All Policy Analysis by Simon Henderson

On December 2, 2006, the Persian Gulf state of Bahrain held the second round of runoff elections for its national assembly, an advisory body. Meanwhile, in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), December 16-20 will see the first-ever elections for half of the advisory federal national council, all of whose members

From October 30 to 31, 2006, U.S. military forces in the Persian Gulf will join the armed forces of several other countries to hold a naval exercise in the interception and search of ships carrying weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and missiles. Though long planned, the exercise has added importance

On October 20, 2006, eighty-three-year-old King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia announced changes to the kingdom's "Basic Law" -- effectively its constitution -- that appear to formalize procedures for the selection of future kings. However, it is difficult to know how much the current system of succession will actually change. For

On September 20, amid reports of al-Qaeda plots against local American targets, the people of the strategically important but impoverished Arabian Peninsula state of Yemen go to the polls to elect a president. The president will not be new -- the incumbent Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has been in power

The June 29 parliamentary elections in Kuwait achieved international media coverage because women were allowed to stand for office and vote for the first time in the sheikhdom. Less well reported were the local political divisions that had brought about elections a year earlier than expected. The results of the

In a June 4 speech marking the anniversary of the death of his predecessor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a warning to the United States in the crisis of over Iran’s nuclear program. “If the Americans make a wrong move toward Iran, the shipment of