The decision by the United Arab Emirates in December last year to re-open its embassy in Damascus marked a march back from what had been the somewhat equivocal anti—Assad position the Gulf state had assumed in the early days of the Syrian…

One of the many challenges of covering the impact of the Trump presidency on global affairs is that in the constant churn of stories generated by his twitter outbursts and in the abrupt and ill-considered policy decisions he makes, really…

What is more significant than the domestic repercussions for the U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from Syria is the question of whether it would be possible for any Gulf state, in particular, and any Middle Eastern…

When their Gulf neighbours - Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain joined by Egypt -launched a land, air and sea blockade of Qatar in the early morning hours of June 5, 2017, the reason cited by what came to be called the…

First to the good news, at least from the perspective of the government of Bahrain and its supporters. Despite an opposition call to boycott the vote, turnout, at 67%, was impressively high. The government did not release the number…

The age of impunity is upon us. On 20 November, in a statement replete with exclamations marks the president of the United States said this about the role of Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammad Bin Salman in the murder of the journalist…

On 2 October, the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered during his presence inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The unsuccessful Saudi operation carried out by the Intelligence Services is still under investigation by both the…

Two years and counting into the radical transformation of the Saudi economy known as Vision 2030, a key component of the strategy – to empower the private sector and significantly reduce unemployment – remains stalled. Figures recently…