Saudi Arabia Archives - Page 18 of 37 - Foreign Policy In Focus

Sexual Prey in the Saudi Jungle

by Walden Bello | Feb 1, 2011

He was an officer in the Saudi Royal Navy assigned to the strategic Saudi base of Jubail in the Persian Gulf, and he wanted to hire a maid. She was a single mom from Mindanao in the Philippines who saw, like so many others, employment in Saudi Arabia as a route out of poverty. When he picked her up at the Dammam International Airport last June, little did she know she was entering not a brighter chapter of her life but a chamber of horrors from which she would be liberated only after six long months.

WikiLeaks XXXV: The Gathering of a Storm — a History of bin Laden in Diplomatic Cables

by Michael Busch | Jan 26, 2011

“He is finished,” was the regrettably premature pronouncement of a relative of bin Laden in the nineties.

Oil or Terrorism: Which Motivates U.S. Policy More?

by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed | Dec 15, 2010

Among the batch of classified diplomatic cables recently released by the controversial whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks, several have highlighted the vast extent of the financial infrastructure of Islamist terrorism sponsored by key U.S. allies in the ongoing “War on Terror.”

Do Arab States Really Want the U.S. to Attack Iran?

by Russ Wellen | Dec 12, 2010

The New York Times and Washington Post misrepresented the views of Arab leaders on Iran.

WikiLeaks II: Saudi Arabia on Iran — “Cut off the head of the snake”

by Michael Busch | Nov 29, 2010

Apparently dealing responsibly with Iran will only strain Washington’s relationship with the Arab Middle East.

No Sykes-Picot, No Holocaust?

by Russ Wellen | Nov 24, 2010

If the British and French had agreed to Arab demands after World War I, an Arab-Jewish state might have been created.

U.S. Still Top Arms Supplier to South as Record Sale to Saudis Pends

by Jim Lobe | Sep 17, 2010

Despite an unusual dip in global weapons sales in 2009, the United States retained its spot as the world’s top arms supplier of developing countries, according to an authoritative new report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS).

Wanted: an Accurate Assessment of Arab-Iran Animosity

by Russ Wellen | Aug 13, 2010

When it comes to Arab-Iran animosity, a distinction needs to be made between the feelings of the ruler and the people.

Iran-Saudi Relations: Rising Tensions and Growing Rivalry

by Richard Javad Heydarian | Aug 6, 2010

For decades, the Persian Gulf region – subsumed under a latent Sunni-Shia divide – was animated by a drama of Iraq-Iran rivalry; each power balanced the other. The elimination of Saddam Hussein, by the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, introduced a new chapter in the regional affairs – Saudi Arabia and Iran as the twin pillars of the regional power-configuration. Historically, despite numerous efforts by each party to improve bilateral relations and deepen cooperation, Iran-Saudi relations have been fraught with intermittent rhetorical wars and grim strategic competition.

What Saudi Arabia Should Do

by John Feffer, Usama Khalidi | Feb 5, 2009

All eyes are focused on what the governments in Pakistan and Afghanistan are doing to combat terrorism. Some attention, however, should be paid to Saudi Arabia and what it could do to douse the theological firestorms it helped unleash in the region. This Western ally has the material and intellectual resources to make a difference now, just as it did in the war to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan in the 1980s.