald Trump, whose freewheeling Republican administration gave Prince Mohammed a blank check in exchange for stable oil prices and multibillion-dollar arms sales.The Saudis also sided with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, who needs higher oil prices to help fund his war against Ukraine. As part of their economic sanctions against Moscow, the US and EU are trying to impose a cap on the price paid to Russia for its oil exports. But that effort could now collapse as global oil prices rise and Europe heads into a winter season when heating costs are expected to soar thanks to the Ukraine war.While Prince Mohammed may believe he outmaneuvered Biden and demonstrated his influence over the global oil market, his power play has upset the foreign policy establishment in Washington. Even so-called foreign policy “realists”, who for years ignored progressive criticisms of the US-Saudi partnership, must confront an uncomfortable question: if Washington can’t count on a steady supply of oil, what does it get in return for its decades of unwavering support for the House of Saud?Technically, the US and Saudi Arabia are not allies – they’ve never signed a mutual defense agreement or a formal treaty. For decades, the US-Saudi relationship has been largely transactional: the kingdom used its leverage within Opec (and later the larger Opec+ cartel) to keep oil production and prices at levels that satisfy Washington. The US used to import significant amounts of oil from Saudi Arabia, but now that Washington is the world’s largest oil producer, it no longer relies as heavily on Saudi imports. In return for guaranteeing a steady global supply of oil, successive US administrations supported the House of Saud politically, sold it billions of dollars in advanced US weapons, and provided military assistance whenever aggressive neighbors threatened the kingdom.In 1990, after Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded neighboring Kuwait, Washington sent half a million troops to Saudi Arabia, which feared it would be Hussein’s next target. The US still deploys hundreds of troops and advisers to train the Saudi military and help it operate American weapons, including advanced warplanes, helicopters, and Patriot antimissile systems, which the kingdom has used to intercept drone and missile attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels.This oil-for-security arrangement has lasted through Democratic and Republican administrations, including multiple crises like the Arab-led oil embargo and Opec price increases in the 1970s and the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, where 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals recruited by Al-Qaida.Yet Prince Mohammed has now upended the decades-old understanding. Worse, he’s timed that decision so as to maximize Biden’s humiliation: a month before pivotal congressional elections, and as Washington and its allies are trying to maintain a united front against Russian aggression.If Biden doesn’t respond forcefully, he may embolden the crown prince to take more risks. So far, Biden has promised unspecified “consequences” in response to the Saudi maneuvering. But a growing number of Democrats in Congress, including centrists who hesitated to abandon the partnership despite the kingdom’s atrocious human rights record, are now demanding action.On 10 October, Senator Bob Menendez, a Democrat who chairs the powerful Foreign Relations Committee, called for an immediate freeze on “all aspects of our cooperation with Saudi Arabia”, and promised to block future US weapons sales. Senator Dick Durbin, another centrist and the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate, was even harsher, writing on Twitter that the House of Saud “has never been a trustworthy ally of our nation. It’s time for our foreign policy to imagine a world without their alliance”.Even before the ill-fated fist bump, Biden signaled to Prince Mohammed that he would carry out a business-as-usual relationship with the kingdom. In February 2021, weeks after taking office, Biden did follow through on a campaign promise to release a summary report of the US intelligence community’s findings on the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. The report concluded that Prince Mohammed had approved the assassination at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018. But Biden, worried about harming the US-Saudi partnership, decided not to impose sanctions on the crown prince.By abandoning his promise to hold Khashoggi’s killers accountable, Biden convinced Prince Mohammed that he was too powerful to punish. At the time, Biden aides argued that banning the prince from visiting the US or targeting his personal wealth would accomplish little. But the lack of even symbolic US sanctions or response likely emboldened the prince to overturn the basic premise of the US-Saudi relationship.Since Prince Mohammed rose to power with his father’s ascension to the Saudi throne in 2015, he has presided over a series of destructive policies, including the Saudi-led invasion of Yemen and the kingdom’s campaign to blockade its smaller neighbor, Qatar. But the crown prince keeps failing upward, consolidating more control over Saudi Arabia. And he continues to be wooed by foreign leaders and business titans, thanks to the world’s sustained dependence on oil and Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.Prince Mohammed had clearly concluded that he can get away with keeping oil prices high and undermining the US and EU campaign to isolate Russia – and still secure US protection and military assistance because Biden can’t get past the decades-old policy of American support for the House of Saud.This is no longer a case of Biden choosing realpolitik over the stated, but rarely enforced, US ideals of supporting human rights and democracy over autocracy. It’s time for Biden to acknowledge that his supposed realist approach toward Saudi Arabia has failed – and tear up the oil-for-security deal.
      Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies and a journalism professor at New York University. He is also a non-resident fellow at Democracy for the Arab World Now
      TopicsForeign policyOpinionSaudi ArabiaMohammed bin SalmanMiddle East and north AfricaJoe BidenBiden administrationUS politicscommentReuse this content More

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      in World Politics

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      The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

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      Saudi Arabia and Lebanon: A Tale of Two Economies

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      The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

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      The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More