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World leaders and global media have been fully preoccupied with the US-Israeli war on Iran launched at the end of February at the instigation of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. He dragged US President Donald
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Marine Le Pen is set to run in next year’s French presidential election after challenging an embezzlement conviction that had blocked her fourth attempt at office. The leader of the far-right National Rally (RN) party,
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As temperatures continue to rise across the UAE, many delivery riders spend long hours outdoors ensuring the items reach our homes on time.In many neighbourhoods across the UAE, residents have started keeping baskets filled with
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What a great delight the FIFA matches have been this year. Every match has been scintillating. Clearly, the entire concept of FIFA matches is a great marketing success story and case study.Marketers rely on the
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Representative photo of US soldiers. (AFP) On Valentine’s Day 1945, aboard the destroyer USS Quincy anchored in Egypt’s Great Bitter Lake, an ailing Franklin Roosevelt sat across from King Abdulaziz Ibn Saud and struck history’s most consequential handshake in the Gulf: American security guarantees in exchange for reliable oil. Roosevelt later told Congress he had learned more about the Middle East in five minutes with the king than in two or three dozen letters. Eighty-one years later, on 28 February 2026, that bargain was tested as never before, and by most honest accounts, found wanting. That morning, American and Israeli warplanes killed Iran’s Supreme Leader. They opened a war that, within 24 hours, saw Iranian missiles and drones strike all six GCC capitals, along with Amman, Jordan, the first time in history that every Gulf monarchy absorbed direct fire in a single day. The Pentagon’s own forward headquarters at Al Udeid, home to some 10,000 American troops, had already taken a direct hit the previous June, forcing a humiliating evacuation before the wider war even began. Kuwait, which hosts 13,500 US personnel, and Bahrain, home to the Fifth Fleet’s roughly 9,000 personnel, fared no better. The question Gulf capitals and Washington planners now ask, gently in public and bluntly in private, is whether the American security umbrella still covers anyone at all. “No-one in their right mind would ever put the CENTCOM forward headquarters 100 miles away from Iran, yet that’s where it is.” — General Frank McKenzie (ret.), former CENTCOM commander The interception numbers, when disclosed, tell their own story. The UAE says it shot down 165 ballistic missiles and 541 drones in the opening barrage alone, yet 35 drones still got through. Kuwait downed 97 missiles and 283 drones. Saudi Arabia, the region’s largest spender, has not released comparable figures at all. These are not the statistics of a defense architecture; they are the statistics of six countries each improvising on its own under fire. Retired General Frank McKenzie, who commanded CENTCOM until 2022, has answered with rare bluntness. Basing the region’s nerve center a hundred miles from Tehran, he said recently, is something no one in their right mind would do. McKenzie now argues for pulling the “necklace of bases” westward, into Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, putting distance between American forces and Iranian missiles that have only grown faster and more accurate. Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute goes further, arguing that it is time to close US bases in the Middle East, since they have become more of a liability than an asset. Yet the numbers cut against complacency. The six GCC states together spend more than $130 n a year on defence, a sum exceeding the annual budgets of most mid-sized nations, and still could not produce a joint command, a shared radar picture, or common rules of engagement when the missiles came. Each fought its own war in its own airspace, phoning its own American liaison officer. Riyadh’s arsenal cannot speak to Abu Dhabi’s; Doha’s cannot speak to Kuwait’s. Money bought quantity. It did not buy unity. And unity, not hardware, is what small, wealthy, thinly populated states need most when facing a country of ninety million that has spent four decades mastering the art of imposing costs it need never fully absorb itself. Here, the strategist’s oldest warning applies: a vacuum left by a great power is rarely filled by nothing. Riyadh has already begun hedging, signing a mutual defence pact with nuclear-armed Pakistan last September, days after Israeli strikes on Doha rattled the entire peninsula. Muhanad Seloom of the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies captures the Gulf mood more precisely than most: the Gulf states, he writes, are not pivoting to China, nor are they asking the United States to leave; they are simply informing Washington that presence without protection is no longer an acceptable trade. The old bargain, in which hosting brought presence more reliably than protection, has been exposed by weeks of incoming fire. That is the paradox confronting American planners as they eye the Indo-Pacific and a rising China. Every dollar and destroyer redirected toward containing Beijing is a dollar and destroyer not defending Manama or Muscat. But an American withdrawal, however partial, does not return the Gulf to some neutral equilibrium. Though bloodied and besieged by months of conflict, Tehran remains unbowed. It now holds the exact prize eighty years of American bases were designed to deny: absolute proximity to the world’s vital oil chokepoint, resilient staying power, and neighbouring Gulf capitals left with nowhere else to look for leverage. Ibn Saud never asked Roosevelt for democracy or nation-building. He asked for a guarantee that his sovereignty and his oil fields would be protected, and got it, verbally, in the course of a single afternoon. Today’s Gulf rulers are asking a version of the same question with far more urgency, having watched Patriot batteries and THAAD radars strain against Iranian salvos in real time. Washington’s planners can withdraw from the region, redistribute forces westward, or double down, but what they cannot do, if the last war taught anything, is pretend that hosting American troops still automatically means those troops can protect the people hosting them. The Quincy bargain assumed American power was close to absolute. Eight decades and a dozen wars later, that assumption is the one now up for renegotiation. The writer is a prominent news anchor, programme presenter and media instructor.
