Posted in Arab Gulf, Gal Luft, Iran, Oil and Gas, Saudi Arabia on Oct 11th, 2008 Comments Off on Financial crisis: OPEC to blame?
From Gal Luft There is so much blame to go around in the wake of the financial crisis that there is no wonder OPEC’s name shows up high in the list of culprits. After all, soaring oil prices and loss of wealth in 2008 to the tune of $1.2-$1.9 billion each and every working day, […]
Posted in Gal Luft, Oil and Gas, Saudi Arabia on Jun 18th, 2008 1 Comment »
From Gal Luft What’s behind the sudden burst of willingness on the part of the Saudis, who announced that they will increase oil output by 500,000 barrels per day in the coming months? After all, for many months they were quite unfazed by the economic havoc caused throughout the world by the rise in oil […]
Posted in Gal Luft, Oil and Gas, Saudi Arabia on May 16th, 2008 Comments Off on Bush begs Saudis (again)
From Gal Luft Four months and thirty extra dollars a barrel later, President Bush is again in Saudi Arabia trying to persuade the Saudis to open the spigot and increase OPEC production. Last time the answer was a resounding no. Not even a gift of 900 precision-guided bombs helped convince the Saudis to show more […]
Posted in Arab Gulf, Books, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia on Apr 16th, 2008 Comments Off on ‘The Absence of Grand Strategy’
MESH invites selected authors to offer original first-person statements on their new books—why and how they wrote them, and what impact they hope and expect to achieve. Steve A. Yetiv is a professor of political science at Old Dominion University. His new book is The Absence of Grand Strategy: The United States in the Persian […]
Posted in Bernard Haykel, Iran, Oil and Gas, Palestinians, Saudi Arabia on Jan 18th, 2008 Comments Off on Bush’s Saudi success
From Bernard Haykel I’m in Riyadh and the sense I get from the Saudis is that the Bush visit was a success for the President in two ways. First, Bush was told that while the Gulf States’ leaderships are against an attack on Iran, preferring instead diplomatic and UN-based initiatives, they would not stand in […]
Posted in Gal Luft, Oil and Gas, Saudi Arabia on Jan 16th, 2008 Comments Off on Bush begs the Saudis
From Gal Luft President Bush’s appeal to the Saudis to increase oil production is more pitiful than understandable. At $100 a barrel, the United States bleeds over a billion dollars per day in order to finance its petroleum import needs. The result: ballooning trade deficits, growing unemployment, a weakened dollar and crumbling financial institutions like […]
Posted in Bernard Haykel, Geopolitics, Saudi Arabia on Dec 16th, 2007 Comments Off on Saudis united
From Bernard Haykel “Lines in the Sand” (Vanity Fair, January 2008, not online) describes a parlor game undertaken by four Middle East specialists (Kenneth Pollack, Daniel Byman, David Fromkin, and Dennis Ross), in which they imagine what the borders of the Middle East would look like if they were to reflect “underlying contours.” In their […]
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