Stunning modern architecture in Riyadh with curved buildings and a central stairway. by Sena Tohum via Pexels
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2nd Desert Architecture – Saudi Arabia forum to bring architecture, innovation and urban transformation to the forefront
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Forum brings architects, developers, planners and government stakeholders together to explore how Saudi heritage, climate intelligence and innovation can shape the next generation of sustainable cities
Press Release
Published 28 September 2026
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As Saudi Arabia continues one of the most ambitious periods of urban development in its history, architects, planners, developers and industry leaders will gather in Riyadh for the 2nd Desert Architecture KSA Forum, taking place from 12–13 October 2026 at the Radisson Blu Hotel & Convention Center, Riyadh Minhal. Image courtesy: 2nd Desert Architecture KSA Forum
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: As Saudi Arabia continues one of the most ambitious periods of urban development in its history, architects, planners, developers and industry leaders will gather in Riyadh for the 2nd Desert Architecture KSA Forum, taking place from 12–13 October 2026 at the Radisson Blu Hotel & Convention Center, Riyadh Minhal.
The two-day forum will focus on the convergence of heritage, sustainability, technology and contemporary design as the Kingdom looks to create cities and destinations that respond intelligently to the desert environment while retaining a distinctive Saudi architectural identity.
Aligned with Saudi Vision 2030, the forum will place particular emphasis on climate-responsive and culturally grounded architecture and the role of the Saudi Architectural Map, which encompasses 19 regional architectural styles reflecting the Kingdom’s different climates, landscapes, materials and cultural traditions.
The discussion comes against the backdrop of an extraordinary development pipeline. According to figures highlighted by the Desert Architecture Forum, Saudi Arabia has more than US$1.3 trillion in active projects spanning real estate, hospitality, cultural districts, government facilities and infrastructure, with 5,200-plus developments in the pipeline. The event website also points to more than 470 urban masterplans being revised in alignment with the Architectural Map’s directives, while 13 regional municipalities and 28 government entities are integrating the architectural identity framework into planning, approvals and design briefs.
Against this rapidly evolving landscape, the forum will examine how lessons embedded in traditional desert architecture can work alongside advanced engineering, materials and technology to deliver environments that are both resilient and comfortable.
Husain Buhwaid, Senior Development Director, Misk City, said: “Desert Architecture Forum 2026 edition will be a key platform for essential dialogue among architects, planners, and leaders in the Kingdom not only about iconic architecture but also creating even more sustainable and livable urban environments with traditional solutions and engineered systems.”
Husain Buhwaid will participate in the opening panel discussion, “Building the Architectural Identity of Saudi Arabia Through the Saudi Architectural Map,” which will examine how the Kingdom’s 19 regional architectural styles can inform its future built environment. Discussions will explore the integration of regional culture, climate-responsive design and heritage into modern architectural practice, as well as the alignment of national design frameworks with giga-projects, urban transformation and Vision 2030.
The wider programme reflects the growing recognition that designing successfully for desert environments involves considerably more than creating visually striking landmarks.
The Forum’s second day will broaden the conversation from individual buildings to the evolution of entire desert cities. Sessions will examine how climate intelligence, policy, infrastructure and long-term urban planning can help establish desert cities as models for sustainable development. The programme will also address regenerative tourism, exploring how architecture can work with landscapes, heritage and local communities to create destinations that strengthen rather than diminish their surrounding environments.
The speaker line-up brings together expertise from government, development, academia, architecture and urban planning, with representatives from organisations including Misk City, ROSHN Group, Red Sea Global, AlUla Development Company, Diriyah Company, King Salman Park Foundation, Aseer Development Authority, Madinah Region Development Authority, Saudi Building Code Centre, Prince Sultan University and the the Royal Commission for AlUla, alongside leading international architectural and design practices like Foster + Partners, ZHA Architects, Gmp, Herzog & de Meuron, RMJM, Snohetta.
