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Bahrain has reiterated its “full support” for the UAE’s campaign to secure one of the rotating seats on the UN Security Council for 2022-23.

Denmark's public prosecution service announced on 15 April that it had charged three members of an Iranian opposition group, the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz (Asmla), with financing and supporting terrorist activity in Iran in cooperation with an unnamed Saudi intelligence service.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned Turkey’s chargé d’affairs in Baghdad on 3 May to receive a formal protest about a visit by senior Turkish officials to northern Iraq. Turkish defence minister Hulusi Akar visited the Bilic Tepe base in the Kurdistan region on 1 May, along with chief of the General Staff General Yasar Guler and Land Forces commander Umit Dundar.

German philosopher Jürgen Habermas has declined the title of ‘cultural personality of the year’ from the Sheikh Zayed Book Award after originally accepting the prize. He cited the UAE’s political system as his grounds for refusal. The award comes with a Dh1m ($272,000) prize and was due to be conferred later this month at the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair.

A 51-year-old Swiss embassy staff member died following an unexplained 4 April fall from the 28th floor of a tower in northern Tehran’s Kamranieh neighbourhood, according to local media reports. She is believed to have lived on a lower floor of the building.

The United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) opened a Middle East regional tourism office in Riyadh on 26 May. An opening ceremony was attended by UNWTO secretary-general Zurab Pololikashvili, tourism minister Ahmed Al-Khateeb and deputy tourism minister for strategy and investment Princess Haifa Al-Saud.

Interior minister Prince Abdelaziz Bin Saud Bin Naif Bin Abdelaziz held talks with a number of defence and security sector firms on a late May visit to Germany.

The United States Department of the Treasury has removed sanctions on three former Iranian government officials and two companies it said had previously been involved in the purchase, acquisition, sale, transport or marketing of Iranian petrochemicals products. The US said the designations were removed after “a verified change in status or behaviour on the part of the sanctioned parties”.

On 22 June the United States Department of Justice announced it had obtained court orders to seize 33 websites used by the Iranian Islamic Radio and Television Union (IRTVU) and three websites operated by Iran-backed Iraqi militia Kataib Hizbollah, claiming they were operating in breach of US sanctions.

UAE-funded heist film Misfits, starring Pierce Brosnan and Tim Roth, is proving to be a further source of friction with Qatar, by depicting Doha as a centre of terrorist-funding. The film has been produced by Abu Dhabi-based FilmGate Production, run by founder and chief executive Mansoor Al-Dhaheri; it was filmed entirely in the UAE.

Prominent dissident UAE human rights activist Alaa Al-Siddiq died when the car she was travelling in collided with another vehicle at a road junction in Oxfordshire, UK on 19 June; she had been out celebrating her 33rd birthday with friends. Al-Siddiq was executive director of the UK-based ALQST, which campaigns for human rights in the UAE and the wider region. 

Israel’s recently appointed foreign minister Yair Lapid travelled to the UAE as GSN on 30 June, to inaugurate the Israeli embassy in Abu Dhabi and a consulate in Dubai. He held talks with foreign affairs and international cooperation minister Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan while in Abu Dhabi.

A report by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Democracy and Human Rights in the Gulf – a group of 17 members of parliament (MPs) in the UK – called on London to halt payments to the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) countries under the UK’s Gulf Strategy Fund (GSF).

President-elect Ebrahim Raeisi rang Oman’s Sultan Haitham Bin Tariq Al-Said on 24 July and indicated that he sees Muscat as a critical go-between for Iran’s relations with the wider world. The two men exchanged Eid Al-Adha greetings as they reviewed bilateral relations.

Swedish authorities have changed an unnamed Iranian – believed to be public prosecutor Hamid Nouri – with suspected war crimes for his alleged role in the notorious mass executions of political prisoners in Iran in 1988, when thousands were killed. Nouri, who was arrested in Sweden in November 2019, denies the charges.