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Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman threatened to fundamentally alter the decades-old U.S.-Saudi relationship and impose significant economic costs on the United States if it retaliated against the oil cuts

It is unclear whether the crown prince’s threat was conveyed directly to U.S. officials or intercepted through electronic eavesdropping, but his dramatic outburst reveals the tension at the heart of a relationship long premised on oil-for-security but rapidly evolving as China takes a growing interest in the Middle East and the United States assesses its own interests as the world’s largest oil producer.

Biden, who pledged to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” as a presidential candidate, scarcely communicates with the crown prince but the president’s top aides have gradually rebuilt ties with him hoping the two nations can work together on pressing issues, including a long-sought peace deal in Yemen, a sustained cease-fire in Sudan, counterterrorism challenges and continued disagreements over the supply of oil.

in exchange for a slew of Palestinian strategic concessions, Israel magnanimously agreed to negotiate the PLO’s terms of surrender.

The Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements, as the Oslo Accord is formally called, is only a few pages long and largely free of technical jargon, and well worth reading for those who haven’t done so. It contains not a single reference to “occupation”, “self-determination”, “statehood”, or anything of the sort. Rather, Palestinians were to exercise limited autonomy, within limited areas of the occupied territories (excluding East Jerusalem), from which Israeli forces would “redeploy” rather than withdraw

the issues that had the greatest impact were the effective abandonment of the refugees, who constitute the majority of the Palestinian people, by the leadership; the political-institutional fragmentation of the Palestinian people; the indefinite suspension of the national agenda in exchange for economic reconstruction that was unlikely to materialize (as it stands the Palestinian economy is today but a shadow of what it was in 1993); and the transformation of the national movement into a local authority

Abramovich is perhaps the most visible of the “oligarchs” surrounding Putin, who are widely perceived as extensions of the Russian president and keepers of a vast fortune that is effectively under the Kremlin’s control. Much of this wealth was extracted from Russia’s enormous energy and mineral resources, and is now stashed in secret bank accounts in the Mediterranean and the Caribbean, in empty mansions and condos from London to Manhattan to Miami, and in yachts and private jets on the French Riviera.

as much as 60% of Russia’s GDP is offshore

The reserved, gray-bearded Abramovich is notoriously litigious toward critics who seek to detail his close ties to Putin. Last year, he successfully sued the British journalist Catherine Belton, who claimed in her 2020 book Putin’s People that the Russian president dictated Abramovich’s major purchases, including his decision to buy Chelsea. He also extracted an apology from a British newspaper for calling him a “bag carrier” for the Russian president.

Iraq is expected to consume about 20-25 million cubic meters of Iranian gas per day. Iran, which has the world's second largest natural gas reserves after Russia, is also close to signing an agreement on gas supplies to Syria via Iraq

In the summer of 2010, Iran, Iraq and Syria signed a memorandum of understanding on building a gas pipeline across the territory of the three countries. The project to build the gas pipeline, dubbed “Islamic Gas,” is estimated at $10 billion. Under the project, the gas pipeline, which will be 5,600 km (3,479 miles) long, is intended to pump 110 million cubic meters of gas per day. Syria wants to purchase 20-25 million cu m per day. The 56-inch pipeline will run from Assaluyeh near the South Pars gas field in southern Iran. Some volumes of gas will be supplied to Lebanon and Jordan through the Arabian gas transportation system. Iran also has plans to start liquefied natural gas supplies to Europe via Syria’s Mediterranean ports.

“Putting pressure is just half of the equation; [US and European officials] have succeeded with that, undoubtedly the pain on Iran is immense,” says Mr. Parsi. “But to channel the pain is a very, very different task.”

measures have begun to bite, causing economic isolation and a precipitous fall in both oil revenues and the value of the Iranian currency. But Iran has still added thousands of centrifuges to enrich uranium, and deployed a more efficient, second-generation centrifuge model; stepped up uranium enrichment levels from 5 percent to 20 percent, which is technically not too far from weapons-grade; and moved its most sensitive work to a deeply buried site impregnable to air attack.

“it is highly unlikely that the regime will succumb to sanctions pressure … [when] no proportionate sanctions relief is put on the table by the P5+1, and capitulation is seen as a greater threat to the regime’s survival than even a military confrontation with the United States.”

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has put forward names of five officials from his administration for internationally-sponsored peace talks with the Syrian opposition, European Union diplomatic sources said on Tuesday. The list includes Prime Minister Wael al-Halki and more junior officials. According to a second EU diplomat, Syria's opposition has already rejected some of the officials on the list because of their lack of influence.

Syria's opposition will then meet on Thursday in Istanbul to announce its stance. The Arab League's Syria committee will also meet on Thursday in Cairo at the request of leading Assad foe Qatar, possibly to endorse the opposition's decision.

