Saudi envoy: Aid groups in Yemen urged to ‘be careful’

Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said at a security conference in Munich Friday that Saudi Arabia is “a country that has no ambitions beyond its borders” and is guided by pragmatism.

The major talking point at North Atlantic Treaty Organisation headquarters in the Belgian capital is whether ground troops will be the next strike against ISIS.

Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister is insisting that Syrian President Bashar Assad must go to make it possible to defeat the Islamic State group in Syria.

The United States long relied on Saudi Arabia as an oil supplier, a steadfast beacon of opposition to communism and a huge buyer of American arms. We think that the United Nations documentation and informal estimation underestimated the casualties due to lack of access to information during the crisis, “remarked report author Rabie Nasser as quoted saying by The Guardian”.

Elsewhere in the kingdom there have been mass shootings and bombings claimed by the Islamic State group against the Shiite minority community.

Saudi Arabia and Iran back opposite sides in the war in Syria.

“So I will be discussing that but I just want to emphasise there are lots of different ways that Saudi Arabia and Bahrain can contribute”.

In December, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Riyadh for talks with King Salman as well as key decision-makers Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef and deputy crown prince Mohammed bin Salman. Dmitry Medvedev, the prime minister, told Germany’s Handelsblatt newspaper. It is important to understand why the Saudis announced they are now willing to venture into the troubled waters of Syria with ground troops, allegedly to fight IS. The kingdom also boasts hundreds of tanks and more than 300 fighter jets and military helicopters.

Even so, Saudi Arabia’s growing worldwide isolation – and the rising regional influence of its biggest rival, Iran – has led the kingdom to “double down” on protecting its interests, according to an analysis of the world’s top 2016 risks released by Eurasia Group last month. While they’ve been a part of the U.S.-led coalition since the beginning, their role has been minimal.

Beeman: Actually one of the problems is that the Saudi Arabian government is friendly with the United States and it’s considered the United States’ ally.

Saudi soldiers march during Abdullah’s Sword military drill in Hafar Al-Batin, near the border with Kuwait, April 29, 2014. Hence the announcement to launch airstrikes on IS came at a time when the Saudi regime became increasingly suspicious in the eyes of some worldwide commentators. But this is more geared toward Aleppo than anti-ISIS.

Saudi Arabia follows the ultra-conservative Wahhabi strain of Sunni Islam, and the public practice of any religion other than Islam is prohibited.