Saudi arabia

We have both proudly served Her Majesty’s government — one of us as an army officer and defence attaché to the British Embassy in Saudi Arabia, the other as a lawyer advising successive foreign secretaries on arms exports to Saudi Arabia. We did not undertake this work with illusions about the reality and cost of armed conflict. We did however work on the understanding that the relevant law — including in the Geneva Conventions and long-standing rules on arms exports — would be adhered to by our government. But that is not currently the case, and we are shocked at the British government’s conduct when it comes to arms sales.

To complete the Hajj is the pinnacle of Islamic worship, required once in the lifetime of every able-bodied Muslim who can afford the journey. In its 1,400-year history, the annual pilgrimage has been cancelled dozens of times, by wars, political strife and pandemics. As I found out when I made the journey, it is a swirling sea of humanity: some 2.5 million visiting Mecca over a few days, from all over the world. When the Covid crisis came, worship was suspended. But then something was attempted that would have once seemed impossible: carrying on the tradition, but under digitally monitored social distancing. The results were extraordinary. A pilgrimage famous for

Donald Trump said in October 2018 that the Saudi royal family ‘wouldn’t last two weeks’ without American military support. Last week, on the back of the collapse of the US fracking industry, he finally acted on his long-standing anti–Saudi instincts. He ordered the immediate withdrawal of two patriot air defence batteries, sent to defend the kingdom’s oil infrastructure in September after a missile attack blamed on the Iranians. He also recalled hundreds of US troops and said the US Navy presence in the Persian Gulf would be scaled back. Leaving with the ships were dozens of US fighter jets, which would have been crucial for defending against any full-scale Iranian

In a dramatic move even by his own mercurial standards, Donald Trump has authorised the withdrawal of two Patriot missile systems guarding Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities, accompanied by hundreds of American military troops operating them. They were deployed last September after a massive cruise missile and drone attack on the Saudi oil infrastructure – blamed on the Iranians but claimed by their allies the Houthi rebels in Yemen – that knocked about half of the kingdom’s production capacity offline. Now Saudi Arabia has just two Patriot batteries, located at Prince Sultan Air Base in the middle of the Saudi desert. They are not there to protect the royal family and

For the first time in months, the coronavirus panic was briefly demoted as the main news story on Sunday when OPEC and oil-producing non-OPEC nations agreed a deal to cut oil production by 9.7 million barrels a day – initially to stabilise and then hopefully increase prices. It is the most dramatic production cut in history and of course not unrelated to the pandemic itself. Last month, demand collapsed as the global economy began to shut down but Russia shot down a Saudi opening proposal fearing it would give a boost to the American fracking industry. The kingdom’s de facto leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman threw a characteristic hissy fit

Saudis woke up last Saturday to find the crown jewel of their oil industry in smoke. The attack on the al-Abqaiq oil processing facility, allegedly conducted by cruise missiles and launched from a staging area inside Iran, resulted in the sharpest single-day increase in crude prices since the 1991 Gulf War. Saudi Arabia’s largest oil installation, however, wasn’t the only thing that went up in smoke last weekend. The volley of missiles screeching into Saudi airspace may have also ruined French president Emmanuel Macron’s attempt to deescalate tensions in the Persian Gulf and save the 2015 Iran nuclear deal from a slow and agonising death. The French president has been hard

TIME magazine has lost relevance, in the United States and globally. The only thing it is now known for is its Person of the Year issue, the 2018 edition of which was out on Tuesday. Historically, its editors have chosen ‘the person or thing that had the greatest impact on the news, for good or ill – guidelines that leave them no choice but to select a newsworthy – not necessarily praiseworthy – cover subject.’ If only that ambiguous sentiment had determined this year’s choice: killed and imprisoned journalists. The magazine calls them ‘The Guardians’, who were chosen ‘for taking great risks in pursuit of greater truths, for the imperfect