Sultan Haitham Bin Tarek Al-Said of Oman issued two royal decrees on Monday setting up a new legislative council for the country and establishing mechanisms to appoint a crown-prince and guarantee the stability and transfer of power.
Last year, (...)
In 2017, a boycott had started in response to Doha's support for terrorist groups seeking to destabilise the region.
The Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani, attended the meeting of the Supreme Council of the GCC for the first time in four (...)
For the rest of the world, 2020 was mainly the year of the coronavirus pandemic and its implications, but for the Gulf region it was about more than that.
The negative economic impacts of the pandemic, coupled with weak oil prices, pushed (...)
Reports that the next Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) summit meeting is to be moved from Manama in Bahrain to Riyadh in Saudi Arabia on 5 January have given further impetus to the prospect of a full-house meeting of the leaders of the six countries (...)
Expatriate workers in Kuwait might be relieved that anti-immigrant MP Safaa Al-Hashem lost her seat in the Kuwaiti National Assembly, the country's parliament, in the parliamentary elections that took place in Kuwait on Saturday. Al-Hashem was the (...)
The UK government is coming under fire for having deployed air defence troops to Saudi Arabia some months ago without gaining consent from parliament. The mission has been under the radar since February and is thought to be costing the British army (...)
Public statements from Iranian officials, MPs and military commanders this week vowed retaliation for the assassination of the country's top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, with the finger being pointed at Israel.
When US drones assassinated (...)
Saudi Arabia had a foreign-policy triumph this week when it hosted this year's G20 Summit meeting at the weekend, with Saudi officials being given a global media platform to explain the country's foreign policy and domestic reform agenda.
There was (...)
The last two months of each year have become an opportunity to be optimistic about the end of the war in Yemen and the start of a political settlement over the last couple of years, and all eyes now are on Saudi Arabia's efforts to use the UN as a (...)
The reaction of the Arab Gulf states to the announcement of Democratic Party candidate Joe Biden as president-elect of the United States following last week's US presidential elections has been similar to the reaction of the markets to the (...)
As the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic hits, the prospects of global economic recovery are dimming, and the world is anticipating a double-dip recession.
In this context, the Arab Gulf region is particularly prone to a double squeeze from (...)
The informal call to boycott Turkish goods in some Arab countries is starting to bite into businesses relying on exporting from Turkey to the Arab world, especially to the Gulf countries.
The consequences for Turkey of the campaign have been (...)
Official sources in the Gulf have downplayed recent media reports suggesting that the Qatar crisis could be resolved soon.
The optimism about a solution to the crisis that led Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt to sever their relations with (...)
As the US presidential elections approach and opinion polls tilt towards the Democratic Party candidate Joe Biden, many countries formerly allied with incumbent US President Donald Trump have started reaching out to Biden's team, among them Arab (...)
The new Emir of Kuwait Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah has vowed to preserve the legacy of his brother, the late emir sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, who died on 29 September in hospital in the US.
The focus of the new emir will be mainly domestic, (...)
The United Nations hailed the agreement in Glion, Switzerland, on Sunday for a prisoner exchange between the warring factions in Yemen as a significant breakthrough, saying that it wanted to build on this positive development to bring about a (...)
In a grand ceremony on the south lawn of the White House in Washington DC, US President Donald Trump presided over the signing of peace deals between Israel and two Gulf countries, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain, this week.
Some Arab (...)
Iran has been struggling to increase its oil and gas output recently, especially of natural gas from the South Pars Field, a joint field with Qatar, despite the fact that US sanctions make it almost impossible for Tehran to sell its output.
Though (...)
Internal changes in the Sultanate of Oman led the news bulletins in the Arab countries and beyond last week in a development that was out of place for the usually quiet Arab Gulf country.
The new ruler of the country, Sultan Haitham Bin Tarik (...)
As thousands of Egyptian migrant workers in Kuwait are frustrated by the decision to ban flights between Cairo and Kuwait, many circles are active on a mission to poison relations between the two countries. When Kuwait announced it will open its (...)
A media spat between Turkey and the UAE this week revealed the tense situation that now prevails between the NATO member and most of the Arab Gulf countries.
Since the UAE and Saudi Arabia stepped up their support for ally Egypt in its stand against (...)
Thousands of southern Yemenis took to the streets of Al-Mukalla, the capital of the Hadhramaut province of South Yemen, earlier this week in support of the Southern Transitional Council (STC) and calling for the autonomy of the southern regions of (...)
The UAE is launching the first Arab mission to planet Mars this week with a 100 per cent Arab-made space probe that will orbit the far planet and be able to send back unprecedented data to earth early next year. The Hope Space Probe, to be launched (...)
Iraqi troops are reinforcing their positions along the border with Turkey to prevent Turkish forces from advancing deeper into Iraqi territory after more than two weeks of airstrikes and Turkey's establishment of more than ten posts inside Iraqi (...)
The Saudi authorities have taken a compromise decision on the Hajj, the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, by allowing a limited number of local pilgrims to perform the ritual in the week of the end of July and beginning of August due to (...)
