Integrated air and missile defense will make America’s partners in the Persian Gulf safer and bolster America’s policy against Iran. It’s past time to make IAMD a priority.
Mohammed Alsulami and Kasra Aarabi join Banafsheh Keynoush to discuss the latest talks between long-time regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran. Several rounds of talks between Riyadh and Tehran been held in Baghdad since April. They are taking place amid a broader regional trend toward deconfliction and as negotiations in Vienna over the revival of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal appear to have bogged down.
The kingdom is unlikely to achieve net zero emissions soon, but the ambition to do so, and the plan, is an impactful step in the right direction, write Jim Krane and Karen E. Young in their new piece for Al-Monitor.
Even as the United States continues the strategic pivot to the Pacific inaugurated by the Obama administration, the competition for security and control of maritime space in the Red Sea and eastern Mediterranean is intensifying.
Iran is a neighboring country for Saudi Arabia and we from the Gulf states respect its people and culture, sharing many similarities as nations throughout different historical periods. However, there are, unfortunately, profound disagreements that have significantly increased since the 1979 revolution because of Tehran’s foreign policy approach based on ideological promotion and projection.
Grievances have been piling up unaddressed in Tihama, Yemen’s Red Sea coastal plain, for almost a hundred years. Since the revolt of al-Zaraniq against Imam Yahya Hameed al-Din of the Mutawakkilite Kingdom (then North Yemen) in 1925-26, consecutive Imams and the republican elite have pursued policies that have systematically marginalized the Tihamis. They have been deprived of a fair share of their region’s wealth, as well as opportunities for equitable power-sharing and economic empowerment.
Expert regional analysis by MEI scholars and contributors.
On Oct. 3 Cyclone Shaheen made landfall in Oman, near Muscat, after traveling through the Gulf of Oman from the Arabian Sea. According to the India Meteorological Department, which monitors and tracks the formation of cyclones in the North Indian Ocean, Cyclone Shaheen was categorized as a severe cyclonic storm when it made landfall with sustained winds of 70 miles per hour. Its arrival brought on heavy rainfall and excessive flooding in the many valleys that are a natural part of Oman’s topography. The high winds of the cyclone generated massive storm surges along the coast and caused serious damage to infrastructure and homes, displacing many.
Inside the Khaleeji Art Museum’s Architecture of Memory, which showcases the work of Dana Al Rashid.
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بعد غزو العراق في ٢٠٠٣، تحولت الأنظار إلى السيد علي السيستاني في النجف بوصفه نقطة محورية ليس فقط على مستوى العراق، بل في عموم المنطقة. اليوم، يبلغ السيستاني ٩١ عامًا مما يجعل مسألة خلافته أمرًا يشغل المتابعين، ليس فقط على مستوى الساحة الشيعية، ولكن على مستوى منطقة الشرق الأوسط بشكل عام. وعليه، تهدف هذه الدراسة إلى تسليط الضوء على مستقبل المرجعية الشيعية على أساس التغيير المرتقب القادم بعد السيستاني.
For Shi’a Muslims, the highest-ranking religious authorities are known as marj’as, who serve as a reference point for emulation for laypeople (marj’a al-taqlīd). The position of the marj’a, known as the marj’aiyyah, has the exclusive right to issue religious rulings (fatwas). Since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Sistani in Najaf has become a focal point not only for Shi’a in Iraq, but for the entire region. Sistani is now 91 years old and the question of succession is a central one — one that concerns not only Shi’a Muslims, but the wider Middle East as well. This paper aims to shed light on the future of the religious authority in the Shi’a world based on the unavoidable change after Sistani.
Vision 2030 promises a transformation of Saudi Arabia’s economy, and the financial sector will be crucial to achieving this. The sector will facilitate private investment focusing on small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) financing, fund mega-projects, and be a driver for diversifying away from oil. As a result, banks’ role must go from being distributive and largely passive to developmental and active. This article will highlight how the role of the Saudi banking sector has been transformed in the last five years and how its composition is changing to cope.
We rarely miss an opportunity to criticize our Gulf Arab partners — sometimes rightly so — for not doing enough to safeguard collective interests. But one must acknowledge that on Afghanistan, and especially our just-completed exit from the country, most of our Gulf Arab partners absolutely shined. They deserve a ton of credit for the role they played in our large, challenging, and deadly evacuation — a role which was nothing short of indispensable.
There is a puzzle in the profits of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) firms, especially conglomerates. Even as the size of GCC economies has grown considerably in the last two decades, corporate profits have been flat. With a goal of economic diversification to expand private sector business and job opportunities for citizens, the imperative to create an environment for growth is acute for regional governments. Tarek Fadlallah, CEO of Nomura Asset Management Middle East and a member of the Program on Economics and Energy Advisory Council, lays out some of the challenges for Gulf economic diversification and improved corporate profitability.