Gulf & Energy Policy

On September 3, 550 British troops evacuated one of Saddam Hussein's former palaces in Basra via the Shatt al-Arab waterway, retreating to Basra airport, the last British base in Iraq. Britain remains responsible for security in the city and for the major supply route from Kuwait, fifty miles to the

From high-level diplomatic tours to multilateral summits in Baghdad and Sharm al-Sheikh, Washington has devoted increasing attention to Iraq's Arab neighbors. Yet, although speculation about the role of regional states in stabilizing Iraq has become something of a cottage industry in Washington, much of this analysis has focused on non-Arab

For the past year, senior United States Treasury officials have traveled the world, highlighting for foreign governments and the private sector the danger that Iran's illicit activities pose to the international financial system. Treasury has lobbied foreign audiences on the need to employ targeted financial measures against entities supporting Iran's

On March 23, at 10:30 a.m. local Iraqi time, fifteen British naval personnel were seized by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in the northern Persian Gulf. The British personnel -- eight from the Royal Navy and seven from the Royal Marines -- were in two light craft returning to

Q: What's the simplest way to remember the difference between Sunni and Shia Muslims? A: Sunni is a longer word than Shia -- there are more Sunnis than Shias. Most ShIAs live in IrAn. IrAq also has a ShIA majority (as does BahrAIn). Mostly SUnnI SaUdI Arabia considers itself the

On January 16, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Kuwait for a meeting with the foreign ministers of Egypt, Jordan, and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)—the oil-producing states of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman. The final stop on Rice’s Middle East tour, the visit

Prince Turki al-Faisal, the Saudi ambassador to the U.S., has resigned. The prince reportedly flew out of Washington after informing Condoleezza Rice, and his own staff, that he was leaving, just 15 months after arriving. The Saudi Embassy told the Associated Press that he was "going home to spend more

From October 30 to 31, 2006, U.S. military forces in the Persian Gulf will join the armed forces of several other countries to hold a naval exercise in the interception and search of ships carrying weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and missiles. Though long planned, the exercise has added importance

As a longtime negotiator in the Middle East, I learned that the most demanding requirement of peacemaking was just getting each side to adjust to reality. In Iraq today, 3 1/2 years after the United States went to war there, no one seems to be doing that. The Shiites, who