Gulf States Archive

The tiny Persian Gulf monarchy of Qatar announced its intention to withdraw from OPEC earlier this month, after 57 years as a member of the cartel of major oil-producing nations. The move, which will go into effect on Jan. 1, is expected to have little impact on energy markets, as Qatar, which is rich in natural gas, exports a very small amount of oil. But it risks worsening Doha’s ongoing diplomatic row with some other Gulf Arab monarchies. In an email interview with WPR, Jim Krane, an energy studies research fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy in […]

The standoff pitting Saudi Arabia and the UAE versus Qatar has brought new tensions to the Persian Gulf, and there’s no end in sight. Will the crisis be too much for the region? Find out more when you subscribe to World Politics Review (WPR). In the immediate aftermath of Donald Trump’s first official visit abroad to Saudi Arabia in May 2017, long-simmering tensions among America’s allies in the Persian Gulf boiled over. It all started the day after Trump left Riyadh. The Qatari news agency, QNA, reported that the country’s ruler, Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, had given […]

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu paid a surprise visit to Oman in October, the first official visit by an Israeli leader in over two decades. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas also traveled to Oman days before Netanyahu’s trip, leading to speculation that Oman could be acting as a go-between for another round of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. In an interview with WPR, Giorgio Cafiero, founder and CEO of Gulf State Analytics, a geopolitical risk consultancy, discusses this recent flurry of diplomatic activity in the context of Oman’s historical efforts to break impasses in a number of regional conflicts. World Politics Review: What […]