Middle East & North Africa Archive

The dust is beginning to settle after Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman surprised observers with a purge of prominent members of the Saudi royal family and business community nearly two months ago. Debate continues over how much the detention of 320 key figures in Riyadh was a decisive move to stamp out corruption in Saudi society, or the culmination of a power grab that has unfolded since Mohammed bin Salman burst onto the scene when his father became king in January 2015. Either way, it is clear that policymaking authority is concentrated in one individual to a degree unprecedented in […]

The split within the Gulf Cooperation Council that pits regional powers Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates against Qatar has proven surprisingly durable. Kuwaiti efforts to mediate the six-month-long dispute have failed, most recently and notably when Kuwait’s emir convened the annual GCC summit on Dec. 5 and was forced to end the proceedings early just after the closed-door opening remarks. The intra-Gulf rupture has spilled over to the region’s external relations, making it harder for security partners to insist on maintaining even and equal relations with all GCC members. From informal think tank consultations to formal intergovernmental forums, […]

No doubt shocked by U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision earlier this month to carry out his campaign promise to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, Mahmoud Abbas has been scrambling for an appropriate response. His initial reaction was to slam the decision, declaring that “the United States has become no longer qualified to sponsor the peace process.” Since then, he has shuttled between Middle Eastern capitals drumming up opposition to the move. But beyond statements of indignation, it is not clear that Abbas has considered any real shifts in Palestinian strategy. The Palestinian Authority will “remain committed to the […]

Last week, a judge in Argentina sent a jolt across the country by ordering the arrest of former President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner on charges of treason. It was an indictment so powerful that the shock waves must have been felt all the way to Tehran and Beirut. If the government of Iran and the leadership of Hezbollah are not watching events in Buenos Aires very closely, they really should. The case in Argentina has the power not only to bring an ignominious end to the careers of prominent Argentinian figures, but it is sure to put an unwelcome spotlight […]

The United Nations is a slow, imperfect and often unsuccessful peacemaker. We should celebrate that. Last week, U.N. officials were grappling with three crises that have each been on the organization’s agenda for over half a century. On Tuesday, Undersecretary-General for Political Affairs Jeffrey Feltman flew to North Korea to call for “open channels” of diplomatic communication with Pyongyang to avoid a nuclear confrontation. His visit came just over 70 years after the U.N. General Assembly first set up an international commission to facilitate the reunification of the northern and southern halves of the country, a dream that remains as […]

It is fitting that one day before U.S. President Donald Trump decided to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, breaking with 40 years of American policy, his State Department issued an order forbidding its staff and their families from traveling to Jerusalem’s Old City. It appears that before lighting the match, Trump did not want any of his own people near the powder keg when the fuse was lit. At the moment, it is not certain how extensive the blowback will be. Regionally, anger will be tempered by regimes unwilling to allow the possibility of wide-scale demonstrations getting beyond […]

Five years ago, on a hazy summer afternoon in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, a security guard at the presidential palace led me around its mosque, which had been the site of a 2011 assassination attempt against then-President Ali Abdullah Saleh during the height of the Arab Spring protests. The shoes of the men who were killed in the bombing—a who’s who of Yemen’s ruling party—were still piled outside the mosque’s entrance. Saleh was very lucky that day. He had been standing near the mosque’s doorway, away from the center of the room that had taken the brunt of the explosion, the […]

On Nov. 28, the day Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta was sworn in for a second term, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters that attending the event would give him an opportunity to reinforce Israel’s engagement with the continent. “Our intention is to deepen ties with Africa, also by forging links with countries that we do not have diplomatic relations with,” he said before boarding a flight to Nairobi. “I hope by the end of the day I will be able to announce the opening of a new Israeli embassy in an African country.” Netanyahu got what he wanted. Though […]

Progress in reducing the spread and use of weapons of mass destruction is never linear. But these days, there seem to be more steps backward than forward. From the failure to stop North Korea from becoming the world’s ninth nuclear power to the tragically incomplete diplomatic work to rid Syria of chemical weapons, the efforts to advance global norms to reduce the threats from weapons of mass destruction are falling short. Granting the Nobel Peace Prize to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which advocated for the new nuclear disarmament treaty that 122 countries voted for at the United […]