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.
The Taliban’s record in recent weeks on making good on promises to respect human and women’s rights as well as uphold freedom of the press is mixed at best.
The US withdrawal from Afghanistan will likely clarify what the Gulf’s security options are.
Recent attacks on Kabul’s international airport by the Islamic State’s Afghan affiliate raise multiple questions, as well as the spectre of paradigm shifts in the drivers and expanding geography of political violence.
Afghanistan is showing the United Arab Emirates the downside of being a haven for deposed leaders and exiled politicians whose wealth is reportedly parked without question in Emirati financial institutions.
Boasting an almost 1,000-kilometre border with Iran and a history of troubled relations between the Iranians and Sunni Muslim militants, including the Taliban, Afghanistan could become a bellwether for the future of the rivalry between the Islamic Republic and Saudi Arabia.
The rise of hardline President-elect Ebrahim Raisi has prompted some analysts to counterintuitively suggest that it could pave the way for reduced
A little acknowledged provision of the 2015 international agreement that curbed Iran’s nuclear programme explains jockeying by the United States and the Islamic republic over the modalities of a US return to the deal from which President Donald J Trump withdrew.
Demonstrating for the third week their determination to force the country’s military to return to its barracks, protesters in Myanmar appear to be learning lessons from a decade of protest in the Middle East and North Africa.
A nationalist Turkish television station with close ties to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has dug up a 12-year-old map that projects Turkey’s sphere of influence in 2050 as stretching from South-eastern Europe on the northern coast of the Mediterranean and Libya on its southern shore across North Africa, the Gulf and the Levant into the Caucasus and Central Asia.
Think the Muslim world is united in opposing Islamophobia? Think twice.
A recent online survey by scholars at two Dutch universities of Iranian attitudes towards religion has revealed a stunning rejection of state-imposed adherence to conservative religious mores as well as the role of religion in public life.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ushered in the new year pledging to employ his country’s military to secure Turkey’s place in a rebalanced new world order.
Turkey is leveraging its successful backing of Azerbaijan’s recent war against Armenia to counter Iran in the Caucasus and gradually challenge Russia in Central Asia, the heart of what Moscow considers its backyard.
Increasing strains between Pakistan and its traditional Arab allies, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, is about more than Gulf states opportunistically targeting India’s far more lucrative market.
Saudi Arabia has taken multiple steps to polish its tarnished image in advance of this weekend’s hosting of the virtual summit of the G20 that groups the world’s foremost economies and in anticipation of an incoming Biden administration in the United States that is expected to be critical of Riyadh and potentially more conciliatory towards Iran and non-violent Islamists.
Weakened by Joe Biden’s electoral defeat of US President Donald J. Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu risks being caught between a rock and a hard place as Jordan, the Palestine Authority and the United Arab Emirates manoeuvre for control of what is to Jews the Temple Mount and to Muslims the Haram ash-Sharif, the third most holy site in Islam.
Ethiopia, an African darling of the international community, is sliding towards civil war as the coronavirus pandemic hardens ethnic fault lines. The consequences of prolonged hostilities could echo across East Africa, the Middle East and Europe.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan didn’t miss a beat during his address to the United Nations General Assembly, insisting that he, unlike the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, would not accept a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that is not endorsed by the Palestinians.
Here are two potential indicators of Chinese interest in moving ahead with a proposed USD 400 billion economic and military cooperation agreement with Iran: a Chinese push for Iranian membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and renewed interest in a China-Pakistan-Iran-Turkey energy pipeline. China has moved on neither.
Like it or not, the United Arab Emirates may have done the Palestinians a favour by forging diplomatic ties with Israel. On the face of it, the agreement deprives the Palestinians of a perceived trump card: Arab recognition in return for Israeli withdrawal from territories occupied during the 1967 Middle East war even if it has not proven to be much of an asset.
Hobbled by harsh US sanctions and a global economic downturn, Iran has discovered a new opportunity: hot air that carries messages to its opponents. China, albeit far less economically impaired, sees virtue in the business too.
One thing is certain, the recent US military pullback from Saudi Arabia will fuel a brewing arms race in the Middle East at a time when the region, struggling with the public health and devastating economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic, can least afford it.
The fight in this week’s Democratic primaries may have been about who confronts Donald J Trump in November’s US presidential election, Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden.
As tens of thousands of refugees shiver in the cold on Turkey’s borders with Europe and a new phase of the brutal Syrian war erupts, Russia, Turkey, the European Union and the international community are being presented with the bill for a flawed, short-term approach to the nine-year old conflict that largely lacked empathy for millions of victims and was likely to magnify rather than resolve problems.
Television news summarises daily what a new world order shaped by civilisationalists entails. Writer William Gibson’s assertion that “the future is already here—it’s just not evenly distributed” is graphically illustrated in pictures of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of desperate Syrians fleeing indiscriminate bombing in Idlib, Syria’s last rebel stronghold, with nowhere to go.
Sweeping new regulations restricting social media in Pakistan put freedom of expression and the media at the heart of the struggle to counter both civilisationalist and authoritarian aspects of an emerging new world order.
The real issue with US President Donald J. Trump’s “Deal of the Century” Israeli-Palestinian peace plan is not whether it stands a chance of resolving one of the world’s most intractable conflicts. It doesn’t.
At the core of US President Donald J Trump’s maximum pressure campaign against Iran lies the belief that Iran can be forced to negotiate terms for the lifting of harsh US economic sanctions even if it has no confidence in US intentions and adherence to agreements.
This week’s inauguration of a new Red Sea Egyptian military base was pregnant with the symbolism of the rivalries shaping the future of the Middle East as well as north and east Africa.
Iranians play chess and Americans play backgammon when it comes to warfare, military strategy and conflict management.
International law may not be a major consideration in debates about the US killing of Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani
The United States stirred a hornet’s nest that stretches far beyond Iraq when it attacked an Iranian-backed militia on the weekend.
The Iranian port city of Bandar-e-Mahshahr has emerged as the scene of some of the worst violence in Iran’s brutal crackdown on recent anti-government protests.
Rarely is out-of-the-box thinking needed more than in this era of geopolitical, political and economic turmoil.
Mass anti-government protests in several Arab countries are turning into competitions to determine who has the longer breath, the protesters or the government.
These are uncertain times with trade wars, regional conflicts and increased abuse of human and minority rights pockmarking the transition from a unipolar to a multipolar world.
If there is one theme, beyond corruption and a host of economic and social grievances, that have driven protests—large and small, local, sectoral and national—across the globe, it has been a call for dignity.
Protests in Lebanon have evolved into more than a fight against failed and corrupt government that has long stymied development in the Middle East and North Africa.
Pakistan, long viewed as an incubator of religious militancy, is gearing up for a battle over the future of the country’s notorious madrassas, religious seminaries accused of breeding radicalism.
Turkey’s ambass-ador to China, Emin Onen, didn’t mince his words this week when he took his Chinese hosts to task for failing to support Turkey’s military campaign against a Kurdish militia in Syria.
Turkey, like much of the Middle East, is discovering that what goes around comes around.
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.
The Taliban’s record in recent weeks on making good on promises to respect human and women’s rights as well as uphold freedom of the press is mixed at best.
The US withdrawal from Afghanistan will likely clarify what the Gulf’s security options are.
Recent attacks on Kabul’s international airport by the Islamic State’s Afghan affiliate raise multiple questions, as well as the spectre of paradigm shifts in the drivers and expanding geography of political violence.
