The power-sharing agreement signed in Riyadh on November 5 between the Saudi-backed Yemeni government headed by Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi and UAE-backed southern separatist group known as the Southern Transitional Council (STC) gives reason to hope that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is veering round to the political track to end the bloody war in…
The fallout from the September attack on Saudi Arabia’s Aramco oil facilities is continuing to reverberate throughout the Middle East, sidelining old enmities—sometimes for new ones—and re-drawing traditional alliances. While Turkey’s recent invasion of northern Syria is grabbing the headlines, the bigger story may be that major regional players are contemplating some historic re-alignments. After…
The South Transitional Council (STC) will receive domestic and international legitimacy for its separatist cause after entering into a reported power-sharing agreement with Hadi’s government as part of a peace deal aimed at ending the ambiguity over South Yemen’s political status following the group’s dramatic liberation of Aden in August. *** The author declared back…
Tahnoun bin Zayed, the national security adviser of the United Arab Emirates and the crown prince’s younger brother, has been in Tehran for the last 48 hours on a secret mission aiming to defuse the Gulf crisis, a senior security source in the UAE told Middle East Eye. Tahnoun’s secret mission is the highest-level meeting…
Never underestimate the power of blowback. Right now, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MbS), the de facto ruler of the House of Saud, is staring at it, an ominous abyss opened by the Houthis in Yemen. This past weekend, Yemeni Armed Forces spokesman Brigadier Yahya al-Sari clinically described how Ansarallah, also known as the Houthi…
Fears of a potential military conflict with Iran may have opened the door to a Saudi-Iranian dialogue against the backdrop of a rethink of US military logistics, involving at least a gradual partial relocation to the United States of command and control operations based in the Gulf for almost four decades. The relocation does not…
