Saudi Arabia

As the state toys with a cultural opening at home, it is beginning to embrace the power of the arts to improve the country’s image abroad.

The Gulf states are acknowledging a difficult truth: the oil and gas–powered, state-led economic development model that lifted them from isolation and poverty less than a century ago must change. Times, and Gulf societies, have changed. A new Saudi push for economic reform is an admission that the state can no longer provide everything for...

OPEC’s oil ministers and technical experts have been holding marathon consultations on the parameters for a production-cut agreement leading up to the ministerial council meeting on November 30 in Vienna, with optimism among the group building that a formal deal is now possible. In a significant shift from its market share strategy of the past...

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry ignited hopes again this week that Yemen’s protracted war may come to a negotiated end, when he announced upon arriving in Abu Dhabi that both the armed Houthi insurgency and the Saudi-led military coalition have agreed to a cessation of hostilities to begin November 17. Whether this comes to...

On November 10, AGSIW held a conversation with Prince Turki Al Faisal Al Saud, former Saudi ambassador to the United States. Following the surprising election of Donald Trump as president of the United States, the discussion focused on the future of U.S.-Saudi relations and the challenges facing a new administration in the region. Prince Turki’s...

This post is part of an AGSIW series on Saudi Vision 2030, a sweeping set of programs and reforms adopted by the Saudi government to be implemented by 2030. Saudi Arabia’s unprecedented bond sale to international investors raised $17.5 billion in October. The timing was impeccable. Given Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election, markets could be...

On July 4, during the holy month of Ramadan, a suicide bomber approached one of the most important sites of Islam, the Prophet Muhammad’s mosque in the city of Medina. Responsibility for the attack, which killed four security officers, was later claimed by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). As the news...

This post is part of an AGSIW series on Saudi Vision 2030, a sweeping set of programs and reforms adopted by the Saudi government to be implemented by 2030. Accessing diverse funding sources is front and center of Saudi Arabia’s new policy reform, which propelled the kingdom to issue its first international $17.5 billion bond offering on October...