Like Israel, Saudi Arabia wants a formalised security agreement, even if that accord may not target Iran as explicitly as Israel’s request does.
Nato’s spat over Turkish opposition to Swedish and Finnish membership is about more than expanding the North Atlantic military alliance.
Rather than push for an immediate improvement of strained relations with the United States, Saudi Arabia appears to be looking forward to a
The Russian Orthodox Church blesses rather than fire weapons. In doing so, it has emerged as a powerful weapon in its own right in President Vladimir Putin’s civilisationalist arsenal.
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have drawn praise for social reforms that have domestically reduced the role of religion in public life.
Long banned, Christmas has finally—at least tacitly—arrived in Saudi Arabia; just don’t use the name in marketing or be ostentatious about your tree.
Just in case there were any doubts, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu demonstrated with his visit to Lebanon last week that improved relations between Middle-Eastern rivals would not bury hatchets.
Two separate developments involving improved relations between Sunni and Shia Muslims and women’s sporting rights demonstrate major shifts in how rivalry for the leadership of the Muslim world and competition to define Islam in the 21st century are playing out in a world where the Middle Eastern states can no longer depend on the United States coming to their defence.
There’s a déjà vu feeling to this year’s wave of protests across the Arab world.
By the law of unintended consequences, US President Donald J Trump’s mix of uncritical and cynical embrace of Saudi Arabia and transactional approach towards relations with the kingdom may be producing results.
Eurasia’s Great Game is anything but simple and straightforward. A burgeoning alliance between China and Russia that at least for now is relegating potential differences between the two powers to the sidelines has sparked a complex geopolitical dance of its own.
A controversial former security official and Abu Dhabi-based political operator, Mohammed Dahlan, has lurked for several years in the shadows of Palestinian politics.
Protest is back on the front burner. Protesters occupy streets in cities ranging from Hong Kong and Moscow to Khartoum and Algiers.
Recent diametrically opposed responses to repression of Muslims by China, India and other Asian countries highlight deep differences among Gulf states that ripple across Asia. The different responses were evident in Gulf reactions to India’s unilateral withdrawal of Kashmir’s autonomy and Qatar’s reversal of its support of China’s clampdown on Turkic Muslims in its troubled, north-western province of Xinjiang.
Russia, backed by China, hoping to exploit mounting doubts in the Gulf about the reliability of the United States as the region’s sole security guarantor, is proposing a radical overhaul of the security architecture in an area that is home to massive oil and gas reserves and some of the world’s most strategic waterways.
A recent ban on a militant, Iranian-backed Shiite group raised the spectre of the Saudi-Iranian rivalry spilling onto Nigerian streets as security forces launched a manhunt to find the alleged Boko Haram operatives who killed 65 people attending a funeral.
Climate change, much like war, could prove to be a geopolitical and commercial gold mine. At least, that is the take of DP World, Dubai’s global port operator, and Russia’s sovereign wealth fund.
An official Turkish visit to the troubled northwestern Chinese province of Xinjiang to assess reports of a brutal crackdown on the region’s Turkic Muslims could shape Turkey’s challenge to conservative Gulf
