Saudi arabia

Saturday

Daniel Korski

Freedom in the desert

When in power, authoritarian regimes can look immovable – even when, in hindsight, they turn out to have been brittle. This seems to have been the case with Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali’s Tunisian regime. Weeks ago, nobody would have believed that the Tunisian strongman, who has held power for more than 23 years, could have been chased from office so quickly. A diplomat friend who served in Tunis marvelled at the dictatorship, where information was so restricted that he depended on information from colleagues stationed elsewhere in the region. Ben Ali’s rule was apparently total; the opposition was comprehensively suppressed and the population had little scope for expression or assembly.

Monday

Daniel Korski

Julian Assange: the new face of anti-Americanism

Like everyone else, I have poured over the latest cache of Wikileaks – the publication of which I find irresponsible and destructive. There are several pieces of information now in the public domain that will cause the US diplomatic embarrassment or worse may even help the regimes in Tehran, Pyongyang and Moscow. Just ask yourself a few questions. Will the West be safer if the Saudi leader cannot trust that a conversation he has with a US envoy will remain secret? Will that help or hinder Iran’s nuclear prpgramme? Will US-German links be improved by the knowledge that US diplomats are sceptical of Angela Merkel’s policies? Will that aid G20

Sunday

James Forsyth

What Wikileaks reveals

The publication of a quarter of a million US diplomatic cables is going to blow the lid on a lot of the world’s diplomatic secrets. So we learn that the Saudis and other Sunni Arab states are urging the US to stop Shi’ite Iran’s nuclear programme by any means necessary. The New York Times’ points out that none of the cables are labeled ‘top secret’, so we are unlikely to find out the most sensitive secrets of American diplomacy. Instead, what we are getting is public confirmation of things we have long suspected. Emblematic of what are learning is confirmation that the Yemenis talked with the Americans about how to

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Preparing for a Nuclear Iran

That’s the message of the US’s forthcoming $60bn arms-deal with Saudi Arabia. Or so says David Rothkopf anyway: [T]he reason that the U.S. government — that would not have done a deal like this in the years right after 9/11 — is willing and even a little eager to move ahead with the deal now is that the War on Terror is being overtaken among top U.S. concerns by the advent of a nuclear Iran.  Now, you may quibble by pointing out that Iran does not yet have nuclear weapons. But this is a purely academic argument. This deal is the latest example of behavior suggesting that the nuclearization of

Wednesday

Anthony Sattin

The last five hundred years

In the aftermath of the destruction of New York’s World Trade Center, an elderly Arab from the Gulf told me that he thought it was the work of American agents. In the aftermath of the destruction of New York’s World Trade Center, an elderly Arab from the Gulf told me that he thought it was the work of American agents. The claim, however fantastic, seemed perfectly logical to him, for it gave the US an excuse to intervene in the Middle East and Asia’s oil-rich regions. Eugene Rogan’s book explains why that Arab, and Arabs generally, feel so suspicious of the West. There has been a plethora of books about

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Arabian Chutzpah

No matter what you think of global warming, I think this qualifies as chutzpah: Saudi Arabia is trying to enlist other oil-producing countries to support a provocative idea: if wealthy countries reduce their oil consumption to combat global warming, they should pay compensation to oil producers. Good luck with that.

Friday

David Blackburn

The SFO can go hang, BAE should not be prosecuted for doing business

All eminent barristers have their specialism, Lord Goldsmith’s is changing his mind. Scholarly integrity is to blame – he likes to give both sides of the argument. His two thrillingly different Iraq war advices are, of course, his crowning achievement; but he’s playing devil’s advocate again today. He writes in the Guardian: ‘I applaud Richard Alderman, director of the Serious Fraud Office for his vigour in pursuing corruption cases in Africa and eastern Europe against BAE. Reports are that he had put an ultimatum to BAE to reach a plea agreement or suffer the full weight of prosecutions. He is right to do so.’ Now, the general sentiment expressed is somewhat