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US President Donald Trump and FIFA president Gianni Infantino, at the Oval Office of the White House, Washington, on August 22, 2025. (AFP/File Photo) As the 2026 FIFA World Cup enters its final stages, the competition had been going well, both on and off the field. On the pitch, the performance of nations such as Cape Verde and the Democratic Republic of Congo captivated fans and justified the controversial expansion to 48 teams from the previous 32. Thrilling games proved the adage that in all World Cup the football does the talking once the matches begin. Off the pitch, the stadiums were largely full and worries that Immigration and Customs Enforcement might target vulnerable communities at games were unmet, despite a sharp rise in ICE arrests more generally. Above all, US President Donald Trump had refrained from commenting on the games even as the US team performed strongly and won the group to advance to a Round of 32 clash with Bosnia and Herzegovina. While the US cruised to a 2-0 win that marked their first victory in a knockout round since 2002, the game was marred by a red card for star US striker Folarin Balogun, who had scored the opening goal in the match. As anger mounted over the sending off, Trump suddenly took credit for a FIFA decision to suspend Balogun’s one-match ban that freed him to play in the Round of 16 against Belgium. In the furore that followed, a sharp divide opened up between American commentators, who praised FIFA for reversing a harsh decision, and international fans, mainly from Europe, who condemned FIFA president Gianni Infantino for bowing to political pressure. As with so much of the discourse around Trump, there was little in the way of middle ground, as further comments by Trump, calling into question the character of the Brazilian referee who had sent Balogun off, and by Senator Lindsay Graham thanking Trump for intervening, added further fuel to the flames. Belgium’s subsequent 4-1 win dampened the debate, but the events cast a shadow over the 2026 World Cup and Infantino’s leadership. Infantino spent much of the 18 months preceding the World Cup developing a personal relationship with Trump that he may have hoped would translate into political capital during the tournament were it to become necessary to seek Trump’s assistance. And yet, at several critical junctures, this approach appears to have failed, notably when Somali referee Omar Artan was denied entry to the US despite being on the FIFA list of approved referees for the World Cup and in possession of a valid visa. If there was ever an occasion for Infantino to use the relationship he had cultivated with Trump it was then, particularly as Infantino had given assurances in 2025 about access for all participants. The restrictions placed on Iran’s team also reflected poorly on Infantino’s seeming inability to pressure the White House on an issue as basic as ensuring fair treatment of all nations. FIFA will survive the controversies of 2026 although Infantino, who is seeking election for a third term as president, may emerge weakened if UEFA, the European governing body, and individual football federations, such as Norway or Germany, increase their scrutiny of him. The outcome of the vote, to take place at a FIFA Congress in Rabat in March 2027, is hardly in doubt as the expansion of the World Cup and the record levels of revenue expected to be distributed to the 211 member federations has won Infantino widespread support. However, the intensity of European backlash to Infantino may only deepen the splits within world football between ‘legacy’ and ‘frontier’ markets that became so evident and vocal during the 2022 World Cup in Qatar and may be so again ahead of Saudi Arabia in 2034. What is perhaps more unusual is that the brazen nature of Trump’s phone call and appeal to Infantino to reverse Balogun’s red card, while in character for the most transactional and unconventional president in modern times, should have happened at all. Few had Trump and the White House publicly boasting of their role in getting a refereeing decision overturned on their list of potential issues before the tournament began. While it is not the first time that a World Cup