By Dr. Nir Boms The new sounds of “tolerance, peace and prosperity” that come from the Gulf are often treated with suspicion – a cliche aimed at obfuscating the newfound autocratie in the region. However, while slogans might be cheap – actual changes made on the ground should be noted. The United Arab Emirates moral education curriculum reform is telling of the vision that the country’s leaders […]
By James M Dorsey The crown jewel of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) increasingly looks like a powder keg that has exploded. Mass protests have for the past month swept Gwadar, a Chinese-dominated Pakistani port city 90 kilometres from the border with Iran that has long been plagued by intermittent protests and Baloch nationalist attacks on Chinese nationals and targets. Making things worse from China’s perspective, a […]
By James M Dorsey Increasingly, compliance with US sanctions against Iran could emerge as a litmus test of the United Arab Emirates’ close ties to the United States. At the sharp edge of a potential rift between the allies is a reportedly recently concluded agreement by a private UAE company to build gas-fired thermal, solar, and wind power plants with a total capacity of 300 megawatts in Iran’s hydrocarbon-rich […]
By James Dorsey A cursory look at Saudi Arabia and Iran suggests that emphasizing human rights in US foreign policy may complicate relations but has little impact on regional stability or the willingness of protagonists to reduce tension and manage conflicts when it is in their interest. A post 9/11 US emphasis on human rights was not what inspired homegrown popular Arab revolts over the past decade […]
By James M Dorsey The United States has signalled in advance of next week’s Summit for Democracy that it is unlikely to translate lip service to adherence to human rights and democratic values in the Middle East into a policy that demonstrates seriousness and commitment. In a statement, the State Department said the December 9-10 summit would “set forth an affirmative agenda for democratic renewal and to tackle […]
By James M Dorsey Russia hopes to blow new life into a proposal for a multilateral security architecture in the Gulf, with the tacit approval of the Biden administration. If successful, the initiative would help stabilise the region, cement regional efforts to reduce tensions, and potentially prevent war-wracked Yemen from emerging as an Afghanistan on the southern border of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf of Aden and at the […]
By Matein Khalid Brent crude is now down 11% to 73 and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) is now down a shocking 13% at 68. President Biden may wish to remember the old Persian proverb “do not wish for anything too badly. You may just get it”. Biden had green lighted a release from the American Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) last week but oil traders actually bid up […]
By James M Dorsey It has been a good week for United Arab Emirates Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed. Headline-grabbing, fast-paced moves reinforce the UAE’s position as a regional power. They highlight the UAE’s willingness to chart a course that increasingly competes with Saudi Arabia, the Gulf’s regional behemoth; is at times at odds with US policy; and scoffs at assertions of human rights abuse by activists […]
By Matein Khalid I remember a time when Lebanon was called “le rêve d’orient” by its Francophile elite. This was definitely the case in the affluent enclaves of Ashrafieh, Beit Mary and Rue Munot where the jeunesse dorée partied with Galic abandon in the mid 1990’s. This was a time of hope for a country still haunted by the nightmare of a civil war that had witnessed […]
James M Dorsey The family of nations is balancing on the edge of an abyss as mushrooming religious and ethnic intolerance becomes the norm. Western as well as non-Western societies have helped paved the road towards the abyss: the West by abandoning the post-World War Two principle of ‘Never Again’ and the non-Western world by never embracing it and failing to adopt the principle of ‘forgive but […]
By James M Dorsey Former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki AlFaisal Al Saud must have gotten his tenses mixed up when he asserted in a recently published memoir that no one should underestimate the political importance of Muslims’ commitment to helping other Muslims. Prince Turki’s memoir is focused on Afghanistan, a major preoccupation during his tenure as head of the General Intelligence Department (GID), the kingdom’s foreign intelligence […]
James M Doresy Sunni Muslim ultra-conservatism is having a field day. Barely three months after the Taliban claimed victory in Afghanistan, Pakistan, the second most populous Muslim-majority state, is moving to join Kabul in becoming an outpost of religious intolerance and Muslim supremacy. In doing so, Pakistan, alongside Afghanistan, has come down on the side of countries like Turkey and Iran that advocate various forms of political […]