Press release issued on behalf of GM Events by Coral Coast Public Relations. For press inquiries, please connect with Verna on +971581544378 or verna@coralcoastpr.com . For event inquiries, contact Aashutosh on aashutosh@gmevents.ae . For a detailed agenda, speaker lineup, and registration information, visit https://desertarchitectureforumksa.com/
Also this week: world leaders speak up about climate change at the UN General Assembly in New York; a record-breaking Atlantic hurricane season (but not what you think).
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This week, the Guardian released a bombshell investigation into how fossil fuel interests are penetrating the world’s most authoritative scientific body on climate change. Let’s talk about it.
The IPCC, or Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is a United Nations body founded in 1988 to advance scientific knowledge about human-caused climate change and to “provide governments at all levels with scientific information that they can use to develop climate policies.” It does so through comprehensive scientific assessments, published every five to seven years, which inform policymakers on the climate crisis and its potential future risks, and put forward adaptation and mitigation recommendations.
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The IPCC does not conduct its own research – rather, its job is to gather experts from various fields, who then study the thousands of scientific papers on climate science published each year and summarize them into comprehensive reports. Once completed, the reports are thoroughly reviewed in plenary sessions by UN member states, who need to approve and adopt them.
During plenary sessions, which take place at least once a year, the hundreds of attendees from relevant ministries, agencies, and research institutions from both member countries and observer organizations also decide on the IPCC’s budget and work program as well as the scope and outline of its upcoming reports.
Over 8,000 experts from nearly all countries in the world have volunteered their time to the IPCC assessment cycles – with six completed to date. They put together dozens of reports on various climate-related topics, including more than a dozen so-called “Special Reports” on topics agreed to by its member governments, ranging from the impacts of aviation and land-use change to carbon dioxide capture and storage, renewable energy, and managing the risks of extreme weather events.
Each assessment cycle concludes with the publishing of an Assessment Report, covering the state of scientific, technical, and socio-economic knowledge on climate change, its impacts and future risks, and strategies to mitigate or adapt to them. They come in four parts – a contribution from each of the three IPCC Working Groups, plus a Synthesis Report, which includes a Summary for Policymakers.
Covers of the first and latest IPCC Assessment Reports. Image: IPCC/screenshots.
Overall, each report has delivered increasingly stark warnings, painting a clear picture of accelerating global warming, escalating climate impacts, and a rapidly narrowing window for effective action. The IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report, its most recent, delivered a “final warning” to countries to invest in mitigation and adaptation projects upon which “the magnitude and rate of climate change and associated risks” strongly depend:
It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. The scale of recent changes across the climate system as a whole … are unprecedented over many centuries to many thousands of years. Global warming of 1.5C and 2C will be exceeded during the 21st century unless deep reductions in carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gas emissions occur in the coming decades.
Conflict of interest?
Across the scientific community, the IPCC’s work is broadly viewed as the most comprehensive and reliable assessment of the climate crisis, undergoing “more scrutiny than any other documents in the history of science.” It was even awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for its “efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.”
This week, the authority the UN body has built over many decades came into question.
The Guardian investigation, carried out in partnership with a team of international journalists with the support of Journalismfund Europe, identified 20 cases “with strong conflict of interest concerns.” Of these, 11 were IPCC lead authors with ties to Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest petroleum company; Saudi-funded universities and research institutions; and other fossil fuel interests. The remaining cases involved experts from other nations linked to industry collaborations, fossil-fuel sponsorship of academic research, environmental campaigning, and sustainable finance.
The journalists looked at the 223 lead authors in Working Group III, which is tasked with exploring emission reduction and removal strategies, policies and technologies (Working Groups I and II cover the science surrounding climate change and the impacts). The group is currently working on the Seventh Assessment Report, scheduled for release by late 2029.
Experts interviewed about the findings do not recall ever seeing such a heavy presence of people with Saudi ties within the institution and argue they would be in breach of the IPCC’s Conflict of Interest Policy.
