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The past two weeks have seen two major developments in the Gulf crisis. The United States managed to cajole the UN Security Council into authorising the use of force (euphemistically termed as "all available means") to eject Iraq from Kuwait. Then President Bush announced that he had invited Tareq Aziz, Iraq's foreign minister, to Washington and was willing to send James Baker, the secretary of state, to Baghdad.

Can President Bush commit the United States to a war in the Gulf? As the weeks slip by, he is finding himself increasingly muscle-bound, despite the massive military power he continues to pour into the Gulf. First, the Soviets are stalling on a UN Security Council authorisation for the use of force to eject Iraq from Kuwait. Second, apart from Britain, his European allies are looking persistently hesitant about fighting. Sensing a lack of resolution on Washington's part, the Arabs in the anti-Iraq alliance are fumbling about for a compromise. Finally, President Saddam Hussein is exploiting the collective indecision of his opponents for all it is worth, and very effectively.

So long as almost a quarter of a million American troops sit in the Gulf, the crisis over Kuwait will not simply be an Arab problem. The United States has deeply involved itself – so deeply, in fact, that it could be a very long time before it can extricate itself. Willingly or otherwise, President Bush has appointed Washington as the protector of the oil producing Arab Gulf states.

Consider this. In 1991, Saddam Hussein will still be securely in power in Baghdad (forget all the nonsense about his exasperated colleagues overthrowing him). He will have withdrawn from most but not all of Kuwait which will be returned to a humbled Sabah family. The United States and the Western powers will have reduced their military presence but not evacuated the region entirely since Washington has decided that the Gulf is now, for all intent and purpose, an American protectorate. Nobody in the Arab world will thank them for the effort, though the Saudis and the smaller Gulf states will be mutely reassured that the United States is there as an insurance policy.

The Gulf crisis must have looked fairly simple to the participants when it started. Saddam Hussein assumed he could walk into Kuwait, confronted by little more than the odd ritual denunciation from the UN Security Council and some timid squeaks of protest from the GCC states. The Bush administration thought that it could put a lot of firepower in place and show who, in the last event, was in control. No-one seems to have thought through the possible subsequent sequence of events and – to be fair – neither side could have been expected to predict their course.

One of the more remarkable aspects of the Gulf crisis is the consensus (and anger) of condemnation which Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait has evoked in the international community. This has been reflected in three striking ways.

The Gulf crisis has entered a particularly crucial phase. The American military build-up grinds inexorably onwards and Britain has committed itself to sending ground troops to Saudi Arabia. The United States and the Soviet Union have held a short-notice summit in Helsinki to stress their solidarity in opposing Iraqi aggression. Egypt and Syria, followed by the majority of the Arab states, have shown themselves to be prepared to risk the collapse of the Arab League rather than knuckle under to Saddam Hussein.

Events in the Gulf in the second half of August have followed a trend which was already identifiable during the earlier course of the crisis but which is now falling into a distinct pattern. President Saddam Hussein of Iraq appears to be prepared to adopt any strategem which will either secure him whatever gains he can make out of the mess he has created or minimise the losses he may incur.

President Saddam Hussein's invasion and annexation of Kuwait marks a watershed in Middle East politics, at least as important as his attack on Iran in 1980 and arguably as significant a turning point in Arab affairs as any of the traumatic wars with Israel since 1948.

GSN in August 1990 gave its initial round-up of Saddam Hussein’s invasion and annexation of Kuwait, which then editor, the late John Christie, rightly said marked a watershed in Middle East politics, 

Iraq's President Saddam Hussein must be congratulating himself on a particularly good month. In pursuit of his blatantly obvious goal of establishing himself as the pre-eminent leader of the Arab world, he has bullied Opec into a new, coherent strategy on prices and production and scared the wits out of his Arab Gulf neighbours.

Sharjah has a new deputy ruler as a result of a decree issued last month. He is Sheikh Ahmed bin Sultan al Qasimi, the son of the ruler, Sheikh Sultan bin Mohammed

The war of words between Iran and Saudi Arabia has taken on a particularly nasty tone in the aftermath of the death of more than 1,400 pilgrims in a tunnel near Makkah earlier this month. Spokesmen in Tehran have threatened to take Saudi Arabia before an international court (though what court and who would prosecute is unclear). accusing the kingdom of being incapable of administering the holy places. Saudi Arabia has responded by accusing Tehran of gloating over an unavoidable tragedy so shortly after the catastrophic earthquake in northern Iran.

The catastrophic earthquake in north-western Iran has resulted in 100,000 casualties, half of them dead. The disaster has shocked Iran and, understandably, led to heated political over-reaction. It may seem rather callous for Gulf States Newsletter to focus on the political repercussions (at home and overseas) of the cataclysm rather than the human tragedy – but it was, after all, the Tehran Times which carried a headline announcing that "Earthquakes can be a blessing in disguise".

Kuwait has a new national council following elections held last week, marking at least a partial return to parliamentary democracy for the first time since the national assembly was dissolved by the ruler, Sheikh Jaber al Ahmed, in 1986. The vote, however, will not resolve the confrontation between the government and ex-members of the last parliament about the restoration of constitutional democracy.