"There is absolutely no date. The biggest difficulty is getting them to the table and for that each side (Russia and the West) must deliver the other party to the table."

during a seven-year period beginning in 2003 that parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran along the Tigris and Euphrates river basins lost 117 million acre feet (144 cubic kilometers) of total stored freshwater. That is almost the amount of water in the Dead Sea. The researchers attribute about 60 percent of the loss to pumping of groundwater from underground reservoirs

"GRACE data show an alarming rate of decrease in total water storage in the Tigris and Euphrates river basins, which currently have the second fastest rate of groundwater storage loss on Earth, after India," said Jay Famiglietti, principal investigator of the study and a hydrologist and professor at UC Irvine. "The rate was especially striking after the 2007 drought. Meanwhile, demand for freshwater continues to rise, and the region does not coordinate its water management because of different interpretations of international laws."

the Iraqi government drilled about 1,000 wells in response to the 2007 drought, a number that does not include the numerous private wells landowners also very likely drilled

Jürgen Scheffran, a professor of geography at the University of Hamburg, has been investigating whether climate change makes armed conflict more likely for more than a decade. In 2012, he worked on a team that analyzed all 27 empirical studies investigating the link between war and climate change.“Sixteen found a significant link between climate and conflict, six did not find a link, and five found an ambiguous relationship,” he told me. He described these numbers as inconclusive. Trying to prove that climate change is linked to war, he said, would be like trying to prove that smoking causes cancer with only one available case study.

there is only one world, and not a million worlds, in which the temperature is rising, and you cannot associate a single event—like a single hurricane or a single conflict—to climate change. It’s a statistical problem, and we don’t have enough data yet

the U.S. Department of Defense already considers global warming a “threat multiplier” for national security. It expects hotter temperatures and acidified oceans to destabilize governments and worsen infectious pandemics

There is a certain irony in the Arab Gulf states’ rising power across the Middle East and North Africa. International prestige, the ability to intervene militarily in regional conflict, and holding the same leverage as international financial institutions in aid and investment are what these states have long coveted. But now that they have the power – both economic and military – Gulf states like Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are faced with the dilemma of demonstrating their dominance without destroying the neighbourhood.

Gulf states’ foreign policies are increasingly at odds with their economic interests

The economies of the Gulf states have changed dramatically since the beginning of the second oil boom, between 2003 and 2014. Joined together in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) trade bloc, they are more integrated into the regional and wider international economy in trade and investment flows

Washington is now embarked on a campaign to persuade itself, the American people and the rest of the world that the ‘global war on terrorism’ (GWoT) will be a ‘long war’. This ‘long war’ is explicitly compared to the Cold War as a similar sort of zero-sum, global-scale, generational struggle against anti-liberal ideolo-gical extremists who want to rule the world.

When the Cold War ended, Washington seemed to experience a threat defi cit, and there was a string of attempts to fi nd a replacement for the Soviet Union as the enemy focus for US foreign and military policy: fi rst Japan, then China, ‘clash of civilizations’ and rogue states

the GWoT had the feel of a big idea that might provide a long-term cure for Washington’s threat defi ci

the Moroccan presidency of this year's COP climate summit has made African agriculture one of its priorities when addressing climate change. For the first time, pan-African experts and officials meet to discuss their best solutions while making a united plea for $30bn to put them into action. Such regional action has become critical, as talks to include agriculture in the climate negotiations have once again failed, and will now be postponed until May 2017.

Every single African country has included adapting agriculture as part of their climate change strategies submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). What is missing is sufficient investment.

Out of the 10 countries most affected by greenhouse gas emissions, six of them are in Africa, yet the continent only receives 5 percent of dedicated climate funding.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal maintains that the two kingdoms were on their way to integrating and added that the leaders of GCC had postponed declaring the shift from the "cooperation stage" to the "union stage" in order to confirm the details of the merge. Despite the statements made by Al-Faisal, it seems that there are profound splits among the GCC countries on the idea of the union.

Smaller GCC countries are afraid of losing political and economical influence to Saudi Arabia whose population is five times bigger than Oman; the second biggest country in the GCC by population

Saudis believe Iran encouraged the overthrow of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in order to dominate the region and used it as a launch pad to "swallow" the Arabs. They also accuse Tehran of inciting Shia-led protests in Bahrain and triggering turmoil among the Shia minority in Saudi Arabia.

“This really signals the first response to a popular demand and a way to increase the margin of maneuver for Egyptian foreign policy in the region,” said political scientist Mustafa Kamel el-Sayyed. “Morsi’s visits ... show that Egypt’s foreign policy is active again in the region.” “This is a way also to tell Gulf countries that Egypt is not going to simply abide by their wishes and accept an inferior position,”

Morsi will visit Tehran on Aug. 30 on his way back from China to attend the Non-Aligned Movement Summit, where Egypt will transfer the movement’s rotating leadership to Iran

In 2006, Mubarak angered Shiite leaders by saying Shiites across the Middle East were more loyal to Iran than to their own countries. His view was shared by other Arab leaders and officials, including Jordan’s King Abdullah II who warned of a Shiite crescent forming in the region.

