Trump Sets Off Middle East Crisis With One Phone Call

Donald Trump ignited a standoff between the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia with a phone call.

Trump contacted UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed last November regarding what he said was a request from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to impose sanctions on the UAE. Trump said Salman made the request earlier that month, citing the UAE’s support for the Rapid Support Forces, a mercenary group fighting in Sudan’s civil war.

After the call, The New York Times reports, tensions between the UAE and Saudi Arabia boiled over. Senior UAE officials felt betrayed by the Saudis, and by the next month, things had gotten so bad that Saudi Arabia bombed a shipment from the UAE to Yemen.

According to the Saudis, that wasn’t the request at all—they wanted additional sanctions on the RSF to cut off its outside support, not sanctions on the UAE directly. They hoped that targeting the RSF in this manner would cause the UAE to back down and that the war in Sudan would end sooner. An official in the Trump administration also told the Times that MBS never asked Trump to sanction the UAE.

But the damage was done, and now two key U.S. allies are not getting along with each other. The UAE’s leader is convinced that MBS asked Trump for direct sanctions against his country. According to Emirati officials, Trump told Zayed that his friends the Saudis were out to get him, but that the U.S. stands behind him.

At best, Trump misunderstood Salman’s request, and at worst, he bungled a very sensitive matter. In either case, two powerful Arab countries are at odds, and it’s not only playing out in Sudan but also in Yemen, where a shipment was bombed after a UAE-backed faction advanced close to the Saudi border. The Saudis accused the UAE of sending weapons to Yemen, which they denied, and then subsequently ended their support for the faction.

The Saudis and UAE each have extensive business ties with Trump, his family, and other administration officials. One wonders if and how Trump plans to settle this rift. He said on February 16, “We can get it settled very easily. “That’s an easy one to settle.” Will he manage not to mess things up again?

The Department of Homeland Security was caught lying Thursday about abandoning a blind refugee who was later found dead on the street.

The Department of Homeland Security claimed that the Tim Hortons in Buffalo where federal agents left Nurul Amin Shah Alam, a 56-year-old Burmese refugee who was blind and spoke no English, was “determined to be a warm, safe location near his last known address.”

Video footage reviewed by the Investigative Post, however, showed that the location had already closed, except for the drive-thru.

In video footage released by IP, Shah Alam could be seen walking past the drive-thru window, then pacing by the locked front doors, before he eventually wandered across the parking lot toward a Dollar Tree. The Border Patrol agents drove away after one minute.

Shah Alam was blind and spoke no English. He was found dead on Tuesday.

Shah Alam was arrested more than a year ago when he was out for a walk and got lost. The refugee was using a curtain rod as a walking stick that police alleged he was “swinging in a menacing manner.” He was tased, beaten, and arrested. He later pleaded guilty to trespassing and misdemeanor possession of a weapon.

After Border Patrol determined that the charges did not render Shah Alam removable, they should have returned him to the holding center where sheriff’s deputies could contact his family to retrieve him.

But Shah Alam’s lawyer was not contacted, and neither was his family. It was Border Patrol who requested custody of Shah Alam after his release, according to Christopher Horvatits, a spokesperson for the Erie County Sheriff’s Office. While Shah Alam’s family waited for a call to pick him up, the holding center called Border Patrol instead.

Border Patrol agents offered Shah Alam a “courtesy ride,” according to Michael Niezgoda, a spokesperson for Customs and Border Patrol. But Shah Alam wasn’t returned to his last known address, or his family’s address. Instead, he was brought to the parking lot of a closed coffee shop miles away from his home, and left there.

“I feel like in a situation like this, we wouldn’t necessarily be here if [Border Patrol] had just exercised a little bit of humanity,” said Siana McLean, Shah Alam’s immigration attorney.

The Trump administration is finally realizing that Grok—the AI chatbot owned by billionaire Elon Musk—is a massive security concern for the federal government. 

According to recent reporting from The Wall Street Journal, multiple government agencies have shifted away from Grok, seeing the chatbot as a liability when classified information is involved. 

A top official at the General Services Administration, Ed Forst, issued a warning about Grok’s safety issues that reached the White House, with Trump chief of staff Susie Wiles eventually calling a senior xAI executive. A GSA report found the chatbot was too easily influenced by biased data or outside meddling, and a National Security Agency’s 2024 review found that Grok was a bigger security risk than Claude, raising eyebrows at the Pentagon. According to the Journal, federal agencies are using Grok less and less—except when they want it to pretend to be a bad guy for war games.  

This comes at a crucial time for Grok, as the Pentagon is in a feud with Anthropic after its CEO denied them access to its Claude AI for mass surveillance and unmanned weapon technologies. But Grok’s reputation within the federal government is still on thin ice. 