The Conflict of Interest Policy was adopted in 2011 following mistakes in its major reports and allegations of financial conflicts involving Rajendra Pachauri, who served as the IPCC’s chairman from 2002 to 2015. As per the IPCC website:
The overall purpose of the Conflict of Interest Policy is to protect the legitimacy, integrity, trust, and credibility of the IPCC and of those directly involved in the preparation of reports, and its activities. The staff of the IPCC Secretariat is subject to the disclosure and ethics policies of the WMO and UNEP. For the purposes of the IPCC Conflict of Interest Policy, individuals must disclose circumstances that could lead a reasonable person to question an individual’s objectivity, or whether an unfair advantage has been created, constitute a potential conflict of interest.
According to an IPCC member interviewed for the investigation, at least one IPCC member, Mustafa Babiker, had declared his role as a consultant for Saudi Aramco on the IPCC’s conflict of interest form. And yet the latest Conflict of Interest (COI) Committee meeting, held this February, noted “with appreciation” that a review of all forms submitted by all the IPCC Bureau and Task Force Bureau members found “no conflict of interest.” Crucially, these forms are never made public, and the COI Committee provides no details regarding its deliberations.
Saudi Aramco is part of the Carbon Majors, a group of around 100 private and state-owned companies that have been responsible for a significant proportion of global industrial greenhouse gas emissions since the Industrial Revolution. It ranked first for emissions in 2024, with a global carbon dioxide emissions share of 4.28%.
At least two of the 14 lead authors for the chapter on energy systems, which looks at ways to reduce emissions across the board, also have ties to Saudi Aramco. They are Diego Armando Moya Pinta, who has worked as an energy and sustainability scientist at the company since 2022, and Professor Zain Yamani from King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, who, the Guardian says, “was conducting joint research with Aramco’s New Energies Research Division during the past year while also serving in his IPCC role.”
The list goes on. Dr Malak Al-Nory, a senior adviser to the Saudi energy ministry, also serves as one of Working Group III’s seven vice-chairs, a job that requires her to evaluate authors’ conflict of interest disclosures, among other tasks. Saudi Arabia, the quintessential petrostate, holds the second-largest proven oil reserves in the world, with the government depending on oil and gas revenues for much of its income and export earnings.
Malak Al-Nory representing Saudi Arabia at COP26 in Glasgow. Photo: Malak Al-Nory. Ph.D via LinkedIn.
The nation is part of a broader coalition of fossil fuel-friendly states that have long campaigned against phasing them out at UN climate negotiations, instead pushing for technological climate solutions like carbon capture and storage, which is widely seen as a necessary but limited tool in the fight against climate change.
Professor Hussein Hoteit from the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Thuwal, Saudi Arabia, was conducting research on underground carbon storage that was heavily funded by Saudi Aramco when he was appointed as a lead author on the IPCC chapter on carbon dioxide removal technologies. Working Group III also includes five authors from the King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center (KAPSARC), a think-tank funded by the Saudi government and chaired by the country’s energy minister, whose stated mission is to “advance Saudi Arabia’s energy sector.” The appointments make KAPSARC the most represented institution in the group, alongside Imperial College London and Vienna’s International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, according to the Guardian investigation.
Reclaiming integrity
At a time when anti-climate rhetoric is gaining political traction worldwide and public trust in multilateral bodies is hitting historic lows – particularly in the US – revelations like these are catastrophic for science communication. When international institutions like the UN and the IPCC suffer from perceived or actual regulatory capture by the very industries driving planetary degradation, it hands fuel to climate skeptics and isolationist political movements seeking to dismantle international climate agreements altogether.
If the world’s gold standard for climate science loses its perceived independence, the fallout will extend far beyond academic debates. It risks undermining the fragile global consensus required to fund energy transitions and policy reform. To rebuild trust, the IPCC must enforce robust, transparent governance mechanisms that hold conflict of interest disclosures to public scrutiny – before the consensus model breaks down completely.
