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Few doubt the UAE has successfully reinforced its position as a major global business and leisure hub by introducing ever more regulations and institutions to provide an accommodating investment climate. Abu Dhabi once left it to commercial hub Dubai to attract foreign attention, but the wealthy emirate is now more assertive on the business front, while also building up its military strength and regional power projection under President Mohammed Bin Zayed and his Bani Fatima brothers.

Under Emir Sheikh Tamim, Doha has pulled back from the overt foreign interventions that typified his father’s rule, preferring to make itself more useful as an international mediator – with another apparent triumph in negotiating the new Gaza ceasefire – while keeping regional rivals onside and building up its global-scale gas industry to leave it as one of the world’s wealthiest jurisdictions for decades to come.

A special ministerial court has given former interior and defence minister Sheikh Talal Al-Khaled a 14-year jail term, a $65m fine and ordered him to repay $32m embezzled from the ministries he headed up between 2022 and 2024.

A lower court’s verdict has been endorsed by the Court of Cassation, sentencing Sheikh Sabah Al-Salem Al-Sabah to death for the murder of Abdelaziz Al-Zaatari.

Kuwait border: Relations also remain strained on Iraq’s southern frontier, where the joint maritime border remains only partially agreed. On 13 December, Kuwait and the US issued a fresh call on Baghdad to agree to the frontier’s demarcation beyond the currently agreed limit, set by boundary marker 162. They made the call following the sixth round of the Kuwait-US Strategic Dialogue, which was held virtually on 9-11 December. They also called on Iraq to stick to a 2012 agreement to regulate maritime navigation in the Khor Abdullah waterway, which the Iraqi Constitutional Court annulled in 2023.

Almost 30,000 Kuwaitis have lost their citizenship over the past five months, including more than 10,000 people in the opening weeks of January. The policy is being run by interior minister Sheikh Fahad Yusuf Saud Al-Sabah, with an opaque decision-making process that appears designed to stifle critics as much as address alleged problems around fraud.

SBI Holdings has signed a series of deals with Saudi companies, including Prince Fahd’s Evision and PIF’s Savvy Games, as the Japanese investor steadily steps up its engagement with the kingdom.

The Abu Dhabi authorities have added the 11 individuals and eight organisations to its Local Terrorist List, accusing them of involvement with the banned Muslim Brotherhood.

In the latest evidence that Tehran’s ‘hostage diplomacy’ is delivering results, an Iranian national was released from an Italian jail before he could be extradited to the US on charges of illegally supplying drone technology to Iran. Relations with France and Switzerland are also strained.

Adnoc Gas, now under new chief executive Fatima Al-Nuaimi, broke ground at Ruwais in November and has since awarded contracts for an LNG pre-conditioning plant, compression facilities and pipelines.

Roc Oil Company has completed its Tethys Oil acquisition, giving the Australian firm a stake in five Omani blocks with production of some 8,800 b/d.

A Dubai businessman favoured by Donald Trump, Hussein Sajwani – profiled by GSN below – in early January said he would invest $20bn in a network of US data centres. His group has also signed a deal to enable $1bn of assets to be traded on a blockchain.

The federal government has set up a new disaster response agency, to replace the Civil Defence Department.

Mohammed Bin Zayed has appointed Major General Ahmed Saif Al-Muhairi as commander-in-chief of Abu Dhabi Police, on the same day that Crown Prince Khalid Bin Mohammed named another Al-Nahyan family member as the force’s new director-general.

In a sign of fast-improving relations with the new leadership in Lebanon, the UAE has dispatched diplomats to arrange the reopening of its embassy – after Beirut extradited influential critic Abdul Rahman Al-Qaradawi to Abu Dhabi.