Communications

“Gulf rulers have an interest in political stability in Arab countries and energy infrastructure is their opportunity to support it,” said Ilan Zalayat, Gulf researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies and Tel Aviv University's Moshe Dayan Centre. Gulf nations have become increasingly proactive in regional affairs, aiming to foster stability and mediate...

“Gulf rulers have an interest in political stability in Arab countries and energy infrastructure is their opportunity to support it,” said Ilan Zalayat, Gulf researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies and the Tel Aviv University's Moshe Dayan Centre. ...The agreement could reduce Iraq's reliance on power and gas imported from Iran, which supplies about a third...

The Palestinian issue is just one problem. I do not intend to confuse it with Lebanon, Yemen, or Iraq. However, as Prime Minister Netanyahu stated in his speech at the United Nations General Assembly, Iran is responsible for a series of attacks on Israel.

“Bahrain is a small island with a large Shia population, about 50-70%, while the ruling dynasty is Sunni,” explained Ilan Zalayat, a Gulf researcher at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies and at the Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University. Iran, which is also majority Shiite, has been helping its co-religionists in Bahrain to agitate against the country’s...

Yemen’s Ansar Allah organization, better known as the Houthi movement, became a global sensation overnight. Its attacks on vessels beginning on Oct. 19 in the busy Bab al-Mandab strait between Yemen and Africa, the gateway to the Red Sea, disrupted global maritime shipping and prompted a United States and United Kingdom-led counter military response.

Ilan Zalayat, a research fellow at Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security Studies, points to a reform implemented by the Houthis at the start of the war, declaring that almost all products would have to be exported rather than kept in the country for domestic use. "All of a sudden, resources that were already scarce became almost nonexistent," he says.

“Many, many drones,” says Ilan Zalayat, a researcher in the Gulf States Program at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies. “The Houthis specialize in sending large groups of drones that are difficult to intercept. They crash into the target and explode, and this is what’s happening in Ukraine” – sometimes down to the very model, as Russia has been buying...

Ilan Zalayat, a Tel Aviv-based defence and political risk analyst, also assesses that Abu Dhabi does not regret normalisation thanks to the billions in bilateral trade, the boost to its tourism sector, and the strategic air defence systems it received because of the accords. “The UAE knew what they were getting into, fully aware in 2020 that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict...