On June 30, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the country’s de facto ruler, announced a wide-ranging National Transport and Logistics Strategy. Billed as a “key pillar” of Riyadh’s sweeping development blueprint known as Vision 2030, the strategy calls for $147 billion in investments over nine years, including plans for a second national airline and new logistics zones. The operator of Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Gateway Terminal also plans to spend $1.7 billion to expand its main port in Jeddah and invest in at least three international ports—with each investment totaling some $500 million—over the next five years. Sustaining such international partnerships will be critical if [...]
Dialogue seems to be in vogue in today’s Middle East. Iranian and American negotiators are in Vienna to find a way to restore the 2015 nuclear deal that President Donald Trump withdrew from in 2018. Iranian and Saudi security officials recently held meetings in Baghdad to mend their relations. and United Nations-led efforts to deescalate and end the war in Yemen are picking up steam. While these processes remain fragile, they present an important opportunity to establish a broader regional dialogue that aims to lessen tensions by opening new channels of communication, the time for which is ripe. Part of [...]
Saudi Arabia and Iran recently confirmed that they are engaging in direct negotiations to lower tensions between the two rivals and eventually normalize diplomatic relations. Officials from both sides are sounding cautiously optimistic about the endeavor. “We have initiated some exploratory talks. They are at a very early stage but we are hopeful,” Prince Faisal bin Farhan, Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, told Agence France-Presse on Tuesday. On the Trend Lines podcast this week, Hussein Ibish, senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, joined WPR’s Elliot Waldman to discuss the complicated history of the Saudi-Iranian relationship and [...]
