Biden meets with Arab Gulf countries to counter Iran threat

JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — President Joe Biden on Saturday will lay out his strategy for the Middle East as he closes out of the final leg of a four-day trip meant to bolster U.S. positioning and knit the region together against Iran.

In the Red Sea port city of Jeddah, Biden will meet with heads of state from six Arab Gulf countries, plus Egypt, Jordan and Iraq for a regional summit. It comes a day after he championed steps toward normalizing ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia, and sought to rebuild cooperation with the Saudi king and crown prince after once promising to make the kingdom a “pariah” for its human rights abuses.

When he speaks to the Gulf Cooperation Council and its Arab allies, the White House said, Biden will offer his most fulsome vision yet for the region and how the U.S. can cooperate with it.

His first Middle East trip comes 11 months after the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and as Biden aims to reprioritize the U.S. away from the Middle East’s ruinous wars and ongoing conflicts stretching from Libya to Syria.

“It’s a strategy fit for purpose for 2022 as opposed to the two decades of major land wars that the U.S. fought in this region over the course of the 2000s,” Biden national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters in a preview of the speech.

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Russian cruise missiles rain down on southern Ukrainian city

VINNYTSIA, Ukraine (AP) — Cruise missiles fired by Russian strategic bombers struck a southeastern Ukrainian city late Friday, killing at least three people and wounding 15, as air raid sirens went off across the country, officials said.

The attack on Dnipro came a day after a Russian missile strike killed at least 23 people and wounded more than 200 in Vinnytsia, a city southwest of Kyiv, the capital.

Russia’s military campaign has been focusing on the Donbas in Ukraine’s east, but Russian forces also have been pounding other parts of the country in a relentless push to wrest territory from Ukraine and soften the morale of its leaders, civilians and troops as the war nears the five-month mark.

Ukraine’s air force said several Kh-101 cruise missiles fired from Tu-95MS strategic bombers over the Caspian Sea hit a factory about 10 p.m. in Dnipro, a major city on the Dnieper River. Four incoming missiles were intercepted, it said. Videos posted on social media showed fiery explosions and towering plumes of dark…