The contrast between the two countries is stark. Iran, never as dependent on oil revenue as its neighbor, has seen prospects boosted by rapprochement with the west. In Saudi Arabia, tentative moves toward economic reform haven’t prevented two years of weak prices causing financial havoc: it’s burning through foreign exchange reserves, government contractors have gone […]
India began a campaign to isolate Pakistan at the United Nations, telling the 193-member General Assembly it was time to identify nations who nurture, peddle and export terrorism and isolate them if they don’t join the global fight.
On the surface, the similarities between 1960s Iran and modern Saudi Arabia seem self-explanatory. Like Saudi Arabia today, Iran in the Pahlavi era was ruled by a monarchy with a close (but complicated) relationship with the United States. Indeed, Tehran and Riyadh would go on to become the “twin pillars” of Nixon’s strategy for keeping the […]
Saudi Arabia doesn’t have the same clout it used to. That’s the message the chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee says he has delivered to the Saudi government. Read Here – Bloomberg
Near the beginning of President Barack Obama’s final speech to the United Nations General Assembly, he pointed out something really important about the world today: We are living through the best time in human history, but it feels to a lot of us like anything but. Read Here – Vox
For a problem this profound, it is notable that no theories in the existing international relations literature, or in other states’ practices, offer guidance as to how India and Pakistan could most effectively proceed here. Unlike any other nuclear-armed antagonists, India and Pakistan directly border each other, have unresolved territorial disputes (Kashmir and Sir Creek), […]
The gruesome death of 18 jawans in Uri is, arguably, a defining moment for PM Modi’s foreign policy. But India’s larger enduring strategic conundrum remains the same. How do you deal with a nuclear state that uses terror as an instrument and which is still bankrolled by major powers? Read Here – The Indian Express
India’s SCO membership could now play a bigger role in ensuring greater energy cooperation between energy producers and consumers by linking Central Asia and South Asia, wherein Iran can be instrumental in facilitating the SCO Energy Club by becoming a major energy trading hub through the opening up of its Chabahar port. Read Here – […]
The Pakistani passport has been a mirror of the persistent existentialist tussle in the country itself. The evolution of its look and contents have reflected (or, rather, have been made to reflect), what Pakistan as a polity and a nation stands for. Read Here – Dawn
Saudi support for Islamic extremism started in the early 1960s as a counter to Nasserism—the socialist political ideology that came out of the thinking of Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser—which threatened Saudi Arabia and led to war between the two countries along the Yemen border. This tactic allowed them to successfully contain Nasserism, and the Saudis […]
