Back in early 2011, when the Arab uprisings first erupted, most pundits assumed the countries that would do most to shape their course from the outside would be the usual heavyweights: the United States, and maybe Turkey (the region’s one semi-functional Muslim democracy) and Iran (the neighborhood’s revolutionary spoiler). Instead, as this newspaper’s Robert Worth pointed out this week, two oil-rich Gulf monarchies have seized the initiative and are duking it out for dominance.
Read Full Article »