Ta’arof comes from an Arabic word denoting the process of getting acquainted with someone. But as with so many other Arabic words that have entered the Persian language through conquest and acculturation, the Iranians have subverted its meaning. In the Iranian context, ta’arof refers to a way of managing social relations with decorous manners. It may be charming and a basis for mutual goodwill, or it may be malicious, a social or political weapon that confuses the recipient and puts him at a disadvantage. Ta’arof is the opposite of calling a spade a spade; life is so much nicer without bad news. As I discovered in the Department of Alien Affairs, ta’arof can also be a way of letting people down very, very slowly. It often involves some degree of self-abasement, through which the giver of ta’arof achieves a kind of moral ascendancy—what the anthro­pologist William Beeman has called “getting the lower hand.” Thus, at a doorway, grown men may be seen wrestling for the privilege of going in second. For years in Tehran, we had a cleaner who insisted on calling me “Doctor” as a way of lifting me up the social scale. “I am not a doctor,” I snapped one day. Undaunted, she replied, “Please God, you shall be!”

Ta’arof can be particularly dis­orienting for Americans, who tend to prize efficiency, frankness, and in­formality. John Limbert, a retired diplomat who has been involved in Iranian affairs for 50 years, has given this culture clash more thought than most. Iranian society, he notes, is full of apparently inconsistent elements that we in the West regard as hypo­critical. “Our instincts are to reconcile the contra­dictions,” he told me recently, while Iranians prefer “to live with them.” Limbert was among the Americans held hostage by a group of Iranian militants for 444 days in 1979–81. In April 1980, he was paraded on Iranian TV alongside the revolutionary cleric Ali Khamenei. In flawless Persian, Limbert joked that his captors had “overdone the ta’arof”—­going on to explain that they were such diligent hosts, they had refused to let their guests go home. The joke was itself a very Iranian way to level a sharp criticism: it allowed Limbert to highlight the hostage-takers’ breach of traditional Iranian hospitality.

Ta’arof is not always supposed to have a resolution; the best conclusion may be an open-ended one. So it has proved with Iran’s nuclear dossier. So, too, with my own, more personal, diplomacy. I applied for Iranian citizenship in 2004. My “accomplish­ments” have not diminished. But I am still waiting for a reply.

protesters in Cairo are gathered at the U.S. embassy compound, where some have scaled the walls and pulled down the American flag

protesting an American film that insults Prophet Mohammed

The movie is called Mohammed Nabi al-Muslimin, or Mohammed, Prophet of the Muslims. If you've never heard of it, that's because the few clips circulating online are dubbed in Arabic. The above clip, which is allegedly from the film (I haven't been able to confirm this) is one of the only in English. That's also because it's allegedly produced by Florida Pastor Terry Jones (yes, the asshole who burnt the Koran despite Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates' pleas) and two Egyptians living in the U.S., according to Egyptian press accounts. The Egyptians are allegedly Coptic, the Christian minority that makes up about a tenth of Egypt

Having recently returned from a European Foundation for Democracy sponsored trip to Antakya and Istanbul, during which a European delegation and I met over 100 Syrian opposition figures, a number of important observations come to mind. First, one of my strongest impressions is that things are not what they seem. It is very difficult on the ground to be sure who it is that you are really talking to and what they represent. Second, Turkish officials maintain a striking degree of control over Syrian opposition forces inside Turkey. Third, the Muslim Brotherhood is pervasive not only within the Syrian National Council (SNC), but among many opposition groups – mostly outside Syria. Lastly, there is a striking cynicism and anger among fighters within Syria toward the outside world for not providing enough practical support.

Syrians of all backgrounds seem to be free to move between Syria and Turkey with only Turkish permission. The Syrian government now seems to have lost control of its borders in every direction.

there is a distinct Turkish preference for some parts of the opposition movement; they favor the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) and the Syrian National Council.

"His parting advice to me was to become a trusted partner to all groups and to get to know the Turkmen," she said. "And that, in essence, was as far as guidance from CPA went in the early months."

They did not understand the people they were dealing with

The military seemed genuinely perplexed that Iraqis seemed so hostile. "The brigade viewed themselves as liberators and were angry that Iraqis were not more grateful. One of the questions put to me was, 'what do we need to do to be loved?' I told them that people who invaded other peoples' countries, and killed people who were no threat to them, would never be loved. I said that after the first Gulf war which killed 100,000 Iraqis, a decade of sanctions with the devastating effects on health, education and economy, and the humiliating defeat of the second Gulf war, I could well understand why Iraqis were shooting at us."

The eclipse of authority has also given rise to Sharia courts run by Islamic scholars who settle disputes according to Islamic law.

Even normal people, not just jihadis, would fight and die if Israelis came back

n the recent turmoil, militants have been carrying out attacks on lightly armed police officers in recent months and have repeatedly bombed the pipeline that carries natural gas to Israel. Bedouin tribesmen with grievances against the state, meanwhile, have kidnapped foreign tourists and international peacekeepers. Drug runners and human smugglers have also seized the moment, making both lucrative trades increasingly violent.