Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer

Three back-to-back, high-level Muslim and Arab summits held over the past two days are likely to yield very little despite the hype surrounding them.

The bitter Gulf rift between Qatar and its Saudi and United Arab Emirates-led detractors could spill on to the pitches of English soccer.

Meet Mohammed bin Abdul-Karim Al-Issa, the public face of Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman’s version of moderate Islam.

Security and the viability of China’s massive investment is likely to top Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan’s agenda when he lands this weekend in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad.

The Indian-backed Iranian port of Chabahar has emerged as a major loophole in a tightening military and economic noose and ever harsher US sanctions that President Donald J. Trump, reluctant to be sucked into yet another war, sees as the best way to either force Tehran to its knees or achieve regime change.

Results of a recent annual survey of Arab youth concerns about their future suggest that Arab autocracies have yet to deliver expected public services and goods, explain autocratic efforts to promote nationalism, and indicate that jobs and social freedoms are more important than political rights.

A fully loaded Chinese oil tanker ploughing its way eastwards from two Iranian oil terminals raises questions of how far Beijing is willing to go in defying US sanctions amid a mounting US military build-up in the Gulf and a US-China trade war.

Andreas Krieg’s edited volume, Divided Gulf: The Anatomy of a Crisis (Palgrave, 2019), brings together a group of prominent Gulf scholars to discuss the Gulf crisis that pits a Saudi-United Arab Emirates-led alliance against Qatar. The alliance’s economic and diplomatic boycott of Qatar since 2017 has implications that go far beyond the regional dispute. The book highlights the fact that strategies of the opposed parties are to a significant extent shaped by the evolution of information and cyber warfare. It also highlights the rise of nationalism in Gulf states that fundamentally changes the role of tribes and the nature of the Gulf state in the 21st century. The book argues that at the core of the Gulf struggle are fundamentally different visions of Saudi Arabia and the UAE on the one hand and Qatar on the other on how to ensure regime survival in an era of social and economic change in which autocratic governments increasingly have to efficiently deliver public goods and services. It projects the Gulf crisis as one more intractable Middle Eastern problem in which countries like the UAE and Saudi Arabia see ensuring their survival in terms of security. In doing so, the book makes a significant contribution to the literature on a region that is key to global developments and increasingly plays a role in shaping a new world order.

Pakistan risks falling off the tightrope it walks as it attempts to balance its relations with rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Developments in recent days, including this weekend’s Baloch nationalist attack on a luxury hotel in the strategic port city of Gwadar and a legal dispute over completion of a gas pipeline against the backdrop of Saudi-Iranian-Qatari competition for the Pakistani gas market, suggest that Pakistan is caught between a rock and a hard place.

Mounting tension between the Trump administration and Iran are likely to shed light on US dynamics shaping today’s geopolitical environment.