DOHA, Qatar - Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni arrived here Sunday to attend the 8th annual Doha Forum on Democracy, Development and Free Trade, at which she has been invited to give a keynote speech. Senior Lebanese and Iranian officials responded by canceling their participation.
“The Arab states cannot continue sitting on the fence when it comes [...]

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Is the United States starting a new arms race? Reviewing the Gulf package, Anthony H. Cordesman, a specialist in Middle East national security affairs at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said a surge of arms sales to countries in the region is just beginning.
With oil and gas exports providing $2 trillion in [...]

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Abu Dhabi to host naval base.
In a major strategic shift, France is setting up its first permanent naval base in the Persian Gulf, just across from Iran, President Nicolas Sarkozy announced during a visit yesterday to the United Arab Emirates.
The 400-strong military base will be built in Abu Dhabi, the wealthiest and most influential of [...]

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If the flow of Middle East oil to China is squeezed, the Chinese economy will come to a grinding halt. Today China imports 32 percent of its oil needs. This need is expected to double by 2012. Of this oil, 58 percent comes from the Middle East — about 2 million barrels a day. It [...]

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$20 Billion Deal Includes Weapons For Saudi Arabia
The Bush administration will announce next week a series of arms deals worth at least $20 billion to Saudi Arabia and five other oil-rich Persian Gulf states as well as new 10-year military aid packages to Israel and Egypt, a move to shore up allies in the [...]

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An unprecedented boom is changing the region—and echoing far past its borders.
Aug. 6, 2007 issue - We all know the headlines by now: the Middle East is burning, right? So it seems, as Palestinians and Iraqis wage civil war, Lebanon seethes, Syria and Israel trade barbs and Iran spits defiance. Yet beyond the smoke a [...]

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Lt. Col. (res.) Jonathan Dahoah-Halevi

Recent Iranian implied threats to “liberate” some of the Gulf states, and an Iranian editorial calling Bahrain a district of Iran, have caused great consternation in the Gulf states. In Bahrain there have been demonstrations at the Iranian embassy, and an official protest was submitted to Tehran. An additional Iranian article [...]

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THE US is replacing one of its aircraft carriers in the Gulf, where the Fifth Fleet is keeping an eye on Iran, but the Pentagon said no decision had been made to increase forces in the region.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the USS Enterprise was expected to arrive within weeks in the Gulf, where the [...]

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The Gulf today is going through a gradual power shift in which the US has lost considerable ground while domestic forces, Iran and other major non-regional powers such as China, India, Russia and Turkey are on the rise.
The region was previously defined by an aggressive but frustrated Iraq, a radical but divided and relatively weak [...]

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“Since the occupation of Iraq by the U.S., China has become very interested in establishing a presence in the region, especially in Iraq because it considers itself the greatest economic and trade rival of the U.S. in the region,” he added.
Most Persian Gulf Cooperation Council members are concerned about the expansion of China’s ties [...]

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RIYADH (Reuters) - Gulf Arab states began working on feasibility studies for a joint nuclear program on Monday and a leading Gulf official said they were set on pursuing atomic energy for peaceful purposes only.
“The promising future of nuclear energy in electricity generation and desalination can make it a source for meeting increasing needs,” Gulf [...]

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Doha: Iran is ready to share its nuclear technology with Gulf countries and open its research facilities to create confidence among neighbours and demolish the charge that the country is on its way to building a nuclear bomb, Iranian officials here said.
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Europe gets forty percent of its oil through the Persian Gulf. But by an accident of history (and civilized policy — ours, that is) it is the United States that guards the Gulf from madmen like Ahmadinejad. Well, so be it. We gain from world peace and free trade, and it is better to keep [...]

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ABU DHABI [MENL] — The State Department has expressed concern over the prospects of anti-American unrest in Qatar.
Officials said after years of banning political activity, Qatar has decided to allow occasional political protests in the Gulf Cooperation Council state. They said these demonstrations could quickly turn into threats against Americans in the emirate.
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The US mechanism for keeping oil prices low was located in Saudi Arabia which could increase its output from 5 million barrels a day to 9 million to keep the global market in check. Saudi Arabia regularly helped America in the past, in particular, its two presidents, Carter and Bush Sr., on request. In 2004, [...]

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Doha: China and Arab countries in the Gulf region are rushing to each other in an increasingly close embrace, throwing money into each other’s economies and starting to discuss security ties.
The growing economic ties are turning political, and that could mean new uncertainty in the United States’ ability to count on steady support from longtime [...]

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