Happy New Year 1, January 2010
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Random.Tags: Blogs, Happy new year, Migrant workers, New Year, RUSI
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So it’s 2010. How very strange. Here’s hoping that everyone has an interesting, productive and entertaining 2010.
I start this year in Doha and assume that I’ll end it in London, though it’s hard to tell. Come ‘this’ post in 365 days I wonder what I’ll be blathering on about? I guess by then I’ll have written a few tens of thousands of words on my PhD (or at least, I better have..) and will have met at least one Qatari foreign minister official-type person, thin on the ground as they are.
This year, thinking briefly in retrospect, I’m most pleased with my article on migrant workers in Kuwait, my Iranian-British relations piece for RUSI and – should they ever be published… – the two book chapters that I’ve written for edited works. Here’s hoping that things continue to progress in a similar fashion.
My blog has – thanks to your kind and appreciated patronage – been going from strength to strength. Viewing figures (if that’s the correct phrase) has been going up at a 45 degree angle month on month from around 550 per month in January 2009 to 7400 in December 2009. This kind of trajectory is extremely pleasing and it’s got me hooked for, I would guess, the long-term. Please keep your comments coming, they’re always interesting and just about always useful and insightful! So far, since the start of the blog (I can’t isolate yearly figures) I’ve written 466 posts in 36 categories with 1,498 tags generating 338 comments, in case you’re curious.
Anyway. Once again, a merry new year all around.
David
The structure of Iranian politics 20, December 2009
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Iran, UK.Tags: Britain, British sailors, Iran, Iranian UK relations, RUSI, RUSI Qatar
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Powerful structural forces inside Iran, not individual personalities, have brought Tehran to the brink of confrontation with the international community over its nuclear programme. Hope lies with closer US-Iran contacts – but this will come at the expense of even greater tensions with Britain and Israel….
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The article was published by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). Do go have a read…
On the 4th Gulf War 10, September 2009
Posted by thegulfblog.com in American ME Relations, Iran, The Gulf.Tags: 4th Gulf War, future Gulf War, Iran US conflict, RUSI
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RUSI have a commentary by Dr. Neil Partrick on the Gulf States and the 4th Gulf War. Whilst there is nothing particularly new in this assessment, it nevertheless eloquently and intelligently sums up the issues in question regarding a possible future conflict between, broadly speaking, the US and Iran and all that that would involve for the Gulf States.
The Gulf blog 