Above is a view through an urban alley of Mecca’s Abraj Al Bait clock tower under a clear blue sky. by Saad Alkot via Pexels
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Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif meet during the signing of the trilateral defense agreement in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, on Aug. 7. MURAT CETINMUHURDAR/TURKEY’S PRESIDENTIAL PRESS SERVICE
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Dealing With Non-State Actors: The Mecca Pact’s Real Test – Analysis
The August 7, 2026 Mecca Pact (Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, Pakistan) is being tested by Houthi attacks, not a conventional state army; the article says the three states are now consulting on how—and when—collective defence should apply to an armed group with uncertain Iranian backing.
Extra partners and weapons do not settle attribution: who ordered, enabled, or merely tolerated a strike, and whether a response should hit the group, the host state, or the external sponsor.
Author Rashed M. Aba-Namay argues the pact should evolve from a closed alliance into a wider, gradual regional compact—rules on non-aggression, investigation, and infrastructure—potentially open to Iran and neighbours, rather than only swapping U.S. guarantees for Turkish and Pakistani ones.
Signed on August 7, 2026, by Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, and Pakistan, the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement extends collective defence across three pivotal regional powers. Less than two months later, the agreement is confronting precisely the challenge that may determine its credibility: how should a collective-defence pact respond when the immediate threat comes not from another state’s regular armed forces, but from an armed non-state actor with external support, its own political objectives, and an uncertain degree of operational dependence on a regional power?
That question has now moved from theory to practice. As Houthi forces expand their position around the Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb and Saudi Arabia faces renewed threats from an armed movement linked to, but not simply controlled by, Iran, the Mecca Pact partners have begun urgent military consultations. The meeting of the Saudi, Turkish and Pakistani military leadership gives the three governments an immediate opportunity not merely to discuss military assistance, but to define how the pact will deal with precisely the kind of non-state threat for which conventional collective-defence arrangements are least prepared.
The Problem Conventional Alliances Do Not Solve
The 1991 Gulf War demonstrated that coalition management can be as important as battlefield superiority. Washington persuaded Israel not to retaliate against Iraqi missile attacks because Israeli participation could have fractured the coalition’s Arab component. The 34-country coalition also possessed an advantage absent from many contemporary regional crises: the adversary was a clearly identifiable state operating through conventional armed forces within a defined conflict.
Today’s regional security problem is structurally different. A missile or drone may be launched by an armed organisation operating from one state, receiving varying degrees of support from another, while pursuing objectives that are partly local and partly regional. The military act may be clear; responsibility for it may not be.
The present confrontation is more difficult because regional governments must navigate overlapping relationships with Washington, Tehran, neighbouring states and armed movements whose actions may not correspond neatly to the policies of any single government. This makes political responsibility and legal attribution harder to determine and encourages regional states to develop greater capacity to manage crises themselves.
Changing the Guarantor Does Not Change the Problem
The Mecca Agreement gives Saudi Arabia meaningful strategic diversification. Türkiye contributes NATO experience, substantial armed forces and an expanding defence industry, while Pakistan adds considerable military capacity, longstanding ties with Riyadh and the strategic weight of a nuclear-armed state—without necessarily extending a nuclear guarantee to the pact’s other members. The relationship already has an operational foundation, including previous Pakistani military deployments to Saudi Arabia. Together with Türkiye’s defence capabilities, this cooperation can strengthen Saudi air and missile defence, counter-drone capacity, intelligence sharing and critical-infrastructure protection.
Additional guarantors, however, do not automatically create strategic autonomy. Ankara and Islamabad maintain their own relations with Tehran and must weigh domestic constraints, economic interests and geographical exposure. Arms transfers and peacetime cooperation cannot by themselves determine how either state would respond to a major regional escalation. The pact’s credibility therefore depends on transparent rules for activating collective-defence obligations, rapid crisis-coordination procedures, and a clear understanding of what forms of operational support each member is prepared to provide.
The deeper difficulty is the mismatch between the Pact’s conventional collective-defence commitment and the irregular character of many regional threats. The Houthis, Hezbollah and Iran-aligned Iraqi factions combine local political interests with varying degrees of Iranian support. Their partial autonomy complicates attribution: an attack may serve Iranian interests or rely on Iranian material assistance without necessarily having been ordered directly by Tehran. The Houthi attack on Saudi Arabia’s Jazan refinery, followed by the present escalation, illustrates precisely this difficulty. The Pact must therefore determine what degree of external support, direction or operational involvement would activate collective defence, and whether a proportionate response should be directed against the armed organisation, the state from whose territory it operates, the external state supporting it, or some combination of the three.
