Fresh back from Damascus, I was taking my coffee on the Beirut Corniche this week when a neat little Greek warship hove into sight. I picked up my French mandate binoculars – they must have travelled in and out of Beirut many times between 1922 and 1946 – and espied that “F465” was the frigate’s…
Saudi Arabia is planning to literally cut Qatar off from the mainland by building a canal along its border. The move would also see Saudi Arabia store nuclear waste on the southern part of the new so-called “island” that would still remain under its sovereignty, as well as build a base on that side of…
The White House has had a hot new idea – to leave Syria but also stay there at the same time by deploying an Arab contingent to US military bases, primarily from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). So to Arabize one of the bloodiest wars of our time in keeping with the bitter memory…
Until he was stripped of his top-secret security clearance in February, presidential adviser Jared Kushner was known around the White House as one of the most voracious readers of the President’s Daily Brief, a highly classified rundown of the latest intelligence intended only for the president and his closest advisers. Kushner, who had been tasked…
The events in Syria on the eve of the Congress of National Dialogue in Sochi, the war against Russia on the diplomatic front, the operation of the Turkish Army in Kurdish Afrin and the cleaning up of the Jabat al-Nusra detachements, banned in Russia, in Idlib attract more media attention than anything else happening in…
Only by clearly and visibly identifying Qatar as a partner and friend can Washington hope eventually to ease the Saudis and others toward some form of reconciliation What do superpowers and teenagers have in common? Speaking as a Washington-based foreign policy analyst, and as a parent, I would suggest that each becomes rather frustrated when…
