Current events in the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula set the stage for a split between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi with Iran and Yemen taking center stage. UAE seems “over” its war in Yemen and ready to divert resources to other theatres, but its occupation of Yemen remains. Abu Dhabi is not interested in escalating US-Saudi…
It seems that nobody is willing to pay attention to the fact that the ongoing armed conflict in the poorest Arab country of the world – Yemen, has recently passed the five year mark. Throughout this time the country would be protected by a resistance movement of the Houthi insurgency from the Ansar Allah movement…
The UAE’s large-scale military drawdown in Yemen is extremely disadvantageous to the Saudis’ strategic objectives in the conflict and will likely lead to the Kingdom scrambling for a “face-saving” exit of its own. *** Nobody’s won the War on Yemen (except for maybe the Southern Transitional Council), but that doesn’t mean that they lost, either,…
Last week it was all fire and brimstone. The US was threatening more sanctions on Iran, the Brits were seizing oil tankers and Iran was violating the JCPOA. This week things look different all of a sudden. An oil tanker goes dark while passing through the Strait of Hormuz, the story fails to get any…
The surprise pullout of troops and warplanes from Yemen by the United Arab Emirates has been interpreted as a “peace move”, or at least a tacit admission of defeat. But, more plausibly, the timing of the withdrawal seems more to do with the UAE redeploying forces at the behest of the United States in order…
Before Emmanuel Bonne, the special envoy of the French President Emmanuel Macron to Iran, visited President Hassan Rouhani, he promised to deal with the “Grace I” crisis between Iran and the UK. Iran considered the UK confiscation of its supertanker, loaded with two million barrels of oil, an act of unlawfulpiracy and threatened to retaliate for the British…
