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As US mulls security pact, Saudi Arabia accused of crimes against humanity

Human Rights Watch says Riyadh has killed hundreds of migrants at its border with Yemen since March 2022.

Reporting | Washington Politics

Saudi border guards have killed hundreds of asylum seekers at the country’s border with Yemen using bombs and live fire, according to an explosive new report from Human Rights Watch, which says the attacks would amount to a “crime against humanity” if they were part of official regime policy.

Survivors of the alleged attacks described their experience in harrowing terms. One migrant said only seven of the 150 people they crossed with survived shelling with heavy weapons. “There were remains of people everywhere, scattered everywhere,” they told Human Rights Watch.

“They were firing big rocket launchers at us,” remembered another survivor. “It was like a bomb. From the 250 people [in the group crossing], 150 died.”

Others accused border guards of firing on migrants, most of whom were fleeing unrest in Ethiopia, at close range. The report strongly suggests that the number of migrants killed since last year alone may reach into the thousands.

The accusations come at a particularly sensitive time for the Saudi monarchy, which has embarked on a massive public relations push in order to burnish a global image tarnished by alleged war crimes in Yemen and the grisly 2018 murder of Saudi journalist and Washington Post opinion writer Jamal Khashoggi.

“Spending billions buying up professional golf, football clubs, and major entertainment events to improve the Saudi image should not deflect attention from these horrendous crimes,” said Nadia Hardman of Human Rights Watch in a statement.

The report also raises uncomfortable questions for the Biden administration, which is considering giving “security guarantees” to Saudi Arabia in order to entice its leaders to normalize relations with Israel. Among the proposals on the table is a mutual defense treaty that would obligate U.S. troops to defend Saudi Arabia in case of attack. American officials are also mulling whether to help Riyadh develop a civilian nuclear program, a move that many experts worry could be a first step toward a Saudi nuclear weapons push.

The White House, aware that any new treaty would face an uphill battle in Congress, has already started briefing Democratic leaders about the talks in order to build support, according to the New York Times.

President Joe Biden, who once said he hoped to turn Riyadh into a “pariah,” may meet with de facto Saudi leader Muhammad bin Salman, or MBS, at next month’s G-20 Summit in New Delhi, India. The main topic of discussion at the proposed meeting would be a potential “mega deal” in which the United States would make a series of concessions to Saudi Arabia in order to encourage it to normalize ties with Israel, according to Axios. It remains unclear what the U.S. would get from the agreement.

Some analysts argue the Human Rights Watch report should serve as a reminder that working with the Saudi government often entails moral pitfalls.

“At a minimum this should trigger a [State Department] investigation into whether US law has been violated by US-trained Saudi forces or with US arms,” said Dylan Williams of J Street, a progressive pro-Israel advocacy group. “It’s also a horrific reminder of why the US should not bind itself [to] the Saudi autocracy with major new military commitments or arms sales.”

Sarah Leah Whitson, the executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now, argued that Saudi actions on the border are a direct result of Washington’s continued support for Riyadh. “Saudi Arabia feels empowered to act as recklessly, inhumanely and unlawfully as it wants — including lobbing mortar attacks on desperate migrants seeking safety — because it knows it has U.S. support,” Whitson told RS.

“We can expect that its reckless belligerence will only increase with the added security of a U.S. security guarantee,” she added. “The Biden administration should take responsibility for its role in knowingly aiding and abetting Saudi security forces.”


Repatriated Ethiopians from Saudi Arabia queue to get registered, after disembarking from a Saudi Airlines plane, at the Bole International Airport, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, April 1, 2022. REUTERS/Tiksa Negeri
Reporting | Washington Politics
Trump ASEAN
Top photo credit: U.S. President Donald Trump looks at Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., next to Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim when posing for a family photo with leaders at the ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, October 26, 2025. Vincent Thian/Pool via REUTERS

‘America First’ meets ‘ASEAN Way’ in Kuala Lumpur

Asia-Pacific

The 2025 ASEAN and East Asia Summits in Kuala Lumpur beginning today are set to be consequential multilateral gatherings — defining not only ASEAN’s internal cohesion but also the shape of U.S.–China relations in the Indo-Pacific.

President Donald Trump’s participation will be the first by a U.S. president in an ASEAN-led summit since 2022. President Biden skipped the last two such summits in 2023 and 2024, sending then-Vice President Harris instead.

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iran, china, russia
Top photo credit: Top image credit: Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov and and Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi shake hands as Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu looks on during their meet with reporters after their meeting at Diaoyutai State Guest House on March 14, 2025 in Beijing, China. Lintao Zhang/Pool via REUTERS

'Annulled'! Russia won't abide snapback sanctions on Iran

Middle East

“A raider attack on the U.N. Security Council.” This was the explosive accusation leveled by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov this week. His target was the U.N. Secretariat and Western powers, whom he blamed for what Russia sees as an illegitimate attempt to restore the nuclear-related international sanctions on Iran.

Beyond the fiery rhetoric, Ryabkov’s statement contained a message: Russia, he said, now considers all pre-2015 U.N. sanctions on Iran, snapped back by the European signatories of the 2015 nuclear deal (JCPOA) — the United Kingdom, France, Germany — “annulled.” Moscow will deepen its military-technical cooperation with Tehran accordingly, according to Ryabkov.

This is more than a diplomatic spat; it is the formal announcement of a split in international legal reality. The world’s major powers are now operating under two irreconcilable interpretations of international law. On one side, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany assert that the sanctions snapback mechanism of the JCPOA was legitimately triggered for Iran’s alleged violations. On the other, Iran, Russia, and China reject this as an illegitimate procedural act.

This schism was not inevitable, and its origin reveals a profound incongruence. The Western powers that most frequently appeal to the sanctity of the "rules-based international order" and international law have, in this instance, taken an action whose effects fundamentally undermine it. By pushing through a legal maneuver that a significant part of the Security Council considers illegitimate, they have ushered the world into a new and more dangerous state. The predictable, if imperfect, framework of universally recognized Security Council decisions is being replaced by a system where legal facts are determined by political interests espoused by competing power blocs.

This rupture followed a deliberate Western choice to reject compromises in a stand-off with Iran. While Iran was in a technical violation of the provisions of the JCPOA — by, notably, amassing a stockpile of highly enriched uranium (up to 60% as opposed to the 3.67% for a civilian use permissible under the JCPOA), there was a chance to avert the crisis. In the critical weeks leading to the snapback, Iran had signaled concessions in talks with the International Atomic Energy Agency in Cairo, in terms of renewing cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog’s inspectors.

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On Ukraine and Venezuela, Trump needs to dump the sycophants
Top Photo Credit: (Official White House Photo by Molly Riley)

On Ukraine and Venezuela, Trump needs to dump the sycophants

Europe

While diplomats labored to produce the Dayton Accords in 1995, then-Secretary of Defense Bill Perry advised, “No agreement is better than a bad agreement.” Given that Washington’s allies in London, Paris, Berlin and Warsaw are opposed to any outcome that might end the war in Ukraine, no agreement may be preferable. But for President Trump, there is no point in equating the illusion of peace in Ukraine with a meaningless ceasefire that settles nothing.

Today, Ukraine is mired in corruption, starting at the very highest levels of the administration in Kyiv. Sending $175 billion of borrowed money there "for however long it takes" has turned out to be worse than reckless. The U.S. national sovereign debt is surging to nearly $38 trillion and rising by $425 billion with each passing month. President Trump needs to turn his attention away from funding Joe Biden’s wars and instead focus on the faltering American economy.

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