Saudi Arabia

Stereotypes live long. One of them is the crucial role of Saudi oil in the world markets. This would be normally illustrated by the fact that, when thanks to collusion between the USA and Riyadh the price for one barrel of oil plummeted to 10 dollars in 1986, this had a massive impact...

Despite this experience, which has so far been more or less fortunate for the Saudis, the initiative to create a military and political union, and particularly on the anti-Iranian basis, had received a cold shoulder in many countries...

The summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council Standardization Organization (GSO, which concluded on 11 December in Kuwait, had been planned by Saudi diplomacy as the triumph of its regional policy. Riyadh had been persistently and obstinately trying...