Missile strikes but the u. S. And saudi arabia they have been pretty categorical in blaming iran but a senior military adviser to irans Supreme Leader has defended the attack on Saudi Oil Facilities at home i can only. Live them is with a retell atory operation yemenis in fact carried out a legitimate defense of themselves against a priss that killed their children the reality is that america and its allies in aggressors against palestine and yemen have become tired and worn out economically militarily and politically the policies were wrong and failed the repudiation of america and its allies is declining. And within the past hour or so President Trumpet said that the us has now expanded its sanctions on iran to include the in rainy and National Bank right now we can speak to not only his director of the center for middle east studies at the university of denver we are lucky enough to have him here with us here in doha thank you for joining us at this point then we have saudi arabia and the United States pretty much accusing iran of sponsoring this attack why is the claim of responsibility by the who has been dismissed. Well i think theres an attempt to try and squeeze iran the saudis want to blame iran theyre hoping that the United States will launch military strikes against iran and theres a longstanding you know Trump Administration policy to try to bring iran to its knees but i think theres a simple way out of this blaming counter blame sort of narrative that were seeing i think iran if it claims that its completely innocent of any wrongdoing should support a u. N. Led International Commission of inquiry to determine responsibility culpability and then accountability i think all of the countries have an interest in doing that and i think thats the way out of this sort of battle of narratives that were seeing between tehran and washington do you think that there is going to be time and space for this kind of investigation to be approved to be launch of the indeed to report but given that time is of the essence at the moment the saudis are saying that they are prepared to report as to exactly the the launch site of these attacks i mean this would be pretty significant when they come up with us and they say these attacks came from the north where exactly what look saudi arabia does not have a good track record when it comes to the truth i think no one takes them seriously particularly under the the rule of this crown prince given what he did to Jamal Khashoggi which is why we need a u. N. Independent led inquiry to you know get to the bottom of this and then to sort of assign blame and demand accountability so if saudi arabia so sure that iran is responsible they have an interest in supporting the u. N. Lead in korea and same with iran if youre wrong claims its completely innocent then why not have this matter investigated theres no urgency i just disagree with that i think its the interest of the International Community of International Peace and security to have that inquiry and to move forward into International Law once it seems very much is the locked and loaded rhetoric the because rhetoric of washington of a couple of days ago has been down somewhat and President Trump as weve just said is increasing sanctions very much for now thats going to be the u. S. Response but at the same time the iranian rhetoric has heated up his. No must get a lead weve just heard from the former revolutionary guard commander and indeed the foreign minister the language is really getting tough while the terran is worried of a response from the United States but the problem really is in washington d. C. Its pretty clear that trump doesnt know what he wants to do and he really is responsible for getting to this getting us to this point of of a potential war when he began this process of starting a conflict with iran pulling out of the Nuclear Agreement and and getting us to the to the tragedy that were seeing unfolding in front of us nonetheless we do have the u. N. General Assembly Starting in and its next week and it has actually got underway but you know the leaders attend next week and we learned that president rouhani is whether zarif the foreign minister there theyve been given visas to go do you think that there is any scope for there to be. About channel back Channel Communication paths is perhaps the most we could hope for at this point i think there is a unique opportunity because all of the key players will be there trump will be there the iranians will be there the saudis will be there and critically the french president will be there if your list your viewers might remember just a few weeks ago there was talk of a french proposal that might sort of break this logjam allow for some sort of negotiation to take place based on you know partial relief of iranian sanctions i think what happens at the u. N. Next week will really set the course for the next coming months whether were headed toward war and conflict or upon a potential damage diplomatic breakthrough now the hashimi thank you very much thanks. Weve got a lot more to come in the saudi syria news hour including. A political firestorm in the us as a whistle blows complaint against President Trump was reportedly kept quiet plus i didnt want to be part of the dysfunctional socalled United Kingdom or did i want to as declared in the previous referendum premium part of the European Union tensions run high in our land as Free Movement of products across the border after brets it remains in question plus. The surface finding a way to compete even when theyre away from the coastline rubble will be here with us in the rest of