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The third sector — the new rising stars of the defense industry — are led by the president's men. They and their companies are tied to Erdogan: Baykar Makina, owned by the family of Erdogan’s son-in-law, Selcuk Bayraktar; BMC, owned by the Ozturk family and Ethem Sancak, a member of Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its Executive Council; and the Tumosan unit of Albayrak Group.

BMC is the leading producer of buses, trucks, rail systems, Kirpi armored vehicles and Amazon mine-resistant ambush protected (MRAP) vehicles. The ambitious joint venture aspires to become Turkey’s monopoly over diesel engine production for land vehicles and jet engines. Sancak holds 25% of the venture's shares, the Ozturks hold 25.1%, and the remaining 49.9% is owned by the Qatar Armed Forces Industry Committee.

In 2018, BMC became Turkey's first private defense industry company to reach the Defense News “Top 100 List,” ranking No. 85, with $554.18 million in defense revenues.

In early 2019, Erdogan offered generous incentives to BMC, such as the opportunity to lease Turkey’s largest tank maintenance factory to produce the indigenous Altay main battle tank under a 25-year contract for only $50 million. This transfer of a tank factory in Sakarya province to BMC is still highly controversial in Turkey, with the main opposition party criticizing it at nationwide rallies because of transparency and accountability issues. Also, factory workers organized several protests against the decision.

a big cooperative deal in the defense industry helps strengthen Qatar’s ties with Turkey, guarantees Turkey's continued military-political shield against the Saudi-led bloc and blockade, and helps Doha diversify its defense sources.

BMC wants to penetrate jet engine production as well. After securing Erdogan's political backing, BMC’s TRMotor went to a joint venture with TAI to develop the jet engine for Turkey’s indigenous TFX aircraft project with the help of the UK’s Rolls-Royce. In March, however, Rolls-Royce​ announced it was withdrawing from TRMotor because of an irreconcilable difference over intellectual property caused by Qatar’s involvement with BMC.

BMC is trying to establish a monopoly in military diesel and jet engines, and also seeks to monopolize the raw material production field of boron mining it recently entered. 

Joint ventures are having a rough time. TSKGV, now under the jurisdiction of the presidential palace, is struggling to evade Erdogan’s attempts to take full charge. Meanwhile, Erdogan's favorites are rising quickly to the top.

Mr. Hosny himself helped stoke those sentiments, saying, “There was a group of the world’s Jews who had a major influence in the elections who were a serious threat to Egypt taking this position.”

All of Egypt, indeed all of the Arab world, was talking with one voice of outrage and insult.

While no one here would argue that Israel and its supporters played no role in Mr. Hosny’s defeat to a Bulgarian diplomat, many people said that his failure was at least as much a sign of Egypt’s long, slow slide as the center of Arab culture, thought and influence. They said the defeat might represent a rejection of Muslims and Arabs, but perhaps more importantly a rejection of their authoritarian leaders.

Mr. Hosny, a favorite of President Hosni Mubarak, was roundly despised by many members of the nation’s cultural elite

pan-Arab daily newspaper Al Quds Al Arabi wrote that Mr. Hosny’s loss “comes as yet another confirmation of the Arab world’s — and Egypt’s in particular — backslide on the international arena,

considering the charges of anti-Semitism that derailed his candidacy, he has never been known as a strong opponent of normalizing ties with Israel.

Throughout his candidacy, Mr. Hosny struggled to mute the charges of anti-Semitism, efforts that caused many people in Egypt to wince as they watched a stalwart of the state apologize, to Israel no less. And they winced again, when he blamed a Jewish-Zionist conspiracy for his loss.

“The moment he lost he came back and started saying some of the most foul anti-Semitic statements against the Jews, confirming what the West had said about him.”

Mr. Hosny lost his bid for Unesco, but tried to turn that into a victory at home, returning as a victim, and for the state-run media a hero.

When it comes to domestic politics, she said, Egyptian officials often try to present themselves as anti-Israeli, even while serving as a mediator between Israel and the Palestinians.

Writing in the English-language Daily News, the chief editor, Rania al-Malky, suggested that Mr. Hosny might have done as well as he did because he was Arab and Muslim, not because he was qualified. His defeat, she wrote, should not surprise anyone.

she wrote, “you must admit that the Egyptian administration did not deserve to win this bid. How can a 22-year minister of a country where culture, education, health and science have regressed to the Dark Ages become the head of Unesco?”

