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King Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa returned to Bahrain on 22 February, from a week-long trip to the UAE, where he held meetings with senior Emiratis. On 20 February, the king welcomed UAE Vice President, prime minister and Ruler of Dubai Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al-Maktoum and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince and UAE Armed Forces deputy supreme commander Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan (MBZ) to his residence in Abu Dhabi.

Sheikh Tahnoun Bin Saeed Bin Shakhbut Al-Nahyan has been ordered to pay most of his opponent’s costs in a recently concluded action in the High Court in London. Sheikh Tahnoun had claimed some €15m ($18.4m) from Greek businessman Ioannis Kent following the failure of a venture to develop a number of luxury hotels in Greece. Kent in turn made a claim for damages from Sheikh Tahnoun for the same amount.

Foreign affairs and international co-operation minister Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed (ABZ) Al-Nahyanmet a number of senior Japanese officials during an early April visit, including economy minister Hiroshige Seko, defence minister Itsunori Onodera and agriculture, forestry and fisheries minister Ken Saito. ABZ chaired the first meeting of the UAE-Japan Policy Dialogue on 2 April. Thenext day he held wide-ranging talks with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, covering technology, agriculture, renewable energy, defence and space exploration.

UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al-Nahayan has taken over responsibility for border issues, including the difficult frontier dispute with a hitherto intransigent Saudi Arabia.

As the end of Ramadan Eid passed, the GCC states found themselves in a dangerously unstable situation. Bahrain is racked by violence and unrest that government repression appears unable to quash. Qatar's emir and his father are engaged in a bitter long-distance tussle for power which threatens to embroil outside powers. Most importantly, if opaquely, the senior Saudi princes are be locked into a power struggle. 

Foreign affairs and international co-operation minister Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan was in New Zealand for a series of meetings in early May. In a busy schedule he held talks with defence minister Ron Mark, education minister Chris Hipkins, foreign affairs minister Winston Peters, justice minister Andrew Little and trade minister David Parker as well as main opposition National Party leader Simon Bridges – all on 2 May.

Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, minister of foreign affairs and international co-operation, arrived in Malta on 22 July, where he held talks with prime minister Joseph Muscat, minister for foreign affairs George Vella and acting President Dolores Cristina. He also visited the Saint John Co-Cathedral while there.

It is no surprise that decision-making in Abu Dhabi can often seem opaque when there are various similarly named councils and a huge number of ruling family members involved in various levels of government. Here, GSN tracks the membership of the Abu Dhabi Executive Council and analyses its current make-up

Malaysia’s newly-elected prime minister, the veteran Mahathir Mohamad, has wasted little time in setting up a new taskforce to probe alleged crimes at the scandal-hit 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), amid allegations that defeated prime minister Najib Razak misappropriated large amounts from the sovereign wealth fund. Abu Dhabi – whose now-defunct International Petroleum Investment Company (Ipic) once worked closely with 1MDB – may be forced to revisit an issue it hoped had gone away.

GSN examines Syrian President Bashir Al-Assad's recent high-profile trip to the UAE where he met Abu Dhabi Crown Prince and UAE Armed Forces deputy supreme commander Mohammed Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan (MBZ) and Dubai Ruler and federal Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al-Maktoum (MBR).

Leaders from across the Arab Gulf states and Egypt have been travelling around the region to heal fractures and head off the perceived threat from Iran’s nuclear ambitions, amid speculation that more GCC member states could move towards normalisation with Israel when US President Joe Biden comes to the region.

Qassem Khamoushi has taken over as head of the Islamic Republic of Iran Army Aviation, replacing Yousef Ghorbani, who had been in the post since 2017

Foreign minister Abdullah Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan was in Paris on 9 March, where he met his counterpart Laurent Fabius, and waxed lyrical about the “strategic, distinguished ties” between the two countries. More than 160 pieces from the Louvre Abu Dhabi are on show in the Louvre Paris from 2 May to 28 June, in an exhibition called ‘Birth of a Museum’, intended as a preview of the 2015 opening of Abu Dhabi’s museum. As part of the 2007 agreement between the French and UAE governments to create the Louvre Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan allocated a renewable annual budget of E5m ($6.9m)

UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al-Nahayan has been in Cuba

Gulf Co-operation Council foreign ministers held talks with their Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in New York on 24 September, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly 77th session.