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The High Court of England and Wales granted an injunction on 5 September to stop Port de Djibouti (PdD) from acting as if its joint venture agreement with Dubai’s DP World had been terminated. It is the latest legal victory for DP in its long-running dispute with the Djibouti government over a contract to run the Doraleh Container Terminal.

The UAE has said it could build an oil pipeline between the Eritrean port of Assab and the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa in the latest sign of its growing involvement in the Horn of Africa.The proposal was announced on 10 August following talks in Addis Ababa between Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and visiting state minister for international co-operation Reem Al-Hashimi.

King Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa held a meeting with members of the Al-Nuaim tribe at Safriya Palace on 16 August, in a move that appears designed to increase tensions with neighbouring Qatar. According to the official Bahrain News Agency (BNA) report on the meeting, King Hamad talked about the Al-Khalifa’s ancestral seat of Zubara on the Qatar peninsula and noted “the allegiance of the tribes of the peninsula to Al-Khalifa”.

The government is scrambling to deal with the fallout from the death of two trainee officers, Hadib Al-Swarij and Falih Al-Azmi, at Ali Al-Sabah Military Academy on 29 August. Local reports said the two men died after being forced to stand outside in the summer heat while carrying heavy weights and being denied water. A number of other cadets are reported to be in a poor condition.

Tensions have again broken out into the open within the senior ranks of the Saudi royal family, with Prince Ahmed Bin Abdelaziz once more acting as the lightening rod for Al-Saud dissatisfaction with the often contentious rule of the Al-Salman. Prince Ahmed – the youngest of the ruling family’s ‘Sudairi Seven’ brothers – was recorded speaking to protestors outside his London residence on 4 September about his brother King Salman, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) and the Yemen war.

Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani has offered QR55bn ($15bn) to prop up the ailing Turkish economy, which is struggling in the face of an ill-tempered dispute with the United States centred around the detention of an American pastor in Turkey.

Foreign minister Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani held talks with controversial Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte on 15 August, during a brief tour of Asian capitals. He met foreign affairs secretary Alan Peter Cayetano on the same day to discuss bilateral economic and political relations. The following day Sheikh Mohammed was in Seoul for talks with South Korean prime minster Lee Nak-yeon, which focused on energy and industrial relations.

Gulf expert Jane Kinninmont has left the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House), where she was deputy head of the Middle East and North Africa Programme, to join London-based peace and human rights group The Elders, whose chair Kofi Annan died in late August.

Tehran looks east: Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif signed the Treaty of Amity and Co-operation in Southeast Asia (TAC) on the sidelines of the Association of South-east Asian Nations (Asean) summit in Singapore on 2 August. The TAC is designed to promote political relations between its signatories and does not hold any economic significance; even so, Iranian ambassador to Singapore Javad Ansari said the treaty would enable the Islamic Republic to expand economic ties with Asean member states in the face of the new sanctions being imposed by the United States.

Abu Dhabi Crown Prince and UAE Armed Forces deputy supreme commander Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan (MBZ) travelled to Cairo on 7 August for a meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi at the Etihadeya Palace, where they discussed bilateral relations and regional events. Among the delegation travelling with MBZ were minister of state for foreign affairs Anwar Gargash, Supreme Council for National Security deputy secretary-general Ali Bin Hammad Al-Shamsi and chairman of the Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan Charitable and Humanitarian Foundation board of trustees Sheikh Nahyan Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan.

Abu Dhabi is pushing for further consolidation among the emirate’s banks, with Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank (ADCB) holding merger talks with both Union National Bank and Al-Hilal Bank. All three institutions are either wholly- or majority-owned by the emirate’s government.

Reports from Tehran in early August indicated that Saudi Arabia is about to allow Iranian diplomats back into the kingdom. Mohammed Alibek, who had been head of the Oman and Yemen departments at Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), has been named as caretaker head of the new Interests section in Jeddah; other statements suggested the section would be based at the Swiss embassy in Riyadh.

President Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al-Nayhan returned to the UAE in late August after an extended – and unusually high-profile – stay in France. During his time in Evian, he was pictured holding talks with visiting officials and senior royals.

Lebanon’s acting prime minister Saad Hariri has endured a tortuous summer, failing repeatedly to form a government after his Future movement lost significant support among its Sunni support base in the first parliamentary elections for nine years, held on 6 May. An early September report in The New York Times alleging that UAE security officials had asked Israeli spyware firm NSO Group to intercept his phone calls is unlikely to have lightened Hariri’s mood.

Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmed Al-Jaber Al-Sabah arrived in Washington DC on 4 September ahead of talks with President Donald Trump the following day. A key goal was to encourage US firms to invest in Kuwait; the delegation featured finance minister Nayef Al-Hajraf and Kuwait Direct Investment Promotion Authority director-general Sheikh Mishal Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah.