Iraq and Lebanon have experienced an extraordinary rebirth of the power of the street in the Middle East, one that has toppled two prime ministers. In both countries, the protests in major cities are ongoing and the results are…

On Sunday 17 November in cities across Iraq tens of thousands of people came into the streets answering a call for a general strike. This comes after weeks of protest that have seen 300 killed and more than 15,000 wounded. The fear…

On 3 November, after several false starts and nearly four years on from when the Saudi crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman first went public with his plan to sell off a portion of the energy giant Aramco in an initial public offering (IPO),…

The Americans call the five day halt to Turkey’s military incursion into Northern Syria a ceasefire, while the Turks prefer to call it a pause. The Kurds call the incursion something else. For them and for American soldiers who fought with…

It is one year since the journalist Jamal Khashoggi walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. He did not come out alive. The day after he disappeared, the Saudi crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman said that he had left the consulate twenty…

The latest twist in the Iran saga is the abrupt sacking by President Trump of his National Security Advisor John Bolton. Bolton says he resigned, Trump says he fired the moustachioed ultra hawk. It scarcely matters which version is…

In April 2014 DLA Piper, a London-based legal firm released a report entitled “Migrant Labour in the Construction Sector in the State of Qatar.” Qatar’s government had commissioned the report in light of numerous allegations…

Were you to ask me “will war break out with Iran,” I would say after President Donald Trump’s recent tweet the odds are definitely leaning to no. Why is that? Well let’s look at the tweet: “If Iran wants to fight, that will be the…