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Iraq joined the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in November, taking the London-based multilateral's number of shareholders to 74. Joining the bank means Baghdad will be able to apply for financial and policy support from the EBRD.

Hussein Ali Saleh Al-Fadala has taken up his position as Qatar's first consul general in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Qatar opened its consulate in Erbil during the summer.

Omani officials told GSN that the failure to achieve a settlement to the Israel/Palestinian conflict was nurturing radicalisation and undermining the prospects for resolving other political problems across the Middle East.

Leaders from the 15-strong Caribbean Community (Caricom) arrived in Riyadh mid-November for the first Saudi-Caricom summit.  Separately, Saudi ambassador to the UN Abdelaziz Bin Mohammed Al-Wasel signed protocols to establish diplomatic relations with Micronesia and Nauru. 

In regions across the Middle East and North Africa where popular support for the Palestinian cause is widespread, the UAE has been trying to walk a fine line, maintaining diplomatic ties with Israel while publicly focusing on the provision of humanitarian aid to Gaza and calls for a ceasefire.

A 30-member Taliban delegation led by Afghanistan’s acting deputy prime minister for economic affairs Abdul Ghani Baradar travelled to Tehran early November to discuss economic co-operation. Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian held separate talks with Baradar the same day.

Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) President Nechirvan Barzani met France’s President Emmanuel Macron at the Elysée Palace in Paris early November. The discussions covered bilateral relations between France and Iraq, and the KRI in particular, as well as the potential impact of the Israel-Hamas war on Iraq. 

Iran’s consul general in Jeddah Hassan Zarnegar Abarqouie left Tehran early November to take up his post, eight months after Saudi Arabia and the Islamic republic agreed to restore diplomatic ties in a China-brokered deal. 

British Conservative Party member of parliament Bob Stewart was found guilty of racially abusing a Bahraini human rights activist, in a case at Westminster Magistrates Court early November.

Doha's relations with India have soured, after a Qatar court handed down the death sentence to eight Indians arrested in August 2022.

Saudi Arabia hosted fresh talks in late October between President General Abdel-Fattah Burhan’s Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) led by Lieutenant General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo (often known as Hemedti).

The 'Axis of Resistance' bloc of state and non-state actors, Shia and Sunni militias, has been long in the making, as Iran's revolutionary elite has sought to project its influence via a disparate group of organisations ranged across the Middle East. Its components are of differing sizes and capabilities, and their links to Iran also vary.

The potential for Iran’s 'Axis of Resistance' militia network to destabilise the wider region has been manifest in an alarming acceleration of attacks on bases hosting United States troops in Iraq and Syria by IRGC-backed militias.

The UAE set up a field hospital in Herat, western Afghanistan to help locals injured during a wave of severe earthquakes that killed more than 1,000 people. The UAE has also sent at least five aircraft with a total of 140 tonnes of aid, including food and tents.

UAE minister of state Sheikh Shakhbout Bin Nahyan Al-Nahyan and his Qatari counterpart Mohammed Bin Abdelaziz Bin Saleh Al-Khulaifi led their countries' delegations at the fourth meeting of the Quint Group on Somalia, held in Ankara. Others in the meeting included representatives of Somalia, Türkiye, the UK and the US.