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James Dorsey

Dr. James M. Dorsey, a non-resident senior associate at the BESA Center, is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University and co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture.

A United Arab Emirates-backed Saudi effort to wrest control from Jordan of Islam’s holy places in Jerusalem signals a sharper, more overt edge to Saudi religious diplomacy.
Protests that forced Jordan’s prime minister to resign, and laid bare the country’s systemic economic and political crisis, shed new light on the root causes of popular protests in the Middle East that swept the region in 2011.
China has long experience circumventing sanctions regimes, but the environment surrounding the reimposed sanctions is likely to be unusually confrontational.
Saudi support for the U.S.-led bid was about more than preserving the kingdom’s alliance with the United States. It appears to be part of an attempt to strong-arm countries into supporting the boycott of Qatar, which has failed to garner international support, and punish those who opposed it.
With agriculture the main culprit in Iran’s inefficient use of water, officials fear that the crisis will accelerate migration from the countryside to urban centers incapable of catering to the migrants, and in turn, increase popular discontent.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman’s top-down approach to social change, which brushes aside Saudi history, rests on shaky ground.