has been overshadowed by direct political intervention, the two most direct parallels were long in the past and believed to belong in the history books rather than have any contemporary relevance to the global game in the twenty first century. Thus, the second World Cup, which took place in fascist Italy in 1934, was marred by allegations that Benito Mussolini had intervened to secure favourable refereeing outcomes in Italy’s games in both the quarter-final and the semi-final, although match-fixing was never proven. Forty-four years later, another host nation, Argentina, went into their final game in the second-round group in 1978 needing to beat Peru by a minimum of four goals to advance to their first World Cup final at the expense of great rivals and three-time champions, Brazil. Peru duly lost 6-0 as it emerged that General Videla, the president of military-run Argentina, had visited the Peruvian changing room before the game, again sparking allegations, never fully dispelled, of political interference at the highest level. The lasting significance of Trump’s action, and the perception that it worked, given that the red card was rescinded, may be that it sets a precedent for other leaders who may be tempted to make a similar intervention in future competitions. Already this week, a Labour member of parliament wrote to Britain’s outgoing Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, to request that the government raise with Infantino the red card given to an English player during their Round of 16 game against Mexico. While that particular intervention was frivolous and more of a populist stunt than anything else, a Rubicon has been crossed for political leaders who may seek relief in high-stakes clashes in coming World Cups. It will certainly be harder for FIFA to push back against any such attempts, given the events of the past week, which only further reinforce how sport and politics remain so deeply intertwined. The writer is a leading scholar specialising in Gulf politics and international political economy, and a fellow at the Baker Institute and co-director of the Middle East Energy Roundtable.
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Nations, like men, are measured not by what they inherit but by what they dare to imagine. HH the late Father Amir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, who passed away yesterday at 74, imagined more for Qatar than geography or history had any right to promise — and then, with a builder’s patience and a visionary’s impatience, he delivered it. Consider the country he assumed in June 1995: oil output in decline, a peninsula on the margins of the world’s attention. Consider the country he handed over on June 25, 2013: the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, its GDP multiplied 24-fold, its voice carried into every Arab home by a broadcaster he willed into being, its flag destined to fly over the first World Cup on Arab and Muslim soil. Eighteen years — one lifetime’s ambition compressed into less than a generation. The figures are staggering, but figures were never the point. Sheikh Hamad understood that gas beneath the seabed is merely potential; it becomes destiny only when converted into schools, hospitals, museums and moral standing. Ras Laffan was one monument. Education City another. The Museum of Islamic Art, rising from the water like a prayer in stone, a third. And he understood something rarer: that a small state’s greatest export can be its conscience. The Doha Agreement that pulled Lebanon back from the abyss in 2008. The patient diplomacy between Djibouti and Eritrea, between Palestinian factions, between the Taliban and Washington. And in October 2012, when Gaza suffocated under siege and the world averted its gaze, he became the first head of state to walk its broken streets. Today the flags hang heavy, and grief sits in every Qatari majlis. But grief must share the room with gratitude. The towers of West Bay, the trains beneath Doha, the very confidence with which this nation carries itself — all of it bears his signature. The nation he taught to dream now owes him its finest tribute: to keep dreaming, and to keep building, exactly as he showed us how.May Allah rest his soul in eternal peace.
