الخليج وسياسة الطاقة

In his January 31 State of the Union address, President George W. Bush declared that America was "addicted to oil" and urged spending on technologies "to break [that] addiction." Noting that oil is often imported from unstable parts of the world, he set a goal of replacing more than 75

"The king is dead. God save the king!" is not quite how they say it in Saudi Arabia. But the Arabic and Islamic equivalent is going to be heard more often in the next few years. King Fahd was 84 when he died last summer. King Abdullah, who replaced him

At the annual summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), held in Abu Dhabi on December 18 and 19, the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Oman avoided confronting Iran directly on its suspected nuclear weapons program. Instead, these member states confronted Israel

On November 8, the State Department released the International Religious Freedom Report, its annual survey of religious freedom across the world ( read the report online). Several of the designated "countries of particular concern" (CPCs) are in the Middle East: Iran, Sudan, and embarrassingly, in light of longstanding close diplomatic

On November 11, Bahrain will welcome government officials and civil society groups to the second meeting of the Forum for the Future. The forum was founded at the 2004 G-8 summit at Sea Island, Georgia, as the centerpiece of the Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiative to promote change

Exploring continuities and changes, this book provides the historical backdrop crucial to understanding how Iranian pride and sense of victimization combine to make its politics contentious and potentially dangerous. From the struggle between the Shah and Ayatollah Khomeini to the current tension between the reformers and traditionalists, a central issue

Iraq's interior minister, Bayan Jabr, lashed out at Saudi diplomacy while speaking to journalists in Amman on October 2. Referring to Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, Jabr said Iraq would not be lectured by "some Bedouin riding a camel." Broadening his remarks to the Saudi ruling family, the

On July 20, the Saudi foreign ministry announced that Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the long-serving Saudi ambassador to the United States, was stepping down, and that "the process of nominating" Prince Turki al-Faisal, the current Saudi ambassador in London, to replace him had begun. When the widely anticipated death of

While the Bush administration’s Middle East agenda focuses on promoting democracy and freedom throughout the region, Saudi Arabia follows a contrary agenda whose sole avowed focus is counterterrorism. Riyadh’s fight against terrorism and repeated calls for national unity have provided a facade under which the monarchy has abandoned the few