the schools. The u. S. Justice department is being accused of playing a key role in apparently withholding a whistle blows complaint against President Trump the u. S. Media has been reporting that the complaint relates to a personal phone call between President Trump and a foreign leader the head of the u. S. House Intelligence Committee says officials were blocked from passing on the complaint to congress the president says is fake news right lets get to the bottom of this is for us we can by speaking to our house correspondent kimberly how kitten kimberly. So there is a phone call between President Trump and a nother leader the speculation seems to be focusing upon. The new ukrainian president. That is the speculation that that is the foreign leader that the u. S. President is talking about when an intelligence official became particularly uncomfortable with parts of that conversation that is why he or she launched a complaint with the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community and in turn when congress tried to investigate 3 Different Committee chairs and that is when the problem arose the democratic controlled house committees alleging that in fact there was an effort by the trumpet ministration not just the Justice Department but the acting director of National Intelligence to block the legitimate oversight responsibilities of congress this has infuriated the house Intelligence Committee chair adam schiff who says congress is simply trying to do its job and investigate the whole point of whistleblower statute is not only to encourage those to report problems abuses violations of laws but also have a Legal Mechanism to do so and not to disclose classified information because theres no other remedy. That whole purpose is being frustrated here because the director of National Intelligence has made the unprecedented decision not to share the complaint with us so kimberly just for claritys sake it seems very much as though there are 2 alleged transgressions here one is President Trump saying something that he shouldnt a said in the phone co and 2nd that the department of justice has quashed that complaint to not paul see them through to the legal channels and the president is responding in tribute to him to be called trump like fashion. Yes in 2 forms in fact the 1st on social media where he has accused the radical left democrats as he calls them in the Fake News Media of allegedly accusing him of having a socalled dicey conversation and in gauging or entertaining what he believes is a highly partisan whistle blowers complaint he went on to speak in the oval office alongside the australian Prime Minister in just the last hour to elaborate on those comments calling this whole story and reporters questions about it ridiculous saying this is a political hack job and that his conversations with foreign leaders are always appropriate then we got a little insight martine into what might be the crux of this conversation and why this alleged official was concerned about the conversation because he pivots the u. S. President to appoint a Vice President joe biden who was the Vice President in the brothel vomit ministration saying it doesnt matter what i discussed someone ought to look into joe biden fake news wall looking to buy them because he is a democrat as sensually there have been stories percolating in the us news media that joe bidens son may have profited by his fathers time in office with the Ukrainian Government potentially getting some lucrative business deals and many are starting to speculate that that is what donald trump may have made a request that many consider inappropriate asking a foreign leader to investigate his potentially political opponent in the upcoming 2020 u. S. President s president ial election if in fact he is joe biden the successful democratic president ial candidate a very intricate story but it has big implications for u. S. Politics and sort of the soul undertones of profit in potentially from power in office all right both sides right and im sure well be speaking to you about this. In the coming days thank you kimberly how kids there are white house correspondent. That recess says it is more than 4 and a half 1000 political spam accounts that will be in use a target in a coordinated campaign they were operating out of the United Arab Emirates and egypt and use fake personas to push content critical of kassa while promoting saudi arabia welters has also suspended the account of the former Saudi Royal Court advisor seld al khatami whos been implicated in the murder of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi right joining us here is Mark Owen Jones assistant professor of middle eastern digital humanities at hama been holly for university here and thanks for joining us. This is a vost number of fake twitter accounts that have been detected how does twitter know what is a fake account and what isnt to do will have many ways of determining whats fake or whats not fake this usually involves looking at the matter data so does that account tweet a lot is there suspicious activity in terms of the nature of the tweets is the repeating of the tweets repeatedly so theres different algorithms that detect these fake accounts and i want to be clear that twitters algorithm is not foolproof i for one study lots of propaganda accounts or political spam accounts to use the euphemism that remain undetected and still continue to promote various ideologies right and what was what was the specific message then that this particular campaign liz was seeking to get out there was very interesting about this recent batch these 4000 or so accounts that with the suspended there was a very much a unity of the discourse it was mostly about yemen it was mostly critical of the who and it was mostly critical of qatar and the ones that were positive were promoting the had been some one in particular so even twitter themselves noted noted that amongst these accounts from the u. A. E. In egypt there was such a commonality of discourse that they actually singled out these facets of the information war and were talking about algorithms which is a technical term it is. Once or twice if not 3 times removed from the human being. Managed manages these 4000. 