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Projects such as King Abdullah Economic City (KAEC) and the new financial city north of Riyadh have been proposed as one solution to make it easier for foreign investors and banks to operate in King Abdullah Bin Abdelaziz’s Kingdom than his father, Saudi Arabia’s founder King Abdelaziz Bin Abdelrahman (Ibn Saud), apparently intended.

The decision by King Salman Bin Abdelaziz to lift the ban on women drivers is a deeply symbolic development for the kingdom which could also provide a useful boost for the economy, but it also reinforces a troubling question for the Al-Saud: how to match the need for reform while maintaining their conservative credentials.If oil prices were high and the Saudi economy was doing well, it is doubtful whether the reform would have been made.

Saudi Arabia’s decision to relinquish a coveted United Nations Security Council (UNSC) seat and a spate of briefings by some of the kingdom’s most prominent Atlanticists recording Riyadh’s growing impatience with US policy and its implementation, come after at least two years of rising frustration at misfiring diplomatic initiatives and deep post-Arab Spring strains (see page 6). The critical question is whether the friction between Riyadh and Washington, which is understandable in any long-term alliance, goes deeper still, threatening the international order that the coming together of King Abdelaziz Ibn Saud and Franklin D Roosevelt helped to create.

Whether President Barack Obama should have carried through on his threat to intervene in Syria when evidence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) were revealed in 2013, or if Western allies should have been more robust in projecting their interests in building a post-Qadhafi state in Libya, remain live issues today. The fact that neither happened can be traced directly to the catalogue of disasters that began with the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003; an ignominious chapter of recent western history which has now been elegantly and intensively recorded in Sir John Chilcot’s Report of the Iraq Inquiry, which covers the UK’s involvement from mid-2001 until its troops formally withdrew in July 2009.

The images and tales that emerged from Al-Shabaab’s attack on Kenya’s Westgate mall were searingly dreadful. Mothers shielding toddlers, blood pooling on tiles, the sheer terror of gunfire in what was supposed to be a benign location. Rarely has the vocabulary of winning been so unconsonant. “We have defeated our enemies,” Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta declared as the four-day siege came to an end on 24 September, leaving at least 70 people dead. For all the bravery of security forces, for all the unity of horrified Kenyans, it is wrong to suggest that anyone wins.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s inauguration marked an inauspicious beginning of his second term in office, as political divisions within the ruling elite continued to deepen, to the extent that forming a new cabinet could prove difficult for the embattled head of government. Until 12 June apparently the master of his political arena, Ahmadinejad now seems unable to do anything right – as was underlined last month when he caused outrage among conservative ranks by appointing Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie as first vice president, a nepotistic move which further diminished his already damaged authority.

Alarm bells have sounded over reports that Saudi Arabia is preparing to sign an unprecedented $2bn arms deal with Russia. Saudi defence procurement is usually the domain of the United States, Britain and France – leading observers to speculate that a geopolitical shift is under way. This might also involve shifting attitudes towards Iran, with Riyadh offering Moscow juicy contracts if it cools relations with Tehran.

The announcement on 20 June that the February election in Kuwait was unconstitutional was an unexpected twist in a political drama already thick with confrontations, resignations and involuntary vacations.

Omani state minister for foreign affairs Yusuf Bin Alawi Bin Abdullah’s 7 July visit to Damascus was the most high-level public visit to Syria by an official from a Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) member state for at least four years. It affirmed Muscat’s continued interest in being a regional interlocutor, as Bin Alawi met his Syrian counterpart Walid Muallem and President Bashar Al-Assad. It repaid Muallem’s late 2018 visit to Oman, when the Syrian foreign minister praised Muscat’s “supportive positions towards Syria”.

In the immediate post-9/11 years Gulf watchers became used to the level of ‘Saudi-bashing’ coming out of the United States. Sensationalist authors churned out books such as Princes of Darkness: The Saudi Assault on the West, or Hatred’s Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia Supports the New Global Terrorism that sought to explore the flaws in Saudi culture and religious thought that had allowed the Kingdom to produce 15 out of the 19 hijackers.

Away from the breathless tones of Saudi-boosters and investors looking to make a big killing around the Saudi Aramco listing, it is easy to let the debate swirling around Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS)’s ruthless rise to power detract from the potential benefits of his ambitious programme to reduce the kingdom’s dependency on oil and provide a more sustainable future for its young population. The Vision 2030 initiative’s National Transformation Plan (NTP) is, after all, the most ambitious reform initiative Saudi Arabia has launched in the modern era.

On 14 September, Human Rights Watch (HRW) published a damning account of torture in UAE prisons, detailing the alleged mistreatment of two Syrian prisoners, the enforced disappearance of one of the so-called UAE Seven, and concerns over the health of up to 60 civil society activists still being held without charge. All the detained have been arrested as part of a crackdown on a perceived Islamist threat to the federation, details of which GSN has regularly reported over recent months.

Sultan Qaboos Bin Said Al-Saeed’s three-day official visit to Iran has cemented decades of steady relations between the troubled Islamic Republic and Oman, for long seen as a moderate and sensible state whose good offices are valued by international partners. The visit, the Sultan’s first since Shah Reza Pahlavi’s fall in 1979, has highlighted the importance that Muscat attributes to maintaining steady relations with its large and powerful neighbour.

In the wake of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI) report into human rights abuses during the government’s crackdown on protesters, Bahrain has entered a critical phase.

Suspicions about Saudi Arabia’s nuclear intentions are growing in the United States, amid evidence of undeclared uranium activities in the north and other undisclosed activity. The concerns led the US House of Representatives Intelligence Committee in early August to insert a provision in the Intelligence Authorisation Bill which requires the US administration to investigate Riyadh’s efforts to develop a nuclear capability.