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  • U.S. explores holding regional leaders’ meeting during Biden’s upcoming Middle East visit

    One of the ideas was to hold a meeting between Biden, Bennett and several other leaders from the region either in Israel or in another country as a means to continue the momentum of the the Negev summit that took place in Israel in late March and as a way to further strengthen the Abraham Accords.

  • Explainer: Why NOPEC, the U.S. bill to crush the OPEC cartel, matters

    A U.S. Senate committee is expected to pass a bill on Thursday that could open members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its partners to antitrust lawsuits for orchestrating supply cuts that raise global crude prices. The No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels (NOPEC) bill is intended to protect U.S. consumers and businesses from engineered spikes in the cost of gasoline and heating oil, but some analysts warn that implementing it could also have some dangerous unintended consequences.

  • U.S.-Saudi Relations Finally Start to Thaw

    President Biden and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman may not like each other, but they desperately need each other—and time for rapprochement is running out. Imagine for a moment that Saudi oil suddenly disappears from world markets—or its supply is severely curbed. The immediate effects would be massively higher prices at the pump, further collapse of the Democrats’ bleak prospects at the polls, disruption of the crown prince’s modernization agenda, and a greatly emboldened axis of Russia, China and Iran. Both Iran and Russia, with China their silent partner, have strong incentives—and real capabilities—to make this scenario a reality and force the world to lift embargoes against their oil sales.

  • Qatar Reclaims Crown From U.S. as World’s Top LNG Exporter

    Qatar reclaimed the crown as the world’s top liquefied natural gas exporter from the U.S. just as the end of winter lowered demand for the heating fuel in the northern hemisphere.

  • Saudis feel ‘let down’ by U.S. over Houthi security threats, says senior royal

    "Saudis consider the relationship as being strategic, but (feel) as being let down at a time when we thought that America and Saudi Arabia should be together in facing what we would consider to be a joint, not just irritant, but danger to the stability and security of the area," Prince Turki al-Faisal said, referring to Houthi missile and drone attacks.

  • U.S. Democrats to ‘go after’ oil companies over gasoline prices

    Democrats in Congress, accusing oil companies of gouging and profiteering that has raised gasoline prices, on Thursday promised legislation to allow the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general to go after them.

  • Former U.S. Ambassador Richard Olson charged in Qatari lobbying scheme

    Richard Olson, a former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates, has been criminally charged for his alleged role in an undisclosed lobbying campaign for the Qatari government, records show.

  • Opinion: The U.S. and Saudi Arabia Can’t Remain at Odds Forever

    The most important partnership in the Middle East has been put in jeopardy by the peevishness of a prince and political opportunism of a president. Repairing the Saudi-American relationship will require the first to behave like a grown-up, the other like a statesman.

  • U.S. and Israel will hold Iran talks amid stalemate in nuclear negotiations

    The U.S. and Israel developed a working group, code-named “Opal” ("Leshem" in Hebrew), in the early days of the Obama administration. It was headed by the national security advisers on both sides.

  • U.S. State Dept backs ammunition sale for Ukraine

    The U.S. State Department on Monday used an emergency declaration for the first time during the Biden administration to approve the potential sale of $165 million worth of ammunition to Ukraine to help the country defend itself against Russia's ongoing invasion, the Pentagon said. The Ukrainian government had asked to buy various rounds of so-called nonstandard ammunition, the department said in a statement, referring to ammunition that does not adhere to NATO standards.