Pakistani poker: Playing Saudi Arabia against China
Desperate for funding to fend off a financial crisis fuelled in part by mounting debt to China, Pakistan is playing a complicated game of...
Achieving religious harmony in a world of fear and populism
This is a tough time for men and women of the cloth, at least those whose message is one of peace, tolerance, mutual respect,...
Journalist’s disappearance challenges fragile Middle Eastern pragmatism
Saudi Arabia and Turkey, despite being on opposite sides of Middle Eastern divides, are cooperating in Syria to enable youth and women to acquire...
Fragility of Middle East alliances becomes ever more apparent
Three recent developments lay bare the fragility of Middle Eastern alliances and a rebalancing of their priorities: the Russian-Turkish compromise on an assault on...
Global watchdog takes Saudi Arabia to task for lax anti-terrorism finance measures
A Financial Action Task Force (FATF) report criticizing Saudi Arabia’s anti-money laundering and terrorism finance measures puts the kingdom on the spot 17 years...
Battling it out at the UN: Potholes overshadow US-Iran confrontation
It’s easy to dismiss Iranian denunciations of the United States and its Middle Eastern allies as part of the Islamic republic's long-standing rhetoric. The...
Attack in Iran raises spectre of a potentially far larger conflagration
An attack on a military parade in the southern Iranian city of Ahwaz is likely to prompt Iranian retaliation against opposition groups at home...
Middle Eastern Black Swans dot China’s Belt and Road
If any one part of the world has forced China to throw its long-standing foreign and defense policy principles out the window and increasingly...
China struggles with Belt and Road pushback
China, in an implicit recognition that at least some of its Belt and Road-related projects risk trapping target countries in debt or fail to...
Party vs Faith: China drafts restrictions for all religions
China intends to extend aspects of its crackdown on Islam in the north-western province of Xinjiang to all religions as is evident from the...