Regarding Russia’s foreign policy in the Middle East, it is important to ask how the normalization of the UAE and Bahrain’s relationships with Israel will play out.
Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, a Bahraini human rights activist, was arrested on the night of April 9, 2011. During the arrest at his family home in Bahrain, he was brutally assaulted and his jaw broken in four places. On June 22, barely two months after his arrest, he was sentenced to life in prison after...
On January 8, Bahrain’s high criminal court of appeal upheld the death sentences of Mohammed Ramadan and Hussain Ali Moosa. The two were convicted in December 2014 in the killing of a police officer using confessions secured under torture. The UK Minister of State for the Middle East Andrew...
A common assumption is that Bahrain’s foreign policy is mostly shaped by its close relationship with Saudi Arabia. Yet the UAE also heavily influences Manama's position on regional challenges, best demonstrated by Bahrain’s approach to Syria-related issues.
If the release of prisoners includes Nabeel Rajab, King Hamad will have signaled that he is serious about ending the cycle of repression in Bahrain. The decision on April 22 by Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa to restore the citizenship of 551 individuals may be a first step in what...
Political repression in Bahrain is feeding economic and social instability. The warning signs are clear and unmistakable: The Kingdom of Bahrain is in serious financial difficulty and its economy is tumbling into crisis. The country’s bond ratings are listed as junk. Its gross debt as a...
Any breakthrough in relations remains unlikely in the short- to medium-term amid hostile Arab public opinion and a lack of progress on the Palestinian issue. Relations between Israel and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members, with the exception of Kuwait, have improved in recent years as their...
Time and history may be moving in Iran’s direction when it comes to its ambition to fill the power vacuum in the Middle East. On February 10, at the end of an extraordinarily violent week, the Israeli military shot down an Iranian drone that crossed into Israeli airspace, and then bombed the...
Although the Qatar crisis may have passed its most dangerous moment, it has had significant negative consequences for both the Gulf and Washington. Amid the fire and fury of Michael Wolff’s explosive account of the Trump presidency so far, readers hoping for greater insight into some of the...
The message coming from Qatar is that the economy is resilient and the country will survive the embargo. The air, land and sea blockade imposed on Qatar by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt — otherwise known as the “quartet” — has significantly impacted Qatar’s...
