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Saudi Arabia’s deputy consul in Yemen was kidnapped outside his house in Aden on 28 March. According to newswires, gunmen snatched Abdallah Al-Khalidi as he was about to get into his car, bundled him into another car and sped off.

The publication of Sir John Chilcot’s long-awaited The Report of the Iraq Inquiry has rekindled disturbing memories of the conflict for British and other stakeholders (see GSN view). Within 2m-plus words contained in the 12 volumes of his report, Chilcot exhaustively covers critical aspects of the conflict, both in the build up March 2003 – when the United Kingdom took part in an opposed invasion and full‑scale occupation of a sovereign state, for the first time since the Second World War – and after. Chilcot seeks to answer two basic questions: whether it was right and necessary to invade, and whether the UK could and should have been better prepared for what followed. GSN asked these questions in the period leading up to the conflict, without ever finding a definitive argument, other than that ‘regime change’ was the policy preference of George W Bush and his advisors in Washington and then premier Tony Blair in London.

Bahrain’s National Dialogue concluded on 30 July with three concrete recommendations and a lot more woolly statements presented to King Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa (GSN 905/4). If robustly implemented, these measures could eventually lead to more representative, tolerant government and greater transparency, in a system where a wider range of Bahraini voices are heard and officials are brought to account for abuses (with ministers potentially facing Kuwait-style ‘grillings’ in parliament).

President Barham Salih has asked veteran politician Adnan Al-Zarfi to form a new government. At a meeting in Baghdad on 17 March to appoint him prime minister designate, Salih also asked Zarfi to ensure early and fair elections, to meet the reform demands of demonstrators and maintain Iraq’s “sovereignty, stability and security.” Zarfi is a pro-western former governor of Najaf city. He was a member of the Dawa opposition party during the Saddam Hussein era and leads former prime minister Haidar Al-Abadi’s Nasr bloc in parliament.

Afghan President Hamad Karzai paid a short visit to Qatar in late March, accompanied by his foreign minister Zalmai Rassoul, head of the High Peace Council Salahuddin Rabbani and presidential adviser Dadfar Spanta. Karzai held talks with the emir and also met Qatar’s ambassador to Pakistan. Likely to have been under discussion is the possibility of a formal role for Qatar in negotiations with the Taliban, and the opening of a Taliban office in Doha.

The redrawing of constituency boundaries is among a number of complicating factors as opposition parties compete for disenchanted voters

A cartoon on the Saudi-owned Dar Al-Hayat’s website on 30 March, the day after Baghdad hosted the Arab League summit, showed Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki with his arm around a Gulf colleague, surreptitiously shaking the hand of Iran behind the Arab’s back.

As attempts to form a new government drag on, there is growing evidence that radical Shia militias are planning a coup, according to reports in Arabic daily Asharq Al-Awsat on 8 October.

Iran will hold presidential elections on 14 June 2013, the Interior Ministry said on 7 September, the first such vote since a violent crackdown on protests over Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s disputed re-election in 2009.

On a day of horrific terrorist attacks on three continents, a young Saudi suicide bomber walked into a Shiite mosque in Kuwait filled with 2,000 worshippers during Friday prayers on 26 June, and blew himself up. The attack, quickly claimed by the Wilayat Najd (Najd province) branch of the Islamic State jihadist group (IS) that conducted similar attacks in Saudi Arabia in May, killed 27 people and injured 227, according to the Ministry of Interior; Kuwait was left reeling from the shock of its worst terrorist attack in decades.

Saudi Association for Civil and Political Rights founding member Abdelrahman Al-Hamid has been sentenced to nine years in jail, barred from travelling abroad for nine years after his release and fined $13,300, for illegally establishing a human rights organisation, questioning the judiciary’s credibility and independence, disobeying the king and interfering with the national Saudi Human Rights Commission. Fellow activist Abdelaziz Al-Sinedi received an eight-year sentence, was barred from travelling for another eight years and fined, for inciting public opinion against the monarchy, questioning the judiciary’s independence and describing the kingdom as a police state.

London has appointed Francis (Frank) Baker as ambassador to Iraq, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) said on 29 August. Baker, who has been ambassador to Kuwait since 2010, replaces Simon Collis, who moves on after two years in Baghdad to an as-yet-unannounced post. Baker has been with the FCO since 1981, and has had postings to Ankara, Washington, Panama and Buenos Aires.

Tehran’s security forces and riot police were on the streets on Sunday 20 February using batons and tear gas to prevent opposition groups and individuals from commemorating the deaths of two young Iranians, Sanee Zhaleh, a Kurd, and Mohammad Mokhtari, who were shot dead during anti-government protests on 14 February.

The deeply polarising campaigns that ushered Iraq towards its 30 April election now look set to give way to a period of political wrangling and uncertainty, as the main parties jostle for influence in the new government. Iraq’s Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) has taken longer than normal to begin announcing results, though as GSN went to press the count seemed to have been mostly completed in the Shiite provinces which will determine the balance of power. No reliable reports had emerged about voting patterns in the more unstable Sunni areas, however, where the run-up to the election was marred by ongoing violence.

One of King Salman Bin Abdelaziz Al-Saud’s first moves on succeeding his half-brother Abdullah in January was to abolish the Ministry of Higher Education, merging it with the Ministry of Education, under the latter’s name. It was a move that provoked a few gasps, given the importance Abdullah placed on education, seeming at first glance to portend the reining in of the some of the late king’s ambitious reforms. Yet the way Saudi educational leaders have sought to spin it, Salman’s move was not about smothering his predecessor’s strategic intent to have education drive societal change.