Houthi Rebels Have Eyes On Riyadh
As fighting in Yemen continues to escalate, the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels have plans to fire ballistic missiles into Riyadh, the capital and largest city of Saudi Arabia, according to Middle Eastern defense officials speaking to this column.
Such a move would be a game-changer in the months-long battle for control of Yemen that already has spilled across the Saudi border.
In June, marking the first use of ballistic missiles by the Houthis in the conflict, the rebels fired a Scud missile at Saudi Arabia, which the kingdom said it shot down. The Houthi rebels and its allied armies fired the Scud toward the southwest Saudi town of Khamees Mushait, which houses the largest air force base in southern Saudi Arabia.
Three weeks earlier, KleinOnline broke the story that, despite the presence of the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt off the coast of Yemen at the time, the Iranians succeeded in smuggling Scud B and C missiles to the rebels fighting in Yemen.
In August, the Houthis again fired a Scud toward southern Saudi Arabia. The Saudi military said it intercepted the missile and retaliated with air strikes on Yemeni territory.
KleinOnline reported in May on the delivery of the Scuds to the Houthi rebels, citing Jordanian security officials. The security officials described the possession of the missiles by the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels as a direct threat to the Saudi kingdom and its oil fields.
The Jordanian officials said the Scuds could endanger Saudi Arabia and potentially disrupt the global oil market.
Arabs Plan To Stir Up Violence On Temple Mount
Israel has intelligence regarding specific plans by Arab youth to provoke violence on the Temple Mount as Jews prepare for Yom Kippur and Sukkot.
Like the violent attempts on the holy site last week over Rosh Hashanah, the plans to stir tension and attack Jews on and near the Temple Mount are being directed by the northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel.
The Israeli government has been weighing options to outlaw the Islamic Movement, headed by radical cleric Raad Salah.
According to Israeli defense officials, the Islamic Movement continues to mobilize Arab youth to smuggle fire bombs, pipe bombs, Molotov cocktails, and stones onto the Temple Mount to attack Jews ascending the site during the holiday period.
Terrorist Dry Run In California?
The seriousness with which the FBI and AT&T are treating the severing of fiber-optic communications cables in the San Francisco area indicates the sabotage could have been a dry run for a terrorist attack.
This according to a leading homeland security and terrorism expert who has been sounding the alarm about imminent threats to the U.S. electric grid, some with the capacity to destroy the nation’s infrastructure.
Peter Pry, a former CIA officer, is executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security and director of the U.S. Nuclear Strategy Forum, both congressional advisory boards. He also served on the Congressional EMP Commission, the Congressional Strategic Posture Commission and the House Armed Services Committee.
“The FBI and AT&T are characterizing these attacks as a threat to public safety and considering all possibilities, ranging from a disgruntled former AT&T employee to terrorism,” Pry told this reporter.
“This is unusual for both the FBI and the utilities [in] that are both always reluctant to publicly acknowledge the worst-case possibility,” he said.
Last Monday, two AT&T fiber-optic cables in Livermore, California, were deliberately severed, the latest in a string of 14 other similar attacks on the infrastructure backbone of the Internet in California. The FBI said an attacker opened a targeted underground cable vault, climbed inside, cut through the protective metal conduit inside, and then severed the cable lines.