person:salman bin abdulaziz al-saud

Saudi Arabia says king’s contact with U.S. helped ease Al-Aqsa mosque tensions
▻http://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-palestinians-saudi-idUSKBN1AC17J

“The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, has held contacts with many world leaders over the past few days,” the announcement from the Saudi royal court, published by state news agency SPA, said.

Saudi Arabia is custodian of Islam’s most revered places in Mecca and Medina while Jordan is the custodian of Al-Aqsa mosque, its third holiest site, which is also revered by Jews.

King Salman contacted the U.S. government and called for an end to restrictions on entry to the mosque, the statement said, saying that developments showed this push had been successful.

Non seulement, il n’est pas mort, mais il fait reculer Israël à lui tout seul…

Saudi Arabia burns through foreign reserves - FT.com
▻http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/01948d2c-ef49-11e4-a6d2-00144feab7de.html?ftcamp=crm/email/2015430/nbe/WorldNews/product#axzz3Z3zwPLBu

The central bank’s foreign reserves have dropped by $36bn, or 5 per cent, over the past two months, as newly crowned King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud dips into Riyadh’s rainy-day fund and increases domestic borrowing to fund public sector salaries and large development projects.

The latest data show Saudi’s foreign reserves dropped by $16bn to $708bn in March, driven by public sector bonuses paid by King Salman after he assumed power in January. This follows a fall of $20bn in February. Saudi Arabia has spent $47bn of foreign reserves since October.

Indian Punchline - Reflections on foreign affairs
►http://blogs.rediff.com/mkbhadrakumar

he invitation extended to attend the swearing-in ceremony of the newly elected Egyptian president Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi in Cairo on Sunday didn’t exactly come out of the blue. Tehran got five days to mull over the invitation and it decided to depute Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian, FO’s topmost diplomat on Arab affairs, to represent President Hassan Rouhani who was on a visit to Turkey. It’s been a measured response in diplomatic terms — appropriate but not effusive,
(...)
However, the highlight of Amir Abdollahian’s stay in Cairo was his meeting with the Saudi Crown Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud. He later said the meeting was “constructive”. [ here : ▻http://english.farsnews.com/print.aspx?nn=13930320001433].
The meeting is a diplomatic scoop for Tehran.
Riyadh has been flooding Tehran with invitations to senior Iranian officials to visit Saudi Arabia (including Foreign Minister Mohammad Zarif and Expediency Council chairman Hashemi Rafsanjani), but no visit has been worked out so far. Meanwhile, Tehran has been focusing on building up its ties with Saudi Arabia’s GCC partners as well as Turkey and Egypt.
What does this rapid flow of events add up to? Clearly, in a nutshell, Middle Eastern politics is entering an altogether new era with Iran’s integration with the West. In sum, intra-regional politics has surged to the centre stage.
There was a time when the US ensured that Egypt and Iran didn’t draw close together. From all appearance, the US’ influence has waned on the Nile banks. On the other hand, US diplomacy may be acquiring greater flexibility.
The US’ bilateral talks with Iran this week in Geneva have reverberated all over the Middle East, including in Cairo. Meanwhile, the ‘Obama Doctrine’ is also at work. Nothing brings this out more vividly than that the Obama administration is quietly fostering a Saudi-Iranian normalization.
With a successful visit by Rouhani to Ankara and the warming up of Iran-Egypt ties, it is about time Tehran gets around to mending relations with Riyadh. Conceivably, Amir Abdollahian’s meeting in Cairo with the Saudi Crown Prince aimed at preparing the ground for a pathbreaking visit by a senior Iranian official to Riyadh. To my mind, the Iranian-Saudi ‘thaw’ is on the cards, finally. The Middle Eastern politics is tiptoeing toward a paradigm shift.

By M K Bhadrakumar – June 12, 2014

Undermining the #Sudairi_clan: The king manages the power struggle
▻http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/undermining-sudairi-clan-king-manages-power-struggle

http://english.al-akhbar.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/4cols/leading_images/923899-01-08.jpg

Saudi Crown #Prince_Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud speaks during the opening session of the Gulf Cooperation Council on May 14, 2014 in Jeddah, #Saudi_Arabia. (Photo: AFP-Mandel Ngan) Saudi Crown Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud speaks during the opening session of the Gulf Cooperation Council on May 14, 2014 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. (Photo: AFP-Mandel Ngan)

Since Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz was crowned king on August 2, 2005 as successor to his half brother Fahd bin Abdul Aziz - who died on July 31, 2005 - he designed a policy for himself aimed at changing the balance of power. He put new rules for the transfer of power stemming from a background that is clearly inconsistent with the direction of his primary competition, the (...)

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