Long satisfied to attempt to dominate pan-Arab media and battle it out with Qatar’s state-owned Al Jazeera television network, Saudi Arabia has now set its hegemonic sights on influencing the media landscape of the non-Arabic speaking greater Middle East. In the wake of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s concentration last year of control of Saudi-owned…
The Horn of Africa might be most infamous for the pirates that lurk along its coastline, capturing oil tankers and holding their crews to ransom. Yet the region is rapidly assuming global political significance, its internal tensions both fuelling and exacerbating a race among foreign powers to gain influence. Observers worry that this modern-day scramble…
If the penny, or cent, has not dropped by now, it never will: Donald Trump presents a greater danger to his allies than he does to his foes. He imperils America as a world power. In 48 action-packaged hours, he has threatened to pull out of Nato (telling the organisation’s leaders that if they did…
The once united Arab world is more divided today than at anytime since the implementation of the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 whereby the French and British imperial governments decided to split the majority of the Arab world into spheres of influence to be shared by western Europe’s foremost colonial aggressors. In the middle of the…
Rumors abound that the Saudis are planning to dig a large canal in the north of the country which will turn Qatar from a Peninsula into an island. Saudi media report that private investors from Saudi Arabia and the UAE will finance the state-ordered construction of the canal on Arabian territory. The canal would be…
On June 30, United States President Donald Trump persuaded the King of Saudi Arabia Salman bin Abdulaziz al Saud to maximize oil production in order to reduce the cost of fuel on the market. This decision will make the Saudis violate OPEC+ agreements reached at the end of June in Vienna. At the recent meeting…