Musk’s chatbot has already come under fire for essentially helping users make child pornography, pushing debunked claims of white genocide in South Africa, and spewing antisemitic rhetoric. It took the Trump administration nearly a year to figure out that it might want to be careful about using a chatbot owned by the chronically online, deeply insecure alt-right billionaire. 

Tensions between the U.S. and Iran are boiling up, so much so that Trump administration officials are bypassing normal procedure to warn regional embassy staff to leave immediately.

In an early Friday email obtained by The New York Times, Ambassador Mike Huckabee announced to nonemergency workers at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem that they would be allowed to leave Israel—but added that if they intend to, they “should do so TODAY.”

Huckabee noted that the directive followed meetings and phone calls through the night with the State Department, and that it was made out of “an abundance of caution.” The email made no explicit mention of Iran, according to the Times.

The notice “will likely result in high demand for airline seats today,” Huckabee wrote. “Focus on getting a seat to anyplace from which you can then continue travel to D.C., but the first priority will be getting expeditiously out of the country.”

The embassy updated its travel advisory for the region in an official statement, prohibiting travel to Gaza due to “terrorism and armed conflict and within 7 miles of the Gaza Periphery,” Northern Israel within “2.5 miles of the Lebanese and Syrian borders due to continued military presence and activity,” and the Egyptian border within “1.5 miles, except for the Taba crossing, which is open.”

It also urged travelers to “reconsider” traveling to “Israel due to terrorism and civil unrest,” and the “West Bank due to terrorism and civil unrest.”

“Increased regional tensions can cause airlines to cancel and/or curtail flights into and out of Israel,” the memo reads.

The order and its timeline are highly unusual—embassy staff are typically provided several days’ notice in order to comply with state-mandated evacuations, with some warnings given as much as a month in advance of the anticipated departure date. In comparison, Huckabee’s 24-hour deadline is shockingly short.

The ambassador’s focus on the voluntary departure of nonemergency personnel suggests that the current status of the withdrawal amounts to an “authorized departure.”

But those with experience complying with such departures argue that the sudden announcement is a whopping display of disrespect.

Since January 22, the United States has built an enormous military presence across a web of U.S. bases in the Middle East for the mere possibility of war, flooding ships—including naval destroyers and aircraft carriers—and more than a dozen jets to the region, reported CNN.

On Monday, Trump announced on Truth Social that the potential for war with Iran is still very much on the table. Top U.S. military officials, meanwhile, have reportedly warned the White House against dragging the country into war with Iran, arguing that it could entangle America in a prolonged conflict.

U.S. officials, including Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner—Trump’s son-in-law—met with an Iranian delegation in Geneva early Thursday to discuss the countries’ ongoing standoff. An adviser to Iran’s supreme leader told CNN that an “immediate agreement” could be within reach if the discussions singularly focus on Iran’s “non-production of nuclear weapons.”

Democratic lawmakers slammed Paramount Skydance’s advancing efforts to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, after Netflix announced Thursday that it would back away from the monthslong bidding war to purchase part of the company.

Paramount Skydance is owned by Larry Ellison, a Trump megadonor, and run by his son David, who has overseen a right-ward cultural shift at CBS since taking it over last year. If Paramount Skydance acquired Warner Bros., Trump allies would have even greater control over media, including CNN, another broadcast news company that has been regularly targeted by the president.

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren condemned the potential merger between Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. as “an antitrust disaster threatening higher prices and fewer choices for American families.”

Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos had visited the White House Thursday, after President Trump demanded the streamer knock Susan Rice, a former Obama administration official, from its board of directors. Shortly after Sarandos arrived for the meeting, WBD announced that Paramount Skydance had offered the “superior deal.” Soon after, Netflix announced that it would back away from the bidding war.

“What did Trump officials tell the Netflix CEO today at the White House?” Warren pressed.

“A handful of Trump-aligned billionaires are trying to seize control of what you watch and charge you whatever price they want. With the cloud of corruption looming over Trump’s Department of Justice, it’ll be up to the American people to speak up and state attorneys general to enforce the law,” she added. At the federal level, only the Department of Justice could sue to block the deal.

New Jersey Senator Cory Booker’s office pushed a reminder to Larry Ellison that he’d previously offered to testify before the Senate if his company’s bid to acquire Warner Bros. proved successful.

“In light of today’s announcement that Warner Bros. Discovery has designated Paramount’s offer a Company Superior Proposal, next week’s hearing presents a timely and appropriate opportunity for Mr. Ellison to make good on that commitment,” Booker’s aide told Deadline.

Democrats from California also weighed in on the deal that has major ramifications for the entertainment industry.

California Senator Adam Schiff said that either company’s efforts to own Warner Bros. would be subject to the “highest level of scrutiny” and should be “free from White House political influence.”

“Oligarchy in full effect,” Tom Steyer, a Democratic candidate for governor, wrote on X.