Saudi Arabia
المملكة العربية السعودية
Saudi Arabia's More Perfect Union -
The Saudis don't try to impose their will on the neighborhood but instead try to persuade the others to follow. Even last year's GCC intervention in Bahrain was at the invitation...
Saudi Arabia & Turkey: Frenemies -
Last month, Saudi Arabia rolled out the red carpet for Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The visit was yet another example of the degree to which relations between the t...
The CIA and Saudi Arabia Get Tight -
The U.S. intelligence community has won plaudits for helping derail a series of recent terror plots, including this week’s disclosure of an al-Qaida affiliate’s attempt to use ...
Saudi Arabia's Quandary -
The political leadership in Saudi Arabia was stunned by the "Arab spring" events and initially panicked. The rapid toppling of Tunisia's president and then Egypt's in populi...
Saudis Export Salafism to War-Torn Region -
A squat and priggish man of 46, Abdul Lateef Al Kindi has a thick salt-and-pepper beard and a reputation for causing controversy. During a sermon last August at his mosque in Srin...
Bahrain and the Mideast Cold War -
Bahrain is an important nation because it is a focal point of what is happening in the Middle East today - the battle to find a balance between preserving the best values of the ...
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Most Recent Articles
A Worrisome Spat Between Egypt and Saudi Arabia - Daily Star
The protests outside Saudi Arabian embassies in Egypt in recent days risk setting a dangerous precedent in relations between the two countries that would be to Egypt’s detrim...
In Egypt, the Horror and the Pita - David Goldman, Asia Times
Egypt's national tragedy took a turn towards farce April 27, when Saudi Arabia closed its embassy and several consulat...
Turkey Has Reasons to Fear Arab Spring - Ersin Kalaycioglu, Bitter Lemons
When the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi in Sidi Bouzid led to an avalanche of protests in Tunisia in January 2011, nearly the entire Arab world began to rock with popular upri...
The Middle East's War on Women - Mona Eltahawy, Foreign Policy
An entire political and economic system -- one that treats half of humanity like animals -- must be destroyed along with the other more obvious tyrannies choking off the region f...
For Saudis, Israel More Foe Than Friend - Amir Oren, Haaretz
Saudi Defense Minister, Prince Salman, was the guest last week of his American counterpart Leon Panetta and, in an unusual step, was also hosted by U.S. President Barack Obama. On ...
Iran and the Battle for Bahrain - Brandon Friedman, World Affairs Journal
The Saudis and their neighboring Sunni Arab rulers along the Gulf littoral are now responding to what they see as the challenge of Iran as much as to last year’s events in ...
New Delhi's Balancing Acts in West Asia - Shashank Joshi, The Hindu
Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are being pushed closer together by Iran's nuclear ambitions and the Arab Spring - creating new challenges for India....
Don't Fear Nuclear Arms Race in the Mideast - Steven Cook, Foreign Policy
The conventional wisdom has it wrong: Iran's development of a nuclear weapon won't spur its neighbors to get the bomb....
Does the U.S. Have More Oil Than Saudi Arabia? - Robert Rapier, Oil Drum
People are often confused about the overall extent of U.S. oil reserves. Some claim that the U.S. has hundreds of billions or even trillions of barrels of oil waiting to be produce...
Arab States Redraw the Map of Alliances - Jamal Khashoggi, The National
While Syria's army cruelly and stupidly shells its own people and storms its cities, the so-called "axis of resistance" stretching from Tehran to Damascus is falling apart. Said ...
Saudi Arabia Knocked Off Balance - Jeffrey Fleishman, Los Angeles Times
The Saudi royal family prizes stability as much as the oil that secures its wealth, but political upheaval across the Middle East has shaken the kingdom's sense of balance, f...
Saudi Arabia Will Lower Oil Prices - Ali Naimi, Financial Times
Saudi Arabia is acting on high oil prices....
U.S. Must Rethink Its Entire Mideast Policy - Thomas Friedman, NY Times
What ails the Middle East today truly is a toxic mix of tribalism, Shiite-Sunni sectarianism, fundamentalism and oil - oil that constantly tempts us to intervene or to prop up di...
Saudi Cleric: Destroy Churches - Walter Russell Mead, American Interest
In recent years the king of Saudi Arabia has won plaudits around the world for promoting interfaith dialogs. Those efforts recently received a dramatic setback when the top relig...
No Spring in Saudi Arabia - Madawi Al-Rasheed, Boston Review
Those Saudis expecting the Arab Spring to bloom in their country were no doubt disappointed. Using its classic strategies-anti-Shia religious rhetoric, a powerful and Western-tra...
Arab Spring Is Spinning Out of Control - Zvi Mazel, Jerusalem Post
Qatar is more and more assuming the role vacated by Egypt in trying to settle local and international disputes....
EU Nations Sell the Most Arms to Saudi Arabia - Der Spiegel
The controversial deals make the EU the world's biggest exporter of weapons to the country....
America Is Stuck With the Mideast - Walter Russell Mead, Wall St. Journal
Global oil markets and global commerce mean that American presidents will simply not be able to set this region off to the side....
Saudi Arabia and 9/11 - Greg Scoblete, The Compass
People may get hung up on the fact that large numbers of Americans were killed on 9/11 but the prevailing attitude in Washington is that that matters less than geopolitical orien...
Syrians Should Beware Autocratic 'Friends' - Brian Whitaker, Guardian
From Monday no one will be tortured in Syria. The state will guarantee personal freedom for its citizens and preserve their dignity and security. People's homes will be inviolabl...
