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About two weeks after the abortive coup in Turkey in July 2016, I reported the allegation from a high-level Turkish security source that the United Arab Emirates had collaborated with...
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Jamal Khashoggi is a friend of mine, so what I am about to write lacks objectivity. In the many conversations we have had together, and for a long time...
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Only when occupation ends and justice is addressed will the Israel-Palestine conflict be resolved
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It is no coincidence that the deadline Qatar was given to comply with Saudi Arabia's 13 demands fell on 3 July, the fourth anniversary of the military coup in...
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When King Salman and his son Mohammed came to power, there was hope of sorely needed leadership in the region. Instead, they may have fragmented it beyond repair
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Saudi Arabia and the UAE bit off more than they can chew once they took on Qatar, a country with vast wealth and powerful allies
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These are dark days. Darkened by the slaughter of children in Manchester. Darkened by the fawning welcome Donald Trump received in Riyadh. But darkened further by the Trump effect,...
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The price tag of an audience with Donald Trump is high, and rising. Saudi Arabia has already pledged an estimated $300bn in defence contracts over the next decade and...
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A Saudi prince needs three sources of power to become king. In order of importance, they are the United States, the royal family, and the Saudi people, although the...
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George W Bush set the bar high for the accolade of worst US president in history. Before 9/11, he ignored warnings of an impending attack, failed to respond to...
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The reaction to Donald Trump's executive order to ban refugees and Muslims from seven countries has been unprecedented. Flash crowds descended on JFK and Dulles international airports on Saturday....
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A senior political officer at the Israeli Embassy in London has been secretly filmed talking about how he would like to "take down" UK foreign office minister Alan Duncan,...
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Whether by habit, or tradition, the US presidential transition is the ideal time to deal with unfinished business. The handover from one administration to its successor offers tempting opportunities...
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After squandered opportunities and blunders galore, the kingdom's foreign policy is backfiring across the region and that's just the beginning
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It is nearly a year since Vladimir Putin sprung one of his little surprises on Washington by entering the civil war in Syria as an active combatant on Bashar...
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"You want to be a first-class nation? Will you bear it if I make you walk on your own feet? When I wake you up at five in the...
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The Palestinian president was angry: "No one dictates an opinion to us. We are the decision makers and we are the ones who decide and the ones who implement...
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In the dying days of Boris Yeltsin's presidency, the great and the good in Washington scratched their heads and asked themselves: "Who lost Russia?" Post-communist Russia was more fluid...
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The United Arab Emirates' government collaborated with coup plotters in Turkey before the unsuccessful attempt was launched, using exiled Fatah leader Mohammed Dahlan as a go-between with the US-based...
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As the people of Turkey battled for their future, there was a crashing silence from Western leaders whose brand image is democracy. The French consulate had closed two days earlier. Did it know something Turkey did not?
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Like Sykes and Picot a century before them, Blair and Bush tried to reshape the Middle East. It had devastating results.
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Last week the Islamic State (IS) devoted 25 pages of its propaganda magazine Dabiq to a "feature" denouncing the Muslim Brotherhood as apostate. "Over the last few decades, a...
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Ever since the Soviet Union fell, Russia and the US have had an asymmetric relationship. In all its moods – the pendulum has swung from craven pro-Westernism to hostile...
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US Secretary of State John Kerry came close to revealing his true thoughts when he was accosted by two Syrian aid workers at a reception in London after the...
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Nearly four months into its intervention, Russia is an active combatant in the Syrian civil war. This is not just an assertion. It is borne out by casualty figures...
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The First World War started over less. Jets from Turkey, a member of NATO, shot down a Sukhoi 24 fighter from Russia, a state with around 7,700 nuclear warheads,...
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With each planeload evacuating Russian and British tourists, Sharm el-Sheikh can feel its life blood ebbing. Arthur, on a fixed salary of 2000 Egyptian pounds (500 more than the...
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A few days before he stabbed and killed two ultra-orthodox Jews in the Old City of Jerusalem before being shot dead, Muhannad Halabi addressed himself on his Facebook wall...
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Of all the bizarre encounters the Palestinian conflict has generated, Tony Blair's four meetings in Doha with Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal must surely rank as among the oddest. Here was the...
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Sunday was a midsummer's day, whose balmy warmth lulled Londoners like me into a false and strictly transient sense that all was right in the world. I logged onto...
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John Allen, the retired marine general charged by Obama to coordinate the campaign against Daesh is a man confident of his facts. Fresh from Turkey, which had just agreed...
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Abdel Fattah al-Sisi gave on Tuesday the clearest indication so far that he intends to hang the democratically elected president whose power he usurped. Railing against the inability of...