Last week’s independence referendum in Iraqi Kurdistan drew the ire of all its neighbors, including the central government in Baghdad. Yet a bit farther afield, the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was offering vocal support for the vote, a position that reflected decades of quiet relations between Israel and Irbil. In an email interview, Bilal Wahab, a Soref fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, discusses the history and diplomatic impact of Israeli-Kurdish ties and what Israel’s support for Iraqi Kurds means for other Kurds in the region. WPR: How far back does official Israeli support [...]
In mid-September, British defense company BAE Systems announced it had signed a letter of intent to supply Qatar with 24 Typhoon jets, in the latest proposed sale of military hardware to the Persian Gulf. As U.S. power in the region has steadily receded over the past decade, the U.K. has tried to seize influence in a part of the world it once dominated by expanding security and economic ties. In an email interview, Jane Kinninmont, a senior research fellow and deputy head of the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House, explains the basis for enhanced defense cooperation, [...]
Last month, Snap—the parent company for the popular social media app Snapchat—announced it would remove Al-Jazeera, the pan-Arab satellite network, from its platform inside Saudi Arabia in “an effort to comply with local laws,” as a Snap spokeswoman told The Wall Street Journal. Snap’s decision came on the heels of a June ultimatum by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries to their rival Qatar, which owns Al-Jazeera, to close down the network completely—one of 13 conditions for ending their ongoing economic blockade of the tiny Gulf country. The move to “silence freedom of expression,” as an Al-Jazeera spokesperson put it, [...]
