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The cold war in the desert may become a new medium term reality for the Gulf and wider Middle East as both sides become more entrenched in their positions.
Qatar has refused a Saudi authored ultimatum whose contents were leaked to the press. A Qatari official has called the ultimatum “unrealistic” and “unreasonable” and it is not difficult to see why as capitulation to Saudi Arabia’s demands would essentially reduce Qatar to the status of a Saudi client state.

Donald Trump made a startling admission in a speech to his supporters in Iowa earlier this week.
The US president continued his unique brand of personal communication with the American electorate by holding a rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on Wednesday.
Near the conclusion of his speech to an enthusiastic crowd, Trump turned to discussion of his first foreign tour, which saw him meeting with the heads of 54 Muslim countries in the Saudi capital of Riyadh:

Today is Quds Day, an event organised by The Islamic Republic of Iran to demonstrate support for the Palestinian people who since 1948 have suffered under occupation in the once and future multi-religious and multi-ethnic nation of Palestine.

Russiagate is fundamentally about two things and neither have anything to do with anyone in the American elite actually believing that Russia had any impact on the US election whatsoever. Those who say that Russia had an influence on the US election are merely providing the bread and circuses to distract the attention of the wider world, including many in Russia from the actual motivation driving the seemingly never-ending scandal.
1. American Geo-political Decline 

The Polish Sejm (Parliament) has just passed a law ordering the destruction of Soviet war memorials throughout Poland.
The Soviet Army liberated Poland after years of brutal Nazi occupation beginning in 1939. This is a fact of history seemingly lost on modern Polish politicians. Soviet war memorials appear in many countries where the Red Army helped to liberate occupied lands from the fascist aggressors. They stand as a tribute to the 27 million Soviet citizens who made the ultimate sacrifice in the war against Hitler’s wicked ideology.

Imagine a journalist who was scheduled to interview Charles Manson and didn’t ask a single question about the infamous Manson Family Murders? Such a person probably wouldn’t be consider a very good journalist to avoid scrutinising a man famous only for an act of criminality, on that act of criminality.
But what if another journalist is set to interview a head of state about his thoughts, his life and his times? Surely this would be less of a cross-examination that a respectful meeting where a leader is allowed to discuss openly his most compelling thoughts?

For centuries Ottoman Turkey ruled the Balkans and this colonial past has not been forgotten, particularly among Orthodox Christians in southern Europe.

King Salman, the leader of the Saudi regime has changed the succession to the throne bypassing now former Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef in favour of newly appointed Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Salman is widely seen as the man responsible for Saudi’s increasingly radical and destabilising foreign policy moves including the Saudi war on Yemen and the increased covert funding to Salafist terror groups. Many also claim that he is the architect of the current boycott of fellow Gulf Cooperation Council member state Qatar.

While many were wondering if somehow the beleaguered, bumbling war criminal leader of the Ukrainian regime Petro Poroshenko could some how convince Donald Trump to change his generally positive views about Russia, the truth is that the meeting could have been described as ‘useless’ before it even happened.
The truth of the matter is that Trump’s Russia policies will not be defined by ideology, it won’t be defined by the Russophobia of the fledgling regime in Kiev and it may not even be defined by Donald Trump’s own views.

Back in April, in the immediate aftermath of the US cruise missile attack on Syria’s Al-Shayrat air base, Russia retaliated by switching off the ‘de-confliction’ hotline between the US and Russian militaries in Syria, which enables these militaries to avoid accidental clashes with each other.