MER Article The Gulf Comes Down to Earth Between the summer of 2008 and the beginning of 2009, oil prices plummeted from a high of $147 per barrel to a low of $33. This extraordinary reversal of fortune announced the end of the second oil boom for the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) -- Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Ar Kristen Smith Diwan, Fareed Mohamedi • 21 min read
MER Article Oil Prices and Regime Resilience in the Gulf The steady summertime creep of oil prices past $40 per barrel and over an unprecedented $45 surprised most oil analysts, including this one, who were expecting the price to drop after the US-led invasion of Iraq. But no one is likely to have been as stunned as the Bush administration policymakers, l Fareed Mohamedi • 8 min read
MER Article World Oil Markets and the Invasion of Iraq George W. Bush's regime-changing war in Iraq is widely seen as an oil war -- a grab for the second-largest petroleum reserves in the world. In the minds of many, this interpretation was confirmed when the United States pressed for, and secured, a UN resolution giving the US-British Raad Alkadiri, Fareed Mohamedi • 22 min read
MER Article Washington Makes Its Case for War After months of internal debate within the Bush administration -- and in the media -- over how the United States intends to remove Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq, the focus of deliberations has shifted. As military action appears more imminent, serious questions are suddenly being raised about the Raad Alkadiri, Fareed Mohamedi • 10 min read
MER Article The Decline (But Not Fall) of US Hegemony in the Middle East Americans who voted for “compassionate conservatism” in the November 2000 presidential election have been disappointed. George W. Bush has proven to be much more radical than his moderate campaign rhetoric implied. In the area of environmental policy, Bush’s moves to lift regulations on pollutants, Fareed Mohamedi, Yahya Sadowski • 32 min read
MER Article Oil, Gas and the Future of Arab Gulf Countries The political and economic structures of the Arab Gulf countries have been surprisingly resistant to change. The resilience of the “old political deal” between royal families and traditional elites -- the ‘ulama’, tribal leaders, urban merchants and technocrats -- can be attributed to three main factors. First, the institutional, tribal Fareed Mohamedi • 11 min read
MER Article The Saudis, the French and the Embargo The successful maintenance of a near total embargo on Iraq owes to a number of factors, ranging from geography to post-Cold War global economies. Iraq’s limited access to the sea can be easily monitored, while its record of regional aggression has deprived Baghdad of local friends. Despite some brea Roger Diwan, Fareed Mohamedi • 6 min read
MER Article Paris, Washington, Algiers The prospect of an Islamist victory in Algeria has alarmed French policymakers and politicians across the political spectrum. The French right, from the National Front's Jean Le Pen to Gaullist Interior Minister Charles Pasqua have, in varying degrees, raised the specter of Algerian “boat people” sw Roger Diwan, Fareed Mohamedi • 4 min read
MER Article The Saudi Economy: A Few Years Yet Until Doomsday The word seems to be getting around: Saudi Arabia confronts a set of uncomfortable and unwelcome economic choices that will affect the royal family’s relations with its own citizen-subjects and with its big power allies in the West. For the past two decades, the kingdom’s treasury has served Fareed Mohamedi • 10 min read
MER Article State and Bourgeoisie in the Persian Gulf It is a widely held myth that Gulf businessmen accumulated their fabulous wealth by using traditional commercial acumen and guile refined over generations. Undoubtedly in a few cases this is true, but most businessmen in the modern, post-oil Gulf made their money less glamorously. For some, the vehicle was land Fareed Mohamedi • 8 min read
MER Article OPEC Since the Gulf War Since August 1990, OPEC has been living in a dream world. For the last year and a half, 6 million barrels per day (bpd) of production capacity have been off the market: Iraqi output has been embargoed, Kuwait’s oil facilities were destroyed and the largest non-OPEC producer, the former Fareed Mohamedi • 7 min read
MER Article How Israel Gets Its Credit Rating A “C” rating from the US government credit evaluators, coming after Washington has held up the $10 billion loan guarantee for more than four months, must come as something of a shock for Israel. Only last September Jacob Frenkel, governor of the Bank of Israel, told the Financial Times that a “good Fareed Mohamedi • 4 min read