In 2016, Adelson gave almost $83 million in publicly disclosed funds to Republican groups and candidates, including $20 million to Future 45, a super PAC that backed Trump. He also threw in a record $5 million to the inaugural committee, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics

Last week’s visit to the Trump White House wasn’t the first for Adelson; he was also there, meeting and discussing policy with Trump and several advisers, in October. Today, he was in Israel with a delegation of several dozen board members from the RJC, another nonprofit he has generously bankrolled.

The drug, which gives a faster high than traditional amphetamine, has for years been a favorite among ISIS fighters. But its export from the country, through ports like Latakia that are controlled by the Bashar Assad government, suggests that the Syrian regime might now be turning to fenethylline sales internationally to bolster its treasury. At the very least, suggest experts, it might be allowing corrupt officials to carry out trade in the illegal substance to keep them loyal.

Captagon, Biocapton and Fitton were the brand names for drugs whose main active ingredient is fenethylline, which was legal in the U.S. until 1981, when its addictive properties saw it categorized as a Schedule 1 drug alongside heroin and cocaine. When legal in the 1960s and ’70s, it was used to calm hyperactive children and for patients suffering from narcolepsy and depression. By 1986, it was banned in most countries. Yet as with most narcotics, the ban only drove production underground, with southeastern Europe emerging as the manufacturing hub. Faced with increasing international pressure, production shifted to the Middle East after 2011. Until then, Syria had no history as a manufacturer or exporter of the drug

Before the 2011 uprising, Syria’s robust pharmaceutical industry meant that almost all medicinal drugs consumed in Syria were produced in-country. Despite the war, Syria still maintains significant pharma infrastructure capable of producing vast quantities of legal medicines, and therefore illegal drugs such as Captagon. In 2017, the country’s health minister Nizar Yazayi told a pharmaceutical conference in Damascus that 40 of Syria’s 62 drug plants were still safe. State media in Syria also occasionally reports forces capturing Captagon pills worth millions on the international market from rebels. But the government hasn’t made clear what it does with all those pills.

In Saudi Arabia, the pill, which contains caffeine and quinine, a painkiller, is more popular than cocaine, weed, heroin or ecstasy. According to a 2016 study published in the journal Basic & Clinical Pharmacology & Toxicology, three-quarters of people treated for drug addiction in Saudi Arabia are addicted to amphetamines, and almost all of those are Captagon users.

Captagon is also becoming increasingly popular in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and North Africa. While a batch of 200 sells for about $70 in Lebanon, in wealthy Gulf states a single pill can fetch between $10 and $20

Erdogan’s visit was prompted by the situation in Idlib, but the venue Putin chose — an aerospace exhibition — set the stage for Moscow to open its favorite topic, namely opportunities for further defense cooperation and fresh arms sales to Turkey in the wake of the S-400 missile deal. 

Tensions in the rebel-held province shot up Aug. 19 after a Syrian fighter jet struck a pickup of the Faylaq al-Sham group escorting a Turkish military convoy, which, according to Ankara, was taking reinforcements to the Turkish observation post at Morek in the southernmost corner of Idlib. The situation grew into a crisis between Ankara and Moscow as Syrian forces encircled the Morek base, where about 200 Turkish soldiers are stationed, while marching into the key town of Khan Sheikhoun. 

Unlike Western leaders, Putin has proved a master in speaking not only to the minds but also the hearts of both Turkish decision-makers and the Turkish people. He grasps the “emotional reality” prevailing in Ankara, where how one feels could be more consequential than what one thinks nowadays. In a move flattering nationalist sentiments, Putin offered Erdogan the opportunity to send a Turkish astronaut to space on the centenary of the Turkish republic in 2023, drawing on the recent creation of a space agency in Turkey, which has been actively advertised for domestic political consumption

A Turkish astronaut in space ahead of the 2023 presidential polls would make for a great election gift for Erdogan

each Putin-Erdogan summit has seen Ankara give concessions, be they economic, diplomatic or security- and defense-related

When the nuclear negotiations that led to the 2015 deal were going on, Zarif’s team faced a propaganda campaign of opposition from the IRGC and its long tentacles in Iranian media. Despite Zarif’s personal loyalty to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the latter’s continued open support for him and for the talks, the IRGC constantly attacked Zarif. It has long been axiomatic that the Guards’ interest lies in closer ties with Russia and China and avoiding Iran’s integration in the global economy.But in the interview, Zarif gives details as to how the IRGC actively worked to sabotage the deal’s implementation after it was reached. According to him, Soleimani’s celebrated trip to Russia to meet with President Vladimir Putin in July 2015, was done on the initiative of Moscow with the expressed aim of “destroying” the nuclear deal.

