Let me say this from the outset, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is no friend of mine. It was there that I was arrested in 2018 on baseless allegations that I was spying for my country, the UK, and there that I was tortured and sentenced to life imprisonment (an experience suffered by innumerable other foreigners and Emiratis...
Faced with draconian Western tech sanctions, Russia has turned to a reliable ally — the United Arab Emirates. The Arab country should end this dishonorable trade. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the UAE has entrenched its friendship with Moscow. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently awarded the UAE’s Ambassador to Russia Mohammed al Jaber the Order...
“The Gulfies play the blob like a fiddle,” a U.S. intelligence official told The Intercept. AMID MOUNTING GLOBAL criticism of his invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin took time on March 1 for a call with a counterpart who has proved himself increasingly reliable: Mohammed bin Zayed, crown prince of Abu Dhabi and the de...
Russia had to settle for the Chinese Yuan while receiving payments from India for its energy exports as Moscow found the Indian Rupee to be ‘volatile’, Sergey Luzyanin said Dirham, the currency of the United Arab Emirates, could be considered for India-Russia trade, a leading Russian economic commentator said on Wednesday. Speaking at an interaction of...
“Mediapart reveals that a private Swiss Detective agency sent the names of a thousand Europeans to the Abu Dhabi intelligence services, qualifying them, often wrongly, as Islamists having close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Among the victims of this absurd filing are Benoît Hamon, Samia Ghali, the CNRS and the La France insoumise mouvement. “A...
One targeted company, Industrial Resources General Trading, is a Dubai-based company sanctioned for importing gold from the Central African Republic and paying the Russian mercenary outfit in cash sent directly to Moscow. It is the first Emirati company sanctioned in relation to Wagner. OFAC previously targeted another United Arab Emirates (UAE) based firm, Kratol Aviation, for...
Chinese Overseas Police Service Stations are known to be present in Israel and the UAE. However, their specific locations, functions, and extent are shrouded in secrecy. China’s footprint in the Middle East has grown significantly over the past two decades. The region has become central to China’s foreign policy within the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)...
Saudi Arabia and UAE’s rivalry intensifies in race for foreign investments. The two Gulf neighbors have reached the point where they are enacting laws that contravene their common Gulf Cooperation Council goals. Intense competition between Gulf Cooperation Council members and geographical neighbors Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to attract foreign investments and foreign billionaires has...
Marking a decade since the United Arab Emirates (UAE) authorities sentenced 60 members of Emirati civil society to lengthy prison terms in a mass trial, Heba Morayef, Amnesty International’s Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, said: “Although we are halfway through the year in which the UAE is in the international spotlight...
In a recent address to global climate envoys, the Emirati President of Cop28 Sultan Al Jaber proclaimed that the United Arab Emirates had “embraced the energy transition.” The speech was the fore-runner to the start of a typically slick public relations campaign, with the UAE’s Minister of Climate Change Mariam Almheiri telling Reuters that the world is...