00 say accounts is it a human being is it a company or is it another go with well its an important question one we dont know but what we can hypothesize if we look at the fact that the message the promoting is similar its against the events carter what we can surmise is that whoevers responsible for purchasing this information this propaganda package is either outsourcing this strategy to various Companies Individuals or some individuals have their own bought nets with these this information that works so i think its important. Its to see that whoever is running these accounts might be multiple actors all of whom are probably on some form of payroll from a middleman or middle person who is taking the money from whoever the entity is whether its the state to this or so presumably i mean now theyve been kicked off twitter presumably all they need to do is read the brand themselves and go back on and do it again thats exactly what they have to do and this is what happens people often get suspended they have the twitter account suspended a couple of days later they set up a similar account with a similar name and its back to square one thats why i think its a need to work on their verification process and can i very quickly one last question then about the former associate of mommy been sound man they had his personal twitter account very briefly if you will yes sadakat certainly its surprising that hes had his account suspended now because he was banned from the u. S. Last year he has been accused of endangering peoples lives using twitter for a long time so why is account being suspended now thats the big question the other big question is why have twitter not provided the archive of his tweets but they have provided the archive of all the other accounts that they suspended all right sounds like you know the answers mark thank you very much ali. Now the emir of qatar is in london hes been meeting the british Prime MinisterBoris Johnson a statement from downing street says shaikh i mean been hammered out fannie and mr johnson agreed the war in yemen must come to an end they also talked about the recent attacks on the iran code of facilities in saudi arabia a statement mentions that they shared concerns over irans destabilizing behavior thats in quotes. Because before. He said we have. Your personal relationship we met 3 years ago i mean business deal i do and yes the relationship between kirk and there is a very strong relationship forward with this meeting right. You know what areas we can also strengths. More now from our correspondent. Well beyond trade interests which are extensive between the u. K. And qatar with qatar providing up to 30 percent of the u. K. s gas imports the 2 men clearly did discuss events in the region or a statement from the emir of qatar as office says that they discussed several emerging issues in the middle east especially the developments in the gulf to no detail from the qatari side now a statement from Boris Johnsons office says that they discussed as well as the need for the war in yemen to come to an end the recent attacks on iran coke Oil Facilities in saudi arabia it goes on a shared concern over irans destabilizing behavior and agreed the importance of negotiation in deescalating regional tensions while the potteries clearly in their statement did not talk about irans destabilizing behavior its unclear how far they went in using similar language during the meeting but iran has been one of qatars partners especially since the embargo placed on qatar in terms of continuing trade into qatar so an interesting divergence there but clearly both sides want to avoid any kind of military escalation in the gulf region they havent actually come out with any steps but at least we know that they are talking about how to get all sides talking rather than blaming each other thousands of algerians have returned to the streets for the 31st week in a row. They want an end to the current regime Amnesty International has condemned the arrest of dozens of demonstrators over the past 10 days and also concerned about the military chief ordering the army to limit access to the capital. Weve got lots more to come on this aljazeera news hour including well take you to other parts of the world joining in on that led climate protests. And in spalled russell well have details of the new york yankees hitting the 1st big landmark on their way to the playoffs. Hello again welcome back were here across northern turkey we do expect to see some showers in your forecast as we go into the weekend and those storms right now are coming in across the black sea so by saturday we do expect to see some thunderstorms here across the coastal areas and it will bring down the temperatures for ancora to about 19 degrees there the Higher Elevations well expect to see some snow in your forecast as well were talking on as well as possibly into georgia and then down towards the south it is going to be still quite warm were talking into the low thirtys for many areas in syria and