MUST-READS

• Saudi Arabia cracks down on employers over health insurance violations
  The Saudi Arabia Council of Health Insurance (CHI) has announced penalties against several employers for failing to meet mandatory health insurance obligations for their employees and their eligible family members. These actions follow previous warnings urging compliance with Saudi Arabia’s Health Insurance Law. Under Article 14 of the law, employers who fail to provide health coverage or neglect to pay insurance premiums must settle any outstanding amounts and may face additional fines. The penalties can reach up to the equivalent of an annual premium per insured individual. In certain cases, noncompliant employers may also be restricted from hiring new workers on a temporary or permanent basis.

• Nazaha arrests 158 ministry employees over corruption charges

  The Oversight and Anti-Corruption Authority (Nazaha) officials have arrested 158 employees of various ministries over corruption charges during the last month of January. Some of the arrested employees were released on bail. Those who were arrested included employees of the Ministries of Interior, Defense, National Guard, Justice, Health, Education, Commerce, and Municipalities and Housing. They were accused of charges including bribery and abuse of office. The Nazaha said that it has carried out 1076 inspection tours during the last month and that resulted in carrying out investigations against 396 suspects. The authority initiated a number of administrative and criminal cases following the inspection raids.

• Early days of Trump 2.0 signal major Middle East policy shift to transactional diplomacy

  Just eleven days into his second presidency, Donald Trump has returned to a “completely inverted” Middle East, where his signature America First policy faces new regional complexities, from Gaza’s humanitarian crisis to shifting alliances in Syria. Trump’s early moves signal a three-fold strategy: ending current conflicts in Palestine and Lebanon, confronting Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and deepening US-Gulf economic integration, according to analysts familiar with the administration’s approach. “For America First to be effective, the globe has to be stable. Wars and flashpoints come in the way of trade and commerce—the last thing Trump wants,” said Abishur Prakash, founder of The Geopolitical Business Inc. “For the Middle East, this means a new kind of US involvement, to stamp out the fires and restore regional and global stability.”

• Turkey exploits post-9/11 counterterrorism model to target critics in exile

  The abductions were the latest of more than 118 “renditions” that Turkey’s intelligence service, MIT, has orchestrated over the past decade, according to the spy agency’s website, making it one of the most aggressive practitioners of such extralegal operations. In Nairobi, MIT relied on Kenyan government operatives to carry out the abductions and was able to bypass Kenyan courts, according to the Western security officials who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive operation.

• ‘Things are really changing for them’: Why explorer known as ‘Indiana Jones for girls’ is walking across Saudi Arabia

  She’s been described as the “Indiana Jones for girls,” and after becoming the first woman to walk the full length of the Draa River in Morocco, UK explorer Alice Morrison is embarking on a new challenge — walking across Saudi Arabia. Accompanied by camels and local guides, Morrison will traverse through deserts and mountains during the 2,500-kilometer journey, which will take around five months in total. “It’s a massive adventure,” Morrison, who has been walking around 25 kilometers (15 miles) a day, tells CNN Travel via Zoom. “I seek challenge, knowledge and connection. And I think you get all of those doing what I do.” Morrison, who speaks fluent Arabic, concedes that she isn’t necessarily a typical explorer, and was actually working as a CEO of a media development company up until 2011.

• Top Saudi diplomat says Trump administration is not looking for war with Iran

  The top Saudi diplomat on Tuesday played down fears that the incoming Trump administration was looking for war with Iran and called on Tehran to engage with the US to address the issue of its nuclear weapon program. “I don’t see the incoming US administration as contributory to the risk of war. On the contrary, I think President Trump has been quite clear that he does not favor conflict,” Prince Faisal bin Farhan said at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos. Prince Faisal admitted that the Middle East was abundant in risk factors, but it also had huge potential. “I hope that the [Trump administration’s] approach will be met, also on the Iranian side, by addressing the issue of the nuclear program, by being willing to engage with the incoming administration in a way that can help us stay on track with this positive momentum,” he said.

• Saudi Crown Prince MBS Moves to Exploit Vacuum Left By Iran

  The oil-rich kingdom and its 39-year-old leader — who backed Aoun to get the presidency — are emerging as one of the biggest winners in the fallout of the 15-month conflict in Gaza, which has tilted the balance of power in the Middle East against its longtime rival Iran. As a fragile ceasefire deal came into effect on Sunday, Tehran’s influence has been crippled, for now: its proxies in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories decimated, its Syrian ally Bashar al-Assad deposed and its enemy Israel emboldened. Saudi Arabia is wasting no time filling the void. "This is a clash between an ambitious young man who realizes the world is changing and an elderly cleric clinging to an outdated ideology that brought him to power," says Mustafa Fahs, a Beirut-based commentator who hails from a clerical family critical of the Islamic Republic, referring to the Saudi crown prince and Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, respectively.

• Diplomacy Is All Hamas Has Left in the Arsenal

  A major concession for Hamas was to accept that many of its key cadres will now stay indefinitely in Israeli prisons. In any case, the militant Islamist group is no longer the same organization that launched the October 7, 2023, massacre. Its battalions have been smashed; all that is left is a ragtag insurgency capable only of hit-and-run tactics. The group’s arsenal is greatly depleted; its fighters have fallen back on improvised explosive devices assembled from unexploded Israeli ordinance. The top tier of Hamas’s military leadership has been eliminated, leaving two relatively inexperienced and junior commanders—Ezz al-Din Hadad in the north and Mohamed Sinwar, younger brother of the October 7 attack’s mastermind, Yahya Sinwar, in the south.

• Saudi Arabia grants exploratory rights to six mining sites

  The Saudi Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources has allocated mineral exploration rights for six mining sites with a combined size of 890 sq km, according to the Saudi Press Agency. The combined cost of the concessions was SAR126 million ($33.6 million), and companies are obliged to spend an additional SAR9 million to develop communities near the sites. The largest concession, Jabal Baydan (244 sq km), which is in the Hijaz Mountains and thought to contain copper, gold, zinc, silver and lead, was granted to the Canadian company Power Nickel.

• Saudi Arabia Plans to Deploy 48GWh of Battery Storage by 2030

  According to foreign media reports, the Saudi Power Procurement Company (SPPC) has officially announced the list of prequalified bidders for its first battery energy storage system (BESS) procurement. The state-owned enterprise revealed on December 30 the companies selected for its upcoming Build-Own-Operate (BOO) model tender for a 2GW/8GWh energy storage system. The list of successful bidders includes prominent companies from the Middle East and abroad, such as Masdar, headquartered in Dubai, Saudi Arabia's ACWA Power, and France's EDF and TotalEnergies. Leading renewable energy and energy storage companies from China, South Korea, and Japan are also among the selected bidders. A total of 33 companies passed the qualification review for the tender, with 21 applying to provide technology and manage the BESS and the remaining 12 focusing solely on system management.

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