Every nation bordering Syria—Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, Turkey—is being drawn into the conflict there. The leaders in these countries are worried, to say the least. But why is Saudi Arabia in a panic? None of the Syrian warfare is spilling over into Saudi Arabia. Iraq and Jordan serve as buffers. Still, hundreds if not thousands of […]
Middle East respiratory syndrome, a cousin of SARS, has sparked global concern for its pandemic potential, but Saudi Arabia has yet to release information that could help protect the rest of the world. Read Here – Scientific American But the discovery of Mers carries a story behind it. The man behind it, Ali Mohamed Zaki, […]
Amid Syria‘s worsening crisis, there is another unprecedented, yet overlooked phenomenon that bodes ill for the entire region: the rise of global Shia jihadism. The number of foreign Shia jihadists in Syria is arguably greater than Sunni ones. So what will this new trend mean, asks Hassan Hassan, Read Here – The National
Saudi Arabia is facing multiple fronts for potential destabilization. A modern society and wealthy citizenry have depended on millions of skilled and unskilled foreign workers to build infrastructure and keep homes, banks and, restaurants running smoothly. Oil money is also behind tremendous investment in education and other social benefits. Yet fossil fuels are limited. Competition […]
There is a lot going for India’s relations with Japan if New Delhi can overlook the Dragon in the room and get on with what it needs to do to ensure its economic and diplomatic rise. Read Here – Indian Express
Current trends in the global energy market don’t look good for Saudi Arabia. First, the International Energy Agency projected in November 2012 that the United States will surpass the Gulf petrogiant as the world’s top energy producer by 2020. Then, last week, it revealed that North America, buoyed by the rapid development of its unconventional oil industry, […]
The Japanese government has decided to restart talks with India to reach a bilateral nuclear cooperation agreement. The move is aimed at paving the way for exports of Japanese nuclear power technology to India. India has developed nuclear weapons without becoming a party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), a key international pact to prevent […]
Yet again Iraq finds itself at a ‘crossroad’ – a euphemism for political intransigence to the point of paralysis coupled with a spike in violence, cruelty and ethno-sectarian entrenchment. As with all such crossroads since 2003 the idea that Iraq needs to – or indeed inevitably will – fragment into three states with neat ethno-sectarian […]
The paradoxical nature of politics in the Islamic Republic of Iran has been on full display in this short campaign season for the presidency. As plenty of commentators — both in the Iranian and Western media — have pointed out, much of the action took place before the race was officially under way. This week, […]
Iran has long characterised its domestic struggle as being between the revolutionaries of 1979 and those who opposed the revolution, the “agents of the West”. But what the nation has proved time and again is that its internal struggle is now between the revolutionaries themselves. Read Here – Gulf News
looking beyond borders 