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Iraq’s election will bring Arab Shiites a major share of power for the first time outside the Levant. But GCC governments remain ambivalent about recognising the importance of their Shia communities.

Nouriyah Al-Subaih owes her survival in office to personal ability, social change and the clout of Kuwaits recently enfranchised female electorate. Her successful battle of recent weeks to surv...

While the opposition’s triumph in Kuwait’s general election has opened the way for Al-Saadoon to stage a comeback bid to recapture the speakers’ chair, the government is trying to adjust to an election result that represented a clear rebuff to several of its most prominent figures

On 27 March, Saudi King Abdullah Bin Abdelaziz Al-Saud appointed his half-brother, Prince Miqrin Bin Abdelaziz, as deputy crown prince, in a royal decree that may have answered short-term uncertainties about the much-debated Saudi succession, but once again delayed the more interesting question of which of the next generation of princes will be the first to rise.

On 15 February, a picture was circulated of Mohammed Ali Al-Houthi, chairman of the Supreme Revolutionary Committee set up less than a week before as Houthi rebels swept aside Yemen’s established organs of power. The photograph showed him presiding over a meeting inside the presidential palace in Sanaa, and its symbolism was clear: with Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who resigned as president of Yemen on 22 January (GSN 986/11), under house arrest, Al-Houthi was effectively being anointed head of state, even as the state he was intended to govern was disintegrating around him.

Domestic human rights campaigns and international pressure have combined to persuade an increasingly imageconscious government down the path of a reform that has social and economic implications for the whole region.

President Ahmadinejads domestic support may be withering as Iranians come to terms with rampant inflation and some poor economic policy calls, but GSNs soundings in Tehran found solid support fo...

Whether localised protests over rising social pressures, a cry for regime change or the work of external enemies – or all of the above – the latest upsurge in popular discontent has pointed to complex dynamics across the Islamic Republic which will not easily go way. Dissident group Human Rights Activists in Iran said that between 28 December and 3 January all 31 provinces saw protests, spread throughout 69 counties and 71 cities; from three locations on 28 December, protests grew to 11 and then 28 cities on the next day and continued to spread thereafter.

The civil nuclear plans of GCC and neighbouring states point to a new assertiveness among Gulf economies, whose need to diversify energy sources is greater than the temptation to keep up with regional nuclear leaders Iran and Israel

On 5 March, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain issued a joint statement saying they were withdrawing their ambassadors from Qatar. Qatar’s refusal – so the statement said – to abide by the terms of an agreement signed by Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) member states more than three months before had forced them to make the decision, effective immediately.The agreement was said to have been signed in Riyadh on 23 November – the day that Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani, Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah and King Abdullah Bin Abdelaziz Al-Saud took part in an unusual tripartite meeting in Riyadh, reportedly aimed at reconciling differences between Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

The King is overseeing a programme of cautious change, but is reluctant to ease the family hold on real power or alienate powerful religious interests. It takes fine political judgment to bolster the position of his Shammar branch of the family without provoking a rift with the Sudeiris and other powerful factions

War with Islamic State (IS, or Daesh) and the fiscal crisis caused by low oil prices have combined to undermine the political arrangements by which both federal Iraq and the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) have been governed since the Saddam Hussein regime fell. New or invigorated strands of social and political opposition have targeted the massive corruption and mismanagement that have wasted hundreds of billions of dollars over the past decade. But it is far from certain whether Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi’s challenge to corruption and the sectarian quota system, or the Kurdish opposition’s attempts to limit the Barzani clan’s authoritarian rule in Erbil, will result in more accountable government.

Neither home-based Islamist reformers nor liberals seem able to identify a strategy to encourage King Abdullah to live up to reformist hopes.

The UAE has projected its influence and increasing military muscle in an ever wider arc under Abu Dhabi Crown Prince and UAE Armed Forces deputy supreme commander Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan (MBZ)’s leadership. Its commitments now run as far west as Libya, where the UAE is a key backer of Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar and his Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF – formerly known as the Libyan National Army), whose march on Tripoli has stalled amid a striking Turkish intervention.

Liberals have taken a beating as conservative Islam, Shiite community organisations, tribal or family ties and local standing have proved the main influences at play as a minority of male Saudis vote for the first time.