Zarif’s sharp words against Russia are not news for those who know him. He has long emphasized the need for Iran to have better relations with the West. In the interview, he also says what many on the Iranian street have long believed (although this is sometimes mocked by certain pundits as unsophisticated thinking): If Iran relies too much on Russia and China, to the detriment of its ties with the West, they will take advantage of Iran.

Ironically, Zarif is, in a sense, more of a true believer than many in the IRGC. He genuinely appears to be under the illusion that the ideals of the Islamic Republic still have popular support and that Iran should rely on them instead of brute force. Few in the IRGC think so, and many seem to be aware of how widely discredited these ideals are among average Iranians.

The manner of the audio file’s leak and its source has been a source of incessant chatter in the Iranian public sphere. Some Zarif supporters (including the Rouhani administration itself) have claimed it was a treacherous act aimed at undermining him as a credible diplomat. On the other side, “Akhbar o Tahlilha,” the public bulletin of the IRGC’s Political Department, attacked Zarif, defended Soleimani, and mockingly asked the foreign minister: “Why should a Foreign Ministry that is incapable of keeping a voice file confidential be trusted with secret military information?”

the hard-liners’ favorite moderate for a reason. He has never wavered from supporting the first principles of Khomeinism and has repeatedly defended its support for groups such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah or the Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Speaking for the entire Iranian regime on the world stage has been at the heart of Zarif’s lifelong ambition. His experience and knowledge of America’s culture and political system have kept him at the top of that portfolio for decades, making him, in essence, too valuable to get rid of. Even prior ructions with the IRGC couldn’t sink him. For instance, following the Iran-Iraq War negotiation debacle in 1988, many of the New York Boys were marginalized or even driven to exile. Not Zarif, who got promoted and served for 10 years as Iran’s deputy foreign minister. Following the conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s election to the presidency in 2005, Zarif also stayed on as Iran’s envoy to the U.N. — at the insistence of Khamenei.

Zarif’s own account shows the degree to which he is used by the IRGC and the military establishment, without him ever being allowed to play a role outside their plans. It hardly inspires confidence. In fact, his account seems to confirm that the process of the IRGC’s domination of Iranian politics is much more advanced than previously imagined

the next supreme leader is likely to be a pliant figure, controlled by the IRGC. Iran will thus turn into a military dictatorship, akin to Egypt or Algeria

Mostafa Tajzadeh, a former deputy interior minister during Mohammad Khatami’s presidency, has launched his own, long-shot candidacy, with the promise that he will “drive back the IRGC to the barracks” and abolish the position of Supreme Leader. Even if he is somehow allowed to run for the presidency (and that is very unlikely), he will have an uphill task in convincing people that he has what it takes to confront Khamenei and the IRGC.

LAF pride and capabilities, both linked to years of sustained U.S. support, endanger Hezbollah’s “resistance” narrative.

For years, Iranian and Syrian interests and tactics in Lebanon have largely coincided: They seek to discredit and divide the so-called “March 14” movement that emerged against Damascus and Tehran in the aftermath of the murder of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in 2005; “resist” U.S. and French efforts to bolster’s Lebanon’s sovereignty and independence; and use Lebanon to threaten Israel.

Hezbollah has expanded its influence in, and in some cases control over, Lebanon’s domestic institutions via its 2006 memorandum of understanding with the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), a Christian party.

Since 2006, Aoun and his son-in-law, Foreign Minister Gebran Bassile, have been reliable fronts for Hezbollah’s and thus Iran’s interests in Lebanon

gives both Damascus and Tehran the gift of a unifying message to the Lebanese about America’s unreliability as a partner.

