Though it was long believed that Mohammed bin Nayef, the king’s nephew and the country’s Minister of the Interior, would assume the throne, bin Nayef’s sudden ouster as Saudi Crown Prince during Ramadan definitively changed that, with King Salman’s son and the current Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, now positioned to take control.

Bin Nayef’s ouster was initially reported by international media as having gone “smoothly.” However, it soon emerged that bin Salman had planned the entire affair and that the former Crown Prince, following his acquiescence of the title, was essentially under house arrest. Since then, rumblings have emerged that many in the Saudi royal family, which has long been guided by deference to elders and group consensus, are none too happy with the sudden turn of events in the normally stable kingdom.

Now, with King Salman on vacation in Morocco for an entire month, the ambitious Crown Prince has been left in charge, promising a taste of things to come for the oil-rich kingdom. Already, speculators are stating that the kingdom’s balance of power is “on a knife-edge.” One such indication that there is trouble brewing within the royal family is the King’s recent string of drastic policy changes that stripped the Interior Ministry, formerly headed by bin Nayef, of many of its key mandates, including counter-terrorism.

These functions have now been transferred to a new entity called the Presidency of State Security, which is under the direct command of the King, who also serves as Prime Minister. A royal decree further stated that “whatever concerns the security of the state, including civil and military personnel, budgets, documents, and information will also be transferred to the new authority.” According to experts, the overhaul of security services indicated there still exists opposition to bin Salman’s position as Crown Prince.

The transnational militia of Shiite men — which has no official title — is now the dominant force in the region, enabling Iran to take full advantage in the absence of a coherent strategy from the Trump White House. Over six months, BuzzFeed News spoke to researchers, officials, and militia fighters who described what they knew about the Iranian program, overseen by the secretive Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and its infamous commander Qassem Suleimani — who often shows up on front lines in Iraq and Syria.

Accounts by the fighters reveal the scale and structure of the program, and although many of the details could not be independently verified, BuzzFeed News was able to confirm all the fighters’ memberships in various armed groups.

Their stories, collected independently, match one another — as well as accounts gathered by US military and intelligence officials. “There is an ideological commitment,” said Connell, of the Center for Naval Analyses. “It’s not purely self-interest that gets people to join. They do believe in what they’re doing.” “We are winning. Look who’s running Lebanon.  Look who’s controlling Sanaa and Baghdad.” 

When Ronald Reagan won his first election, the US national debt was less than one trillion dollars. When Barack Obama entered the White House it was sitting at 10.6 trillion dollars, when the Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in 2010 it was about 14 trillion dollars, and now we have nearly reached the 20 trillion dollar mark. We have been stealing money from our children and our grandchildren at the rate of more than 100 million dollars an hour, and yet most Americans don’t seem to care that we are rapidly bankrupting our nation.

In 1956, approximately 5 percent of all babies in the United States were born to unmarried mothers. Today, things have obviously changed tremendously. 2008 was the very first year in United States history when 40 percent of all babies were born to unmarried mothers, and we have now stayed at that level for eight straight years.

Many Americans don’t realize this, but the United States has the highest rate of illegal drug use on the entire planet. But we actually have an even bigger problem with legal drugs. According to a study conducted by the Mayo Clinic, nearly 70 percent of all Americans are on at least one prescription drug, and an astounding 20 percent of all Americans are on at least five prescription drugs.

When a federal income tax was introduced in 1913, it was fairly simple and most taxpayers were taxed at a rate of just one percent. Today, the tax code is more than 2 million words long and the regulations are more than 7 million words long.

We are an extremely, extremely unhappy nation. If you can believe it, doctors in the United States write more than 250 million prescriptions for antidepressants each year.

Since Roe vs Wade was decided in 1973, nearly 60 million American children have been murdered in America’s abortion mills. Sadly, the number of children that are aborted each day in this country is roughly equal to the number of Americans that lost their lives on 9/11. If we do not put an end to this, there isn’t going to be any sort of a future for this nation.

As we explore our options in shutting down North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile programs, we must recognize we are also dealing with Iran’s programs, which have piggybacked upon Pyongyang’s.

In recent years, the evolution of this relationship has allowed Iran to step into the shoes of North Korea’s former and longtime best friend, China. It is also why China has been unresponsive to US calls to reel Pyongyang in.

North Korea’s leadership behaves as if it has determined that it no longer needs China as its “big brother,” as Iran is committed to seeing Kim acquire a nuclear arsenal and delivery system for it. Tehran’s mullahs have not hesitated to use Pyongyang over the past several years as a test case for American resolve. As such resolve has been non-existent, Iran came to recognize it could move forward simultaneously and in coordination with Pyongyang.

Archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority discovered the charred artefacts while excavating the City of David in Israel's Jerusalem Walls National Park. The burning of Jerusalem by the Babylonians was first described in The Book of Jeremiah, which states: 'He burned the house of the Lord, and the king's house; and all the houses of Jerusalem, even every great man's house, burned he with fire.'

As well as the charred wood, pottery and food items, the researchers also discovered dozens of jars used to store grains and liquids – many of which have stamped handles and rosette seals. Ortal Chalaf and Dr Joe Uziel, directors of the excavation, said: 'These seals are characteristic of the end of the First Temple Period and were used for the administrative system that developed towards the end of the Judean dynasty.' 

During the reign of King Jehoiakim, in 597 BC, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon besieged the city of Jerusalem, following a long struggle between Judah and Babylon. The nation of Judah continued to exist under Babylonian rule with King Zedekiah installed in Jerusalem as a puppet king. After King Zedekiah rebelled too, the city fell in 586 BC.

A sadder sentiment came from a young Irish woman I met in Dublin who went to Columbia University, founded a social enterprise and has lived in New York for nine years. “I’ve come to recognize that, as a European, I have very different values than America these days,” she said. “I realized that I have to come back to Europe, somewhere in Europe, to live and raise a family.”

But there is another aspect to the decline in America’s reputation. According to a recent Pew Research Center survey of 37 countries, people around the world increasingly believe that they can make do without America. Trump’s presidency is making the United States something worse than just feared or derided. It is becoming irrelevant.

Trump has managed to do something that Putin could not. He has unified Europe. As the continent faces the challenges of Trump, Brexit and populism, a funny thing has happened. Support for Europe among its residents has risen, and plans for deeper European integration are underway. If the Trump administration proceeds as it has promised and initiates protectionist measures against Europe, the continent’s resolve will only strengthen. Under the combined leadership of Merkel and new French President Emmanuel Macron, Europe will adopt a more activist global agenda. Its economy has rebounded and is now growing as fast as that of the United States.

In 2008, I wrote a book about the emerging “Post-American World,” which, I noted at the start, was not about the decline of America but rather the rise of the rest. Amid the parochialism, ineptitude and sheer disarray of the Trump presidency, the post-American world is coming to fruition much faster than I ever expected.

On Sunday, two Chinese fighter jets gave chase to an American reconnaissance aircraft over the international waters of the East China Sea, forcing the American plane to maneuver away from them rapidly. American officials with knowledge of the situation described the Chinese jets’ behavior as “unsafe,” while the Pentagon clarified that the American plane was conducting a “routine” mission.

“The ‘righteousness’ of the Pentagon is ridiculous,” the Times complained. “US military reconnaissance threatens China’s national security and an intercept by the Chinese navy is justified.”

The article goes on to praise the Chinese military for its “restraint,” suggesting that the will of the Chinese people would have been to see the incident turn deadly. “The public actually wanted the US reconnaissance plane to be shot down directly,” the article claims.