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Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani criticised delays in sending aid to Syria, following the devastating earthquake which hit the country and neighbouring Turkey.

The late Shah’s son Reza Pahlavi believes opposition groups can unite to remove the Iranian ruling system in a constitutional coup, while the Mojahedin-e-Khalq remains committed to armed revolution. But, along with the reformists tolerated by the regime, none of these actors seem to have great traction on Iran’s streets, where Ayatollah Ali Khameini has most to fear from the combination of younger protestors and workers.

The Kuwaiti political scene is undergoing another of its periodic resets, with Sheikh Ahmed Nawaf Al-Sabah reappointed as prime minister, following the resignation of his government. He is expected to announce his new cabinet in the coming days, but few significant changes are expected in what will be his third government in eight months.

The relationship between Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) and UAE President (since May 2022) Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan (MBZ) goes back some way.  However, the two have grown more distant in recent years.

The overwhelming might of Iran’s internal security apparatus has ruthlessly suppressed the demonstrations which broke out in September 2022, following the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini. The regime has dug in at home and abroad to protect the system of clerical rule, with hardliners as dominant as ever. But the protests have continued despite this onslaught and the regime’s critics have found new ways to express their discontent, from widespread strikes (including in the Tehran bazaar, a bastion of the 1979 revolution), to cyberattacks on state banks and other institutions.

Relations between the two heavyweight Gulf monarchies – Saudi Arabia and the UAE – appear to have succumbed to a renewed period of tension, amid rising economic competition and a growing list of differences over regional diplomatic issues.

Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani named foreign minister Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman Bin Jassim Al-Thani as prime minister in March, following the resignation of Sheikh Khalid Bin Khalifa Bin Abdelaziz Al-Thani, who had been premier since January 2020. Tamim’s youngest full-brother Khalifa Bin Hamad Al-Thani  was named interior minister, a position Khalid Bin Khalifa had also held.

Matthew Campbell and Kit Chellel's book "Dead in the Water: Murder and Fraud in the World's Most Secretive Industry" chronicles the proceedings that uncovered a jaw-dropping international conspiracy to commit what would have been the world's largest-ever maritime insurance fraud.

Labelled by the British press as a ‘billionaire banker’, Sheikh Jassim Bin Hamad Bin Jassim Al-Thani was born in April 1982 into a family that accrued almost unimaginable wealth, as the Qatari economy grew from an all but impoverished desert peninsula into a global-scale gas giant. His father, former prime minister and foreign minister Sheikh Hamad Bin Jassim Bin Jabr Al-Thani (HBJ), played an instrumental role in that process.

Sheikh Jassim Bin Hamad Bin Jassim Al-Thani’s emergence as a bidder to buy Manchester United FC has thrust the banker into the global limelight, while also posing questions about the balance of power and wealth in the opaque world of Qatari politics, which his father Sheikh Hamad Bin Jassim (HBJ) dominated for so many years.

Saudi Arabia celebrated its recently created Founding Day on 22 February – the second year it has been officially marked. It marks what is referred to as the creation of the ‘First Saudi State’, on the day ancestor Mohammed Ibn Saud took control of Diriyah in 1727.  It is different from National Day, which marks “the unification” of Saudi Arabia on 23 September 1932.

Control of the Asir region has fluctuated between different groups over the centuries. By the 1830s, the Al-Ayed dynasty was in control, until the area was captured by the Ottomans in the late 1860s. Saudi Arabia’s founder King Abdelaziz (Ibn Saud) brought Asir under his direct rule in the early 1920s.

A hydrocarbons law in Iraq is in the offing, which could provide a stable revenue-sharing platform for years to come, but big obstacles remain to be resolved, leaving Iraqi Kurds in political and financial limbo, while the Kurdish regional oil industry stutters even as big gas developments are being promoted.

Kuwait has all but left behind its former status as a pre-eminent hub of regional diplomacy, as the leadership is widely perceived to have walked away from its role as mediator in the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) and its neighbours. Concerned by this apparent inaction on the regional stage, GSN has been asking: why has Kuwait apparently retired from playing such a significant diplomatic role?

The mountainous province in Saudi Arabia's south-west has been earmarked as a future centre for tourism, notwithstanding the threats posed by attacks from Houthi rebels across the border in Yemen. Asir could be a model for Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman’s post-oil development ambitions, as well as for more short-term efforts to stabilise potentially restless populations.