The value of Hezbollah’s FPM-provided Christian veneer has declined precipitously, with Bassile now a favorite target of the protesters as a symbol of everything that ails Lebanon

it would not be the first time that regional actors used Lebanon as the theater for their competition

Two Lebanese politicians speculated about a connection to what is happening in the Alawite regions of Syria, where Bashar al-Assad may view Iranian influence and Shia proselytizing as a threat to his secular, Alawite base

Assad, who would have considered Hezbollah a junior partner during the pre-2005 Syrian occupation of Lebanon, may also resent the current strength and presence of Hezbollah in Syria: Who’s the junior partner now? How much control can Assad exert over Hezbollah inside Syria? Given that Assad still needs Iran’s and Hezbollah’s help in Syria, he can, according to this theory, use Lebanon to send a message.

The presumed candidacy of Lebanese Army Commander Joseph Aoun, with his enhanced credibility for independence, would be more aligned with the sentiments of the street. But the Lebanese president is elected by parliament, not the people. While the current Lebanese parliament reflects the very establishment that the protesters wish to topple, one hopes that the members of parliament will think about protesters’ views if they are put in a position as to whether to choose between Damascus, Tehran, or their own Lebanese constituents.

There’s an argument for the United States maintaining a low profile, to undercut Nasrallah’s predictable arguments about a U.S. conspiracy, and a guiding principle should always be “do no harm” when trends emerge that are clearly in U.S. interests. Instead, the White House suspension of security assistance at this of all times, gives Damascus’ and Tehran’s Lebanese allies a message around which to re-unite: that the United States is an unreliable partner and that the LAF will not get needed assistance, meaning Hezbollah’s arsenal remains essential to Lebanon’s security. American officials who are seeking to promote U.S. interests in Lebanon face a strange set of bedfellows — Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, and apparently the White House — and face the difficult task of pushing back against all four.

Biden’s hearings highlighted the dangers of occupation, such as the basic uncertainty around what would replace Saddam Hussein, as well as the bloody, long, and expensive commitment required to midwife a democratic Iraq. “In many ways, those hearings were remarkably prescient about what was to happen,” said Tony Blinken, Biden’s longtime aide on the committee and a deputy secretary of state in the Obama administration. “He and [GOP Sen. Richard] Lugar talked about not the day after but the decade after. If we did go in, they talked about the lack of a plan to secure any peace that followed the intervention.”

But the balance of expert testimony concerned guessing at Saddam’s weapons program, the pragmatic questions of invading, and the diplomatic legwork of an action whose justice—if not necessarily its wisdom—was presumed

the regnant foreign policy consensus in America: Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and had sealed his fate by doing so. It was an enormous factual mistake born out of an inability to see that Saddam believed that transparent disarmament would spell his doom at the hands of Iran. This misapprehension led advocates to accept that the U.S.—preferably with others, but alone if necessary—was justified or even obligated to get rid of Saddam

Bush’s secretary of state, Colin Powell, convinced the White House to attempt securing United Nations support for the war. It was a cynical maneuver: the Security Council could accept additional weapons inspections but not war; Bush could claim he tried for an internationalist solution before invading unilaterally. Its primary effect was to legitimize the war in the eyes of uncomfortable congressional Democrats who had made the tactical error of disputing the war for insufficient multilateralism rather than arguing it was wrong

For Biden, the critical point, “what this is about,” was America daring to “enforce” U.N. Security Council disarmament resolutions that the U.N. was saying did not justify war. When the world stood against America, in the forum Biden considered critical and Bush considered pretextual, America would simply act in the world’s name. He approvingly quoted the infamous Henry Kissinger: “As the most powerful nation in the world, the United States has a special, unilateral capacity, and indeed obligation, to lead in implementing its convictions, but it also has a special obligation to justify its actions by principles that transcend the assertions of preponderance of power.” America’s confidence in its nobility was, in the end, all the justification it required. 

Biden acknowledged that the “imminence and inevitability” of the threat Iraq posed was “exaggerated,” although that recognition was irrelevant to both his reasoning and his vote. He performed an end-zone dance over Bush advisers who favored what he called the doctrine of preemption—a euphemism for wars of aggression—as if his vote did not authorize exactly the preemptive war those advisers wanted. The trouble Biden saw was that elevating preemption to a foreign policy “doctrine” would grant “every nation an unfettered right of preemption.” Left unsaid was that it would be better for America to keep that unfettered right for itself.