By James M. Dorsey The times they are a changin’. Iranian leaders may not be Bob Dylan fans, but his words are likely to resonate as they contemplate their next steps in Iraq, Iraqi Kurdistan, Lebanon, and Azerbaijan. The same is true for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The president’s shine as a fierce defender of Muslim causes, except for when there is an economic price tag […]
James M Dorsey It may not have been planned or coordinated but efforts by Middle Eastern states to dial down tensions serve as an example of what happens when big power interests coincide. It also provides evidence of the potentially positive fallout of a lower US profile in the region. Afghanistan, the United States’ chaotic withdrawal notwithstanding, could emerge as another example of the positive impact when […]
James M Dorsey Gulf states are in a pickle. They fear that the emerging parameters of a reconfigured US commitment to security in the Middle East threaten to upend a more-than-a-century-old pillar of regional security and leave them with no good alternatives. The shaky pillar is the Gulf monarchies’ reliance on a powerful external ally that, in the words of Middle East scholar Roby C. Barrett, “shares the […]
By James M. Dorsey Two separate developments involving improved relations between Sunni and Shiite Muslims and women’s sporting rights demonstrate major shifts in how rivalry for leadership of the Muslim world and competition to define Islam in the 21st century is playing out in a world in which Middle Eastern states can no longer depend on the United States coming to their defence. The developments fit into […]
James M Dorsey On their way from Tel Aviv airport to Jerusalem in 1977 then Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Yigael Yadin asked President Anwar Sadat, the first Arab leader to ever officially visit Israel, why the Egyptian military had not moved deeper into the Sinai during the 1973 Middle East war. “You have nuclear arms. Haven’t you heard?” Mr. Sadat replied. Mr. Sadat’s strategic calculations in the war, the […]
James M Dorsey A year of diplomatic relations between the United Arab Emirates and Israel has proven to be mutually beneficial. The question is whether the assumptions underlying the UAE’s initiative that led three other Arab countries to also formalise their relations with the Jewish state will prove to be correct in the medium and long term. UAE Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed laid out the strategic […]
Matein Khalid Brent crude has now reached a post-pandemic high of $77 and reinforced my conviction that energy will be the best performing sector of September 2021. Saudi Arabia and Russia have ignored the Biden White House’s call to pump more oil and the quota discipline in OPEC+ is intact while Libyan oil remains offline due to the civil war and the US’s Afghan debacle means Biden […]
James M. Dorsey Saudi and Emirati efforts to define ‘moderate’ Islam as socially more liberal while being subservient to an autocratic ruler is as much an endeavour to ensure regime survival and bolster aspirations to lead the Muslim world as it is an attempt to fend off challenges rooted in diverse strands of religious ultra-conservatism. The Saudi and Emirati efforts to garner religious soft power have much […]
Manish Rai The Taliban after much wait has announced its 33-member interim cabinet. This new government is exclusively Taliban, and almost all the ministers are of Pashtun ethnicity. Women have no positions in this new setup. The Ministry of Women’s Affairs has been dissolved. And the sinister Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice has been re-established. This clearly illustrates that the Taliban […]
James M Dorsey Indonesian religious affairs minister Yaqut Cholil Qoumas set the bar high for President Joko Widodo as well as Nahdlatul Ulama, the religious backbone of Mr. Widodo’s government when he laid out the agenda for his country’s presidency of the Group of 20. The G20 groups the world’s largest economies. Speaking to the G20 Interfaith Forum in Bologna as Italy prepared to handover its presidency to […]
James M Dorsey The Taliban’s record in recent weeks on making good on promises to respect human and women’s rights as well as uphold freedom of the press is mixed at best. Afghanistan’s neighbours and near-neighbours are not holding their breath even if some are willing to give the Central Asian country’s new rulers the benefit of the doubt. A litmus test of Taliban willingness to compromise […]
James M Dorsey The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan may help Iran reduce its international isolation. At least, that’s what the Islamic Republic hopes when leaders of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) gather in Tajikistan next weekend. Members are admitted to the eight-member China-led SCO that also groups Russia, India, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan, by unanimous consensus. Iran, unlike its rivals in the Gulf, Saudi Arabia and the […]
