Abdel Bari Atwan Many questions were raised about the  prolonged stay in London of Prince Ahmad Bin-Abdelaziz, youngest of the seven Sudairi sons of Saudi Arabia’s founding monarch – especially after he told a group of protestors outside his residence that they should not blame the ruling family as …

Shehab Al Makahleh Russian sources believe that Moscow would play the role of a peace mediator between Israel and Syria, benefitting from the current situation in the Middle East and the political status in both Damascus and Tel Aviv in the aftermath of the opening of the Qunaitra …

Giancarlo Elia Valori Last August the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA) moved its Tripoli’s offices to the now famous Tripoli Tower. The traditional financial institution of Gaddafi’s regime currently manages approximately 67 billion US dollars, most of which are frozen due to the UN sanctions. Said sanctions shall be …

Shehab Al Makahleh China’s ambitions in African countries are on the rise. Beijing’s annual trade with African states exceeded $250 billion at a time Chinese firms and companies have heavily invested in constructing roads, railways and other building complexes as well as factories to better use the resource-rich …

Giancarlo Elia Valori Currently natural gas is one of the most important US assets in its relations with the European Union. In fact, President Trump and President Jean Claude Juncker spoke at length about it during their last meeting at the White House at the end of July …

Mohammad Bazzi On October 2, Jamal Khashoggi, a well-known critic of the government of Saudi Arabia, walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to obtain paperwork he needed to get married. He never walked out. Since then, Washington’s foreign-policy establishment has begun turning against Mohammed bin Salman, the …

CLAES G. RYN  In order to make sense of the term “populism” as ordinarily used today, we must first take into account that it has been defined almost exclusively by America’s permanent ruling establishment. This establishment is sometimes called the “deep state,” but we should resist a narrow …

Nikolas K. Gvosdev There is a way to break the dysfunctional cycle that hinders Moscow’s relationship with the West. George Beebe’s recent analysis has presented the policy community with a very useful paradigm for understanding recent alleged actions taken by the Russian special services in a number of …

James Dorsey  The fate of missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, assuming that his disappearance was the work of Saudi security and military officials, threatens to upend the fundaments of fault lines in the Middle East. At stake is not only the fate of a widely respected journalist and …