One of the key agenda items during Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s July 23-24 visits to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar is Turkey’s continued military presence in Qatar. A Saudi-led coalition of Arab countries that cut ties with Qatar in early June is demanding, among a dozen other things, that Turkey close its base there. Doha…
It’s been a bad week for the Saudi rulers in the US media. A slew of embarrassing stories got wide coverage, with the seeming intention of undermining Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies. Not coincidentally, the Saudi-led bloc then capitulated in its standoff with Qatar. The row between Qatar and the other Gulf states of…
What has been an open secret across the Arab world is not a secret anymore even in the US: What happened last month in the deep recesses of the House of Saud with the ascension of Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, aka MBS, was in fact a white coup. Nearly a month ago, as I’ve…
The central event of the G20 summit in Hamburg was the meeting between Putin and Trump. The Russian and American presidents, among other things, agreed on the situation in southwest Syria. The heads of the Russian Federation and the USA did not discuss the crisis in the Persian Gulf after the Saudi Arabia, the UAE,…
Iran calls the US a terrorist sponsoring state and the US strikes back with sanctions. The United States has just levelled new sanctions on Iran. The stated justification for the sanctions is Iran’s procurement of “military hardware, such as fast attack boats and unmanned aerial vehicles”. But while the US admits that Iran has not…
The saga of the Saudi-Qatar dispute continues. This week saw some important developments, which might provide pointers to what is likely to happen in the coming weeks and months, and possibly years. As expected, the US stepped in to ensure that the Saudis, UAE, and Bahrain did not escalate their actions against Qatar. In particular,…
