Associated Professor at Grand Valley State University and Non-Resident Fellow at the Middle East Institute, Washington D.C. The defining turning point in U.S.-Saudi relations can be traced back to February 14, 1945, when King Abdulaziz…

While it is premature to declare Syria—under transitional president Ahmad al-Shar’ and his domestic and international backers—a genuine ally of the Gulf states, it is equally difficult to overlook the strategic openings that have emerged…

On the 7th of October, Hamas launched a large-scale attack on the Gaza perimeter fence area, where its militants succeeded in breaking through the border fence in a scene that caught the world’s attention. The militants of the…

It is hard to recall that until January of this year the GCC remained divided with Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, joined by Egypt, tilted against Qatar. The Saudis, encouraged by Washington had already been making welcome back noises but…

The game of cat and mouse that Israel and Iran are playing out is continuing along a dangerously escalatory route. Most recently it saw an explosion at the Iranian nuclear facility of Natanz 11 April that caused Iran’s foreign minister…

On 10 April the Saudi Ministry of Defense announced that it had executed three soldiers after what it called a “fair trial” in a specialist court. The men were convicted and sentenced to death for the crimes of “high treason” and…

Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, the Bahrain human rights activist, was arrested on the night of 9 April 2011. During the arrest at his family home, he was brutally assaulted and his jaw broken in four places. On 22 June, barely two months after his…

The eighteenth session of the Kuwaiti National Assembly elections is not merely one of bad luck for Kuwaiti women. Rather, we may go so far as to label it the “session of exclusion”. For the coming four years, the Kuwaiti Parliament will…