To Avoid Proxy War, Offer Assad an Exit - Abdel Bari Atwan, The Guardian
A face-saving exit plan might be the only way to remove Assad, and prevent further polarisation of the world's superpowers....
What Are the Saudis Up to in Syria? - Jonathan Schanzer, Foreign Policy
The longer Obama waits and the deeper the humanitarian crisis worsens, the more likely it becomes that other actors will tip the balance in Syria. Using history as a guide, none wo...
The Drift Toward War With Iran - Gideon Rachman, Financial Times
The question of whether a war will break out over Iran's nuclear programme has been around for so long that is easy to become almost blase....
Saudi Arabia's Free Speech Choice - Richard Cohen, Washington Post
Keep your eye on Hamza Kashgari. He’s the 23-year-old former columnist for Saudi Arabia’s Al-Bilad newspaper who had the extremely bad judgment to tweet an imaginary convers...
How the Iran Standoff Looks from Saudi Arabia - Mustafa Alani, Bloomberg
The most likely victims of a nuclear armed Iran are not the U.S. orIsrael, but the Gulf states -- countries that are engaged in intense competition with the regime in Tehran, but t...
Arab States More Stable Than They Appear - Ezzedine Fishere, Daily Star
With leadership essentially contested among Arab states, it is hard to see how non-Arab states could hope to lead. Let me put it clearly: the Turkish and Iranian bids for regiona...
The Saudis Will Want the Bomb, Too - Michael Totten, PJ Media
It’s no secret that Saudi Arabia will want nuclear weapons if Iran gets them. Riyadh has been saying so for years and said it again a couple of days ago. It ought to go without s...
Saudi Arabia's Bloody Hypocrisy - Washington Post
Saudi Arabia is doing its best to bring about the end of Mr. Assad, whose Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, is a minority in a country with a plurality of Sunni Muslims....
Red Roses, Black Market - Alessandra Ram, The List
Five places that aren't feeling the love this Valentine's Day....
The Biggest News from the Mideast Today - Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic
The most important news out of the Middle East is not the Hamas-PA Agreement 4.0 (or 5.0 or 6.0, who can remember?). For various reasons, it doesn't seem likely to work (you can ...
The Lesson of the Arab Spring - Alwaleed bin Talal, Wall Street Journal
The euphoria that accompanied the relatively quick removal of the presidents of Tunisia and Egypt soon gave way to the realization that such successes could not be easily replica...
A Nuclear Arabia - Yochi Dreazen, National Journal
By Yochi J. Dreazen BRAKA, United Arab Emirates"”The United Arab Emirates, one of the wealthiest nations in the world, is a land of firsts. Dubai, its richest city, has ...
China Courts the Middle East - Dilip Hiro, Yale Global
As a country importing 11 percent of its oil from Iran, the latest American and European move to isolate Iran has put China in a quandary. Should it join the West with which it has...
Saudi Arabia's Role in Syria - Roula Khalaf, Financial Times
Saudi Arabia prefers to work in the shadows, flexing its diplomatic weight without attracting too much attention. So it is surprising that its veteran foreign minister, Prince Saud...
Consequences of War for Saudi Arabia - Brian Downing, Asia Times
Saudi Arabian threats that its military could join a Western-led conflict with Iran heap more pressure on Riyadh's Shi'ite rival. However, the House of Saud could invite isolation ...
Why Won't Saudis Write Down Laws? - Nathan Brown, Middle East Channel
In 2007 and 2009 Saudi King Abdullah capped a decade of legal and judicial reforms in his country by reorganizing the judiciary and ordering that Saudi Arabia follow the step that ...
Saudi Arabia Pivots Towards Asia - Peter Lee, Asia Times
As the exploitation of its own gas and oil resources leads to a future in which the United States washes its hands of Middle Eastern intractables and oil, Saudi Arabia's primacy in...
China's Mideast Visit Is All About Iran - Gordon Chang, Around Asia
Washington has been cheering Beijing's recent initiative to increase its energy imports from the Saudi kingdom and its neighbors. Why? Because the more energy China buys from the...
Arab Spring Deals Losing Hand to Iran - Samuel Segev, Winnipeg Free Press
It's obvious that Iran underestimated the depth of resentment the masses have of Shiite dominance in the Arab world....
Why Is Obama Selling Arms to a Dictatorship? - David Keyes, TNR
The justification for the arms sale is simple. The deal will provide at least 50,000 jobs to Americans - good PR at a time of great economic distress. More importantly, it is int...
Entrepreneurship in Saudi Arabia - Gallup
Although small shares of Saudi Arabia's adult population own businesses or plan to open them soon, Gallup surveys in 2011 reveal these shares are even smaller outside the three maj...
The End of America's Pro-Democracy Pretense - Glenn Greenwald, Salon
Why should 'American interests' determine the type of government Egypt has? That it should is simply embedded as an implicit, unstated assumption in Alterman’s advocacy. Th...
Slow and Uncertain Change in Saudi Arabia - Doyle McManus, LA Times
Women in Saudi Arabia won a small but promising victory this year. No, they aren't being allowed to drive; that's still forbidden. Most of the time, they still can't work, trave...
Why U.S. Should Withdraw from the Persian Gulf - Toby Jones, Atlantic
Our experiment in militarizing the region has made it more volatile, less free, and more costly to American interests and values....
About Saudi Arabia
- Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
- Population: 28,686,633 (41st)
- Area Size: 830,000 sq mi (14th)
- GDP: $577.9 billion (23rd)
- Currency: Riyal (SAR)
- Official Language: Arabic
- Capital City: Riyadh
- Largest City: Riyadh
Saudi Arabia Prosperity Rank: 49 |
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