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Having finally opened in Abu Dhabi, the Louvre is taking French cultural diplomacy to another level with a major exhibition opening at the National Museum of Iran in Tehran. The Louvre in Tehran will include 50 works drawn from the Paris museum’s collection and from the Musée Eugène Delacroix; it is sponsored by car-maker Renault and Fondation Total. The exhibition, themed around the Louvre’s development since 1793, will include Greek, Roman and Persian artefacts.

The much-publicised initiative for Morocco and Jordan to join the Gulf Co-operation Council surprised many when it was announced by new GCC secretary-general Abdelatif Al-Zayani, but it was not a new suggestion – it was proposed some years ago but quietly dropped – and has a political and economic logic for most of those involved.

The politics were long in the making before the crisis erupted between Qatar and three major Gulf Co-operation Council partners turned adversaries – Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the UAE (the ‘GCC-3’) – plus Egypt and other allies from the wider Muslim world, but several of the immediate consequences emerging from the conflict are nevertheless unexpected.

Sheikh Nasser Mohammed is suffering a political realignment, with the Islamic Constitutional Movement’s move from cabinet to grilling sponsor reflecting an erosion of support for his government.

A report on farsnews.com says that newly installed Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani is due to participate in the 4 August inauguration ceremony of Iranian president-elect Hassan Rouhani. Asharq Al-Awsat said on 29 July that representatives of 40 countries were due to attend the ceremony. Rouhani himself has tweeted (@HassanRouhani) that this is the first time foreign officials have been invited to the ceremony, and that the emir of Qatar will “certainly” attend, alongside ten presidents, three prime ministers, five heads of parliament (including Oman’s), five vice-presidents and ten foreign ministers.

King Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa inaugurated a $50m National Theatre on 13 November, an elegant glass structure with a golden roof that seats 1,001 people and symbolises the union of Bahrain and sea. The theatre, commissioned long before the political crisis, was designed by France’s AS Architecture-Studio, also responsible for the Muscat Cultural Centre and Doha’s Pier Exhibition Centre.

The deployment of Turkish forces to Qatar as the emirate’s ‘GCC-3’ rivals ratcheted up pressure – including calls for Ankara to close the new military base it is building in Qatar – has underlined the positioning of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government as a key ally for Doha and Turkey’s wider importance in the regional balance of power. As the crisis unfolded, the Turkish parliament on 7 June ratified two agreements on stationing troops in Doha.

Mohammed Bin Nayef Bin Abdelaziz Al-Saud (MBN) is a nephew of King Salman and, like him, from the powerful Sudairi bloc that has re-emerged as the dominant branch of the Al-Saud in the months since King Abdullah’s death. Born in 1959, he has long been thought of as a contender for the throne, and has excellent dynastic credentials, having been born to two members of the Al-Saud, the late crown prince Nayef and Jawahar Bint Abdelaziz Bin Musaid Bin Jiluwi.

The Iraqi cabinet passed the 2014 draft budget on 15 January, but its passage through parliament is facing a number of challenges. As well as complaints from the Kurds (see box, page 5), the budget’s failure to follow through on a 2013 provincial powers law stating provinces should get $5 per barrel of oil produced has provoked huge anger in the oil-producing states of southern Iraq, which are now threatening to block it in parliament.Article 2(1)(d)(2) of the budget states that provinces should receive $1 of additional revenue for each barrel of oil produced, along with $1 for every 150m3 of gas.

Amid all the talk of war on Iran, it is worth noting that Israeli deputy foreign minister Daniel Ayalon took the time last week to distance his country from any notion of imminent conflict.

The application of renewable energy (RE) to replace hydrocarbons in generating electricity could provide an end to the Gulf’s ‘resource curse’, but right now the region lacks some of the tools needed to cope with the new era. Just as oil prices were hitting a three-year high in mid-January, the world’s RE industry was gathering in Abu Dhabi for the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena)’s annual summit.

An electorate numbering around 600,000 will go to the polls on 25 October to elect a new 84-member Majlis Al-Shura (the eighth) from among 596 candidates, 20 of them women, according to a schedule set out by interior minister Sayyid Hamoud Bin Faisal Al-Busaidi. Electoral posters and other material have started appearing for elections, which the authorities have said should be preceded by “unprecedented” public campaigns. The Ministry of Interior has been insisting that candidates should not try to buy votes.

It is not hard to see why Britain is keen to get more Gulf nationals onto its shores. In 2012, according to the national tourism agency VisitBritain, the UK had just over half a million visitors from the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) states, who spent a total of £1.2bn ($1.9bn), and in the past five years, the total number of GCC visits and spend have increased by 17% and 58% respectively. The average spend per visit by Gulf visitors is massively higher than that of other international visitors – around £2,124 ($3,417) in 2012, compared to a global average of just £600.

A second former MP sentenced for his role in the storming of the National Assembly (parliament) in an anti-corruption scandal in 2011 has returned to Kuwait to begin a three-and-a-half-year jail term. Waleed Al-Tabtabaei arrived back on 25 November and handed himself over to officials.

King Abdullah’s decision to give women the vote in municipal polls had been on the cards for months, but allowing women to stand as municipal candidates and be appointed to the Majlis Al-Shura surprised many