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It is good news for environmentalists and climate change activists not just in Brazil, in Latin America but across the world. Amazon’s rainforest is the largest carbon container, which helps in combating rising global temperatures
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A pledge by US President Donald Trump to allow Kyiv to produce US Patriot air defence missiles is a victory for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky but it could take at least a year to start producing them, defence experts say. With its chronic shortage of interceptor missiles likely to continue until then, Kyiv faces tough choices over which targets are a priority to defend as Russia keeps pounding its cities and energy infrastructure. Trump’s promise on Wednesday, when he met Zelensky during a Nato summit in Ankara, was a significant gesture of support that marked a huge improvement in their relationship since they clashed at the White House in February 2025. Patriot interceptor missiles are vital for Ukraine’s defence at a time when Zelensky says Russia, whose battlefield advances have stalled, is trying to leverage its advantage in ballistic missiles by hitting Ukraine hard. The Patriot is the only weapon in Kyiv’s arsenal capable of stopping Russian ballistic missiles. Ukraine has brought down only four of the 54 much-faster ballistic missiles launched by Russia this month. But Trump’s pledge was vague. He acknowledged he had not spoken first to the companies that manufacture Patriot interceptors — Lockheed Martin and Raytheon. Experts say the time needed to build an assembly plant and organise contractors means production of Patriot PAC-2 interceptors made by Raytheon, or the more sophisticated PAC-3 from Lockheed, will not start soon enough to ease Ukraine’s situation in the near future. “Short term, the impact will be very limited,” said Fabian Hoffmann, a missile expert at the Norwegian Institute for Defense Studies in Oslo. “I would be very surprised if this is faster than 12 months. I would assume significantly longer.” By way of comparison, Raytheon reached an agreement with European weapons manufacturer MBDA in 2024 to produce GEM-T interceptors for the PAC-2 system in Germany and the first deliveries are not expected before early 2027. Conversations for PAC-3 production in Germany have so far not borne fruit. A Lockheed Martin spokesperson said the company was focused on supporting the US government and its allies, and said further comments on the proposal should be addressed to the White House. Raytheon did not respond immediately to a request for comment. Production outside Ukraine?Ukraine has managed to fast-track military development in the war since Russia’s 2022 invasion, but defence experts say building a system to down missiles travelling at several times the speed of sound is the toughest challenge in missile technology. Serhii Beskrestnov, an advisor to Ukraine’s defense ministry, said on Telegram there was uncertainty over how long it would take subcontractors to scale production of scarce components. One country that might be able to help Kyiv accelerate the process is Germany, which has developed a domestic production chain for PAC-2 interceptors. Two sources familiar with the discussions said the new interceptors were likely to be manufactured in Germany or another European country, where it is safer, and production could be shifted to Ukraine when the war ends. Zelensky said on Thursday technical teams would hammer out the details as quickly as possible but that he wanted production to start “in Ukraine as soon as possible.” He said a shipment of PAC-3 interceptors from the US was expected in “coming days”. He has also asked other allies to provide missiles from their own stockpiles and under a Nato-coordinated financial arrangement providing for European allies and Canada to transfer funds to the US to procure US-made weapons for Ukraine. Patriot missiles are not being produced in sufficient quantities to cope with Russia’s ballistic threat, as Russia is producing at least 700-800 Iskander ground-launched and Kinzhal hypersonic air-launched ballistic missiles a year, experts say. Working on the principle that three Patriots are needed per ballistic missile to ensure an interception, they estimate some 2,400 interceptors would be needed per year if Russia’s output remains stable. “Even with a licensed production facility in Ukraine, reaching that number will be very, very difficult, if not impossible,” Hoffmann said. Lockheed delivered just over 600 PAC-3s last year and is aiming to scale its production to around 2,000 by 2030. A Ukrainian plant might produce 200 to 300 interceptors a year, Hoffmann said. Plan B needed?Zelensky has said Ukraine needs a Plan B. “The only right option is an alternative to the PAC-3,” Zelensky said on Wednesday. He hopes European allies involved in a nascent missile defense project called Freya, being led by Ukrainian company Fire Point, will soon meet in France. Fire Point is asking European companies to provide radar, data uplink and seeker solutions to bolt on to its existing missile technology, and hopes to have a cheaper alternative to the Patriot ready before year-end. “Fire Point’s Freya project is a long shot but if it works, the reward is enormous,” said Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute think tank in London. Watling said there were other European options that should be feasible, such as the SAMP/T NG system developed by Eurosam - a joint venture of MBDA and France’s Thales — which he said would just need some technical adjustment and calibration of its radar. Zelensky said on Thursday he hoped Ukraine would receive these systems from France soon. Kyiv has previously floated the possibility of a truce on long-range attacks but Moscow rejected this. Zelensky has also sought to bring Russia to the negotiating table by attacking its energy infrastructure, sometimes deep in Russia. Kyiv’s choices look stark as Russia bombards Ukraine. “You can only defend a very small number of the targets that you would like to defend, so you need to figure out which ones those are,” Hoffmann said. Ukraine aims to increase the protection of energy, manufacturing and military infrastructure by placing them in protective concrete structures or underground, but Hoffmann said its best option may be to go more heavily on the attack. — Reuters
