Mohammed al-Rumaihi

The Gulf summit held in Jeddah last Tuesday came at an extremely sensitive moment that could lay between two truces: a temporary military truce and a political truce that has yet to fully take shape. In such unpredictable moments open final communiques are not merely diplomatic texts, they become…

Iranian ambitions in the Gulf did not begin with the Iranian revolution. They are an extension of a conception that had taken shape during the reign of Mohammad Reza Shah in the 1970s amid Iran’s rapid ascent, which was driven by an unprecedented oil boom, military modernization, and an explicit…

On October 28, 2023, in the early days of the Gaza war, also known as Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, I published an analytic piece in this newspaper that sought to go beyond the immediate event and anticipate not the limited confrontation but possible trajectories that it could precipitate. At the time…

The entrenched crisis of the Iranian regime and the fierce wars raging across the Middle East cannot be properly understood without looking into the deep roots of the complex relationship between religion and politics in Iran. This is not a recent phenomenon but one that stretches back centuries,…

Following the fast-moving scene in Iran, one could be misled. The mass protests, far from the first to erupt against a regime that emerged on ideological (theocratic) grounds nearly five decades ago. Bolder and less fearful, the youths have begun to rise as the economy wobbles under the weight…

Are the various crises in the Arab world- from Sudan to Iraq to Libya to Lebanon and others- linked to another? Some argue that they are not. However, if we choose to take a deeper look, we find that there is an undeniable underlying connection. This connection has two parts: the first is the…

About 45 years ago, or slightly more, several Gulf activists came together with the idea of creating a forum they called The Gulf Development Forum. Every year, this forum composed of volunteers convenes to address a developmental theme. In the past two years, for instance, the forum met in…

Both are undeniably criminal acts. The former, perpetrated by ISIS, was universally condemned. While there remains some doubt, Hezbollah was probably behind the latter. However, both are grounded in a troubled relationship with the past. ISIS has been overwhelmingly condemned by mainstream Sunni …

This question has echoed across the Arab world for over half a century. Yet, it remains taboo—unspoken, sometimes even forbidden. To raise it invites accusations of ideological betrayal, or worse, a form of "intellectual terrorism." In many circles, merely pondering it marks one as an outsider. I…

Last week, global and regional media outlets focused on President Donald Trump’s visit to Riyadh, Doha, and Abu Dhabi. Some of the piles of analysis we saw were objective and fact-based; others were fanciful and prejudiced. Some theories have now been shown to be misguided. One is the theory…