Biden was unprepared to break from prevention, which is always the prerogative of hegemonic powers. Boxed in, he continued to argue that the trouble was Bush elevating preemption to centrality in foreign policy, and fretted that predatory states would cite that “doctrine” to prey on weaker ones. He neglected to see that all those states needed was the example of the Iraq war itself. Eleven years later, when Biden was vice president, Vladimir Putin cited Iraq as a reason the U.S. had no standing to criticize him for invading Ukraine. 

Iraq was an abstraction to Biden—as it was, ironically, to the neoconservatives Biden had criticized—a canvas on which to project theories of American power

Nothing that followed went the way Biden expected. Bush did not share Biden’s distinction between the U.N. weapons-inspection process and the invasion. Iraq did not passively accept its occupation. And Biden did not reap the political benefit of endorsing the war that seemed so obvious to the Democratic consultant class in the autumn of 2002. 

Biden praised the leadership of the Coalition Provisional Authority, a shockingly corrupt and incompetent organization. Its chief, Jerry Bremer, was “first-rate,” Biden said mere months after Bremer disbanded the Iraqi army, the greatest gift America could have given the insurgency

Rebuilding Iraq’s police force was left to former NYPD Commissioner Bernard Kerik, whom Biden called “a serious guy with a serious team.” Iraq’s police would soon become indistinguishable from sectarian death squads; Kerik would soon plead guilty to tax fraud and other federal corruption charges

By the next summer, with Iraq in flames, Biden continued his misdiagnosis. The original sin wasn’t the war itself, it was Bush’s stewardship—the same stewardship Biden praised in 2002. “Because we waged a war in Iraq virtually alone, we are responsible for the aftermath virtually alone,” he thundered at the 2004 Democratic convention. The intelligence “was hyped to justify going to war,” Biden continued, causing “America’s credibility and security [to] have suffered a terrible blow.” Yet Biden made no call for withdrawal. It was easier to pretend that Bush was waging a different war than the one he empowered Bush to wage. 

The U.S., unable to win the war it chose, would be better off reshaping the map of Iraq into something that better suited it. The proposal was a natural outgrowth of viewing Iraq as an abstraction. Now that Iraq had undermined American power, Iraq would be subject to a kind of dismemberment, a theoretically cleaner problem to solve than a civil war or a weak client state. In September 2007, Biden prevailed upon his fellow senators to endorse his proposal on a staggering 75-23 vote. There was no support for the idea among actual Iraqis outside Kurdistan, but they were beside the imperial point.

2007 saw Biden’s most valorous act on Iraq. With the war a morass, Biden secured $23 billion, far more than the Pentagon requested, to buy Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles, whose hull design proved more survivable against the insurgency’s improvised bombs. Replacing insufficiently armored Humvees with MRAPs was “a passion,” he said. While the number of lives MRAPs saved over the course of the program’s $45 billion lifespan has been disputed, the Pentagon estimated in 2012 that over 2,000 service members are alive today because of the vehicle. Biden counted securing the funding for the MRAP among his greatest congressional achievements.

Barack Obama had opposed the Iraq war, but was hardly afflicted with the “distrust of the use of American power” that Biden feared in 2004. Selecting Biden as his vice president laundered Biden’s reputation. No longer was Biden the man whose faith in American exceptionalism had driven the U.S. into a morass. He was the lovable uncle in aviators who washed his metaphorical Trans Am on the White House lawn. Obama gave him responsibility for a three-year project of U.S. withdrawal, one that Biden considers an accomplishment. 

Biden and other U.S. officials appeared at times dangerously unconcerned about Maliki’s consolidation of power that once again marginalized Sunni Iraq, which the war had already proven would give jihadis the opportunity they needed

Biden reflected America’s schizophrenic attitude toward ending post-9/11 wars, in which leaving a residual force amidst an unsettled conflict does not count as continuing a war.

