Israeli voters face a toxic sludge and dubious propaganda about Libya and Iran as they head to the polls.
Around the world, leaders are scrambling to define their strategy for dealing with the inevitable U.S.-China cold war to come, and the Gulf is no exception. Considering the different objectives and perspectives that the region has in regard to the two superpowers, any misstep in forming alliances could be detrimental to its future.
Kuwait is stuck in a major predicament. The government continues to engage in significant deficit spending, even as its readily available funds dwindle, while political gridlock limits the government’s ability to replace those shrinking financial resources.
اقرأ تقرير MEI الأسبوعي الذي يتضمن تحليلات الخبراء للتطورات الإقليمية الرئيسية للأسبوع المقبل.
“الإشكالية الراهنة هي مواجهة المُفسدين المُحتملين”
Five years ago, President Barack Obama characterized the failure “to plan for the day after” the U.S. intervention in Libya as his worst foreign policy mistake. Certainly, the aftermath of the decision to provide support for the Feb. 17, 2011 uprising, which ended 42 years of Moammar Gadhafi’s erratic and dictatorial rule, hasn’t been happy. Libya’s past decade has featured recurrent civil war, state collapse, terrorism, militias, and warlords, together with competing foreign interventions despite the continuing U.N. arms embargo.
“يَدعي عبد الحميد الدبيبة أنه شعبوي وصل لمنصب سياسي لأنه أتى من خارج الأوساط السياسية، وأن مؤهلاته هي وعوده القائمة على ما أسماه تجفيف مستنقع الفساد. ولكن الحقيقة أن هذه مجرد شعارات.
اقرأ تقرير MEI الأسبوعي الذي يتضمن تحليلات الخبراء للتطورات الإقليمية الرئيسية للأسبوع المقبل.
When it comes to the Persian Gulf, saving the environment might seem like it would be the last item on the to-do lists of the region’s Iranian and Arab rivals. It is an urgent matter, however — and one that could help turn these foes into friends. The United States can play an important role in this: It has helped the region to resolve conflicts over water in the past, and it could do so again.
The Middle East is in turmoil, with civil wars raging in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Libya. COVID-19 is now an additional factor on top of the violence and monumental international support tasks, all of which require a sustained commitment. The effects of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic highlight the need for more robust international stabilization efforts to achieve long-term peace and self-sufficiency in the Middle East.
This paper looks at the political implications of the relationship between Shi’a in the Gulf states and Iranian marj‘as, the historical background to these ties, and Gulf states’ concerns surrounding the outflow to Iran of religious taxes. In some Gulf countries, these issues are tied to concerns about the loyalty of Shi’a to the nation. The authors argue that the emergence of a marj‘a who would be based in one of the Gulf states could quell these concerns.The authors identify potential marj‘as from the region and steps that Gulf states must take so that their Shi’a citizens will shift their allegiance from foreign-based marj‘as to domestically based ones.
This article discusses Kuwait’s response to COVID-19 against the backdrop of two longstanding conceptions in the country about the role and position of non-citizens, particularly that of low-wage migrant workers. It recounts the efforts of the country’s small but vibrant civil society sector to respond to the pandemic-related needs of blue-collar migrant workers by approaching them as equal partners in solving shared challenges.
The leaders of the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member states — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar — signed a “solidarity and stability” agreement, dubbed the “al-Ula Statement” after the Saudi city in which it was inked, at their Jan. 5 summit meeting.
The mixed messages and pendulum swings in U.S. Gulf policy in recent years are rooted in and have further fueled deep questioning and a largely unresolved debate within the United States about America’s role in the region, and indeed in the world. Like the U.S., relations between the GCC and Iran are locked in confrontation. Breaking this impasse requires decisive U.S. reengagement in Gulf affairs led by vigorous, sustained diplomacy that promotes intra-GCC reconciliation and supports efforts aimed at tempering the Saudi-Iran strategic rivalry.