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Pope Francis is to visit the UAE on 3-5 February in the latest sign of how some Gulf countries are gradually stepping up their interactions with other world religions. The visit is being made at the invitation of Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and UAE Armed Forces deputy supreme commander Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan.

Back from Berlin on 13 June, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince and UAE Armed Forces deputy supreme commander Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan (MBZ) received the Yang di-Pertuan Agong (YDPA – Supreme King of Malaysia) Sultan Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah. Following a 21-gun salute, the two held talks at Qasr Al-Watan on how to boost bilateral ties. The YDPA paid a de rigueur visit to Wahat Al-Karama, the UAE’s national monument to fallen soldiers, and also had a meeting with presidential affairs minister Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan.

Bank Markazi (Central Bank of Iran) governor Tahmasb Mazaheri has been replaced, at least on a temporary basis, by the bank's general secretary Mahmoud Bahmani, who is generally regarded as more malleable. Mazaheri had been increasingly isolated in his resistance to the president's high-spending populism since the departure, earlier this year, of Economics Minister Davoud Danesh Jaafari.

Widening their scope of operations, Somali pirates are posing an ever greater challenge to regional governments. While energy producers are rethinking their export strategies, governments are concerned that the Horn of Africa’s instability will encroach on the Gulf region’s southern flank. Yemen is especially vulnerable as the collapse of export revenues piles further pressure on President Saleh. GSN analyses developments in the Gulf of Aden, Somalia and Yemen, and talks exclusively to the Southern Movement’s new figurehead Ali Salem Al-Baydh.

Qatar has appointed its first female ambassador. On 31 July, Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani issued emiri decision 89 of 2013, naming Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser Bin Ahmed Bin Ali Al-Thani the new “extraordinary and plenipotentiary ambassador” to Croatia. Last November, Croatia opened an embassy in Qatar, its first in the Gulf. Croatian President Ivo Josipovic visited Doha at the time, with a large delegation of Croatian business leaders, and a focus on expanding economic ties. According to the Croatian press, Zagreb is seeking financial help from the Qatar Investment Authority and Macquarie Group to build an LNG terminal on the island of Krk. Qatargas is expected to supply the LNG in a 25-year deal.

Iranian diplomats have had to hunker down across the Middle East and Europe as a string of consulates and embassies have come under attack. The first to suffer was the Iranian consulate in Basra which was set on fire by demonstrators on 7 September, during wider protests. The Iraqi Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed “deep regret” at the incident and called for tighter security around diplomatic missions in the city.

To bolster its case that Iran was responsible for the 13 June tanker attacks, the United States released a black-and-white video of an alleged Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC) Hendijan-class patrol boat removing an unexploded mine from the side of the Japanese tanker Kokura Courageous, followed by some colour photos of the same incident. The footage was probably taken with a long-range MX-20HD electro-optic system onboard a P8 maritime surveillance aircraft.

UK ambassador to Saudi Arabia John Jenkins has completed his report on the Muslim Brotherhood, commissioned by the UK government in March, but its conclusions are uncomfortable for Number 10 and its Gulf allies, especially the UAE. A UK Foreign Office source told GSN that, after exhaustive enquiries, the “scholarly” Jenkins found the Brotherhood should not be proscribed as a terrorist organisation and that its members are generally not involved in terrorist activity. The source said former foreign secretary William Hague had been reluctant to produce the report in the first place, fearing the damage to bilateral relations with Gulf friends.

The National Dialogue Conference, a crucial component of Yemen’s GCC-backed political transition plan, could begin by the end of February, following the completion of a key preparatory report. But uncertainty over who will attend is just one of several potential obstacles to success.

Following recent setbacks for the government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi in the central Al-Dhale province and on Socotra, where control has been seized from the national government by forces loyal to the separatist Southern Transition Council (STC), Hadi has been trying to push back and regain some momentum. On 22 May, the Riyadh-based president wrote to United Nations secretary-general António Guterres with a series of complaints about UN special envoy Martin Griffiths, including “his insistence on dealing with the Houthis as a de facto government”.

Tehran has been making clear its displeasure with Poland for planning to co-host an anti-Iran meeting with the United States on 13-14 February in Warsaw. US secretary of state Mike Pompeo announced the event in an interview with Fox News on 11 January, saying it would be “a global ministerial on Middle East peace and freedom and stability. We’ll bring together dozens of countries from all around the world… an important element of making sure that Iran is not a destabilising influence.”

Humanitarian concerns have forced a ceasefire in Yemen’s murderous Al-Houthi conflict amid signs that the Arab-Iranian ‘cold war’ is hotting up. With Saudi Arabia and Egypt joining the US in seeing wider regional significance in what has long been understood as a localised conflict, Ali Abdullah Saleh is looking to exploit a difficult situation

Yemen’s President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi has taken the first step towards a long-awaited cabinet shuffle, installing new interior and oil ministers. On 7 March, a presidential decree appointed Major General Abdo Hussein Al-Tareb as interior minister, replacing Abdel-Qader Qahtan. At the Ministry of Oil and Minerals, the new minister is Khaled Mahfouz Bahah, who fills the post vacated by the January resignation of Ahmed Abdullah Dares. Bahah was recalled from Canada, where he had been ambassador since 2008. He is a former oil minister (2006-08) of Hadhrami origin; holding a Masters of Commerce from the University of Pune in India, he has private sector experience and is known for pushing Yemenisation of the oil industry.

As the holy month of Ramadan began, the rulers of the UAE emirates received well-wishers at their palaces, and exchanged greetings with Muslim leaders around the world. Notable for his absence was UAE President Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, who had a stroke in January 2014, and has not been seen in public since. Official news agency Wam said the president had sent cables of greetings to various leaders, but he does not seem to have engaged in any telephone exchanges of congratulations, and was the only one of the seven Emirati rulers not to attend an iftar banquet in Abu Dhabi on 20 June.

Elections for the Council of Representatives (Majlis al-Nuwab) are to be held on 24 November. King Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa set the election date in Royal Order 36, issued on 10 September. Voting will take place across Bahrain from 8am to 8pm on the day. Overseas citizens will be able to vote at Bahraini embassies, consulates and diplomatic missions on 20 November.