“I’ll bet you my vice presidency Maliki will extend the SOFA,” the Times quoted him. Instead, the following year, the Iraqi parliament did no such thing

Biden is the last of the pre-Obama generation of Democratic foreign policy grandees who enabled the Iraq war. John Kerry and Hillary Clinton both lost their presidential bids, saddled in both cases with the legacy of the war they supported

A President Biden is likely to find himself a man out of time. Writing in The Guardian, David Adler and Ben Judah recently described Biden as a “restorationist” in foreign policy, aiming at setting the American geopolitical clock back to what it was before Trump took office. Yet now an emergent China, a resurgent Russia, and the ascent of nationalism and oligarchy across Europe, India, and South America have fragmented the America-centric internationalist order that Biden represents. While Trump has accelerated these dynamics, he is far less responsible for them than is the martial post-9/11 course of U.S. foreign policy that wrecked itself, most prominently in Iraq.

the German Interior Ministry said last week that it had caught an alleged spy in Chancellor Angela Merkel's press office. According to the ministry, an Egyptian-born German citizen working at the press office is believed to have operated as an agent for Egypt's secret service. A report detailing the case said "there are indications that Egyptian services are trying to recruit Egyptians living in Germany for intelligence purposes."

Ongoing security cooperation between Western countries and Egypt has led to little fallout over the targeting of government critics. Instead, Trump has called Sissi his "favorite dictator," while Germany approved arms transfers valued at €290 million ($330 million) earlier this year.

Owing to its small population of roughly 300,000 citizens, Qatar relies heavily on migrant workers. When it won the World Cup bid, it employed a labor system called kafala. Under kafala, migrant workers, mostly seeking to leave impoverished conditions elsewhere, have to pay exorbitant recruitment fees and cannot change jobs without the consent of their employer. The system led to rampant abuses that included wage theft and unsafe working conditions, ultimately resulting in the deaths of thousands of workers. Qatar also bans homosexuality, which it defends on religious grounds.

In 2016, Qatar said it would abide by the United Nations’ human rights code. In 2019, Qatar announced it would abolish kafala. In 2021, Qatar instituted a minimum wage. The Supreme Committee, Qatar’s World Cup host organization, created a workers’ welfare program for those who built World Cup infrastructure. By the sound of the first whistle last November, the country’s labor market was “radically transformed,” a FIFA spokesman said.“Would any of that have happened if they hadn’t hosted the World Cup?” said Mary Harvey, chief executive at the Centre for Sport and Human Rights. “Would kafala still be in place in Qatar if they hadn’t hosted the World Cup? That may not be the question people want to ask, but it’s important. … You don’t just flip the switch with a law change and expect an implementation is going to take hold. It’s going to take a generation probably to get this put in. But it’s still big change, and it’s change that is needed.”

Max Tuñón, head of the International Labor Organization’s Qatar office, said he has seen major improvements in working conditions for foreign laborers over the past five years.

We work all over the world, and we rarely see change happening at this pace

Rothna Begum, a Human Rights Watch researcher, has worked extensively in Qatar and visited with workers. (Unlike Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Qatar’s government allows human rights groups to work in the country.) Begum said it is “not the case” that Qatar dismantled kafala in practice.“They didn’t do it properly, anyway,” Begum said. “They didn’t take away all the elements. They reformed aspects of the kafala system, but they didn’t dismantle the kafala system. The bits that they did reform, they are implementing in such a way that kafala still exists in practice.”

While workers can apply to change jobs, Begum said, she has found they must first give notice to their employer. If the employer does not sign a resignation notice, the worker cannot get permission from the government — “employer permission through the back door,”

“Qatari authorities — not just Qatari authorities but FIFA — sought to weaponize a narrative of Qatar being an underdog, that they were under attack in this double-standard way that no one else has been under attack before, and it’s because they are a Middle Eastern country,” Begum said. “Rather than dealing with the fact that they just did not come through with reforms and did not protect migrant workers who really contribute to the success of the World Cup and made sure they got their wages and compensated them for it, they instead used this narrative and weaponized it. We’re seeing the Saudis and UAE are moving in that direction.”

Qatar’s reforms also did not address the biggest cost of the World Cup: the migrant workers who died — in the thousands according to human rights groups, a number disputed by the Qatari government — while building stadiums and other infrastructure FIFA required after working in extreme heat on strict schedules. Human Rights Watch challenged whether Qatar could move forward with meaningful reform without compensating the families of the workers who died.

FIFA instituted its human rights policy in 2017 in response to criticism about Qatar. That policy may receive a more stringent test in coming years. Saudi Arabia, whose government has jailed and executed dissidents, submitted a bid to host the 2034 World Cup and is the favorite to host the tournament. Unlike Qatar, Saudi Arabia has not met with human rights groups.