The current consultations among the pact’s military leadership therefore provide an opportunity to establish, before a larger confrontation occurs, how the three states will distinguish support from control, influence from command, and political alignment from legal responsibility.
Iraq presents a parallel challenge. After American and Saudi forces struck Iran-aligned groups operating there, the Saudi intelligence chief met the Iraqi prime minister to discuss regional security. An attack may originate inside a neighbouring state without reflecting a decision by its government; yet retaliation can weaken the same government whose cooperation may be necessary to restrain the responsible faction. The legal and strategic question is therefore not simply where an attack came from, but who ordered it, who enabled it, and what degree of control or support can fairly be attributed to the state concerned.
Türkiye has already said that it could help meet Saudi military requirements under the Mecca Pact as Houthi attacks intensify. But additional capabilities alone will not resolve the attribution problem. The three states need integrated warning systems, interoperable defences, agreed procedures for determining responsibility and graduated responses that do not automatically transform a limited attack by a non-state actor into interstate war.
The institutional process is now accelerating. On September 25, the Saudi, Turkish and Pakistani foreign ministers discussed arrangements for an urgent meeting of their chiefs of staff to consider mechanisms for supporting Saudi Arabia under the pact. The ministers also condemned attacks on Saudi civilian and economic facilities and stressed the security of maritime navigation. At the same time, the three governments are continuing technical negotiations on how to institutionalise cooperation under the agreement.
The urgency is reinforced by the scale of the current escalation. The Houthis have claimed missile and drone attacks on Riyadh and Saudi energy infrastructure, while fighting in Yemen has expanded around strategic Red Sea locations and Bab el-Mandeb. These developments threaten not only Saudi territory but also oil exports and maritime navigation, making the distinction between collective defence, infrastructure protection and wider regional escalation increasingly difficult to maintain.
Even an operationally credible alliance cannot by itself settle Yemen’s conflict, define Baghdad’s relationship with armed factions, resolve Hezbollah’s position within Lebanon, or end the wider competition between Iran and its Arab neighbours. Nor can infrastructure corridors connecting South Asia, the Gulf, the Levant and Europe remain secure without political mechanisms capable of containing non-state violence. The Mecca Pact can diversify Saudi Arabia’s security partnerships, but lasting regional security requires a framework broad enough to address not only military threats, but also the political relationships that allow armed non-state actors to operate across borders.
From Exclusive Alliance to Inclusive Compact
The Pact was expressly presented as a defensive arrangement that does not target any country and as an affirmation of the right of collective self-defence under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. President Erdoğan also stated that it remained open to other friendly states seeking peace, prosperity and stability in the region. That leaves room for a more ambitious course: to treat the Mecca Agreement not as a finished alliance directed against an excluded adversary, but as the institutional starting point for a broader regional-security compact.
The Mecca designation itself gives the Agreement a wider significance. Mecca is a shared reference point for Muslim societies far beyond the three founding states, giving the Pact a natural potential to develop into a broader framework of cooperation among Muslim countries without turning it into an exclusionary military bloc. Iran, the remaining GCC states, Iraq, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen could all have a natural place within such a framework, provided they accepted reciprocal obligations of non-aggression, sovereignty, attribution and restraint. Iran’s inclusion would be particularly important because of its relationship with several of the non-state actors that the Pact must now learn to address.
That possibility is especially important now. The more the Pact is tested by Houthi attacks associated with Iranian support, the greater the temptation will be to define it permanently in opposition to Iran. That may strengthen deterrence in the short term, but it would leave unresolved the underlying problem: how to prevent armed groups, state support and uncertain attribution from repeatedly drawing regional powers into wider conflict.
Iranian participation is not inconceivable. Tehran’s initial response suggested a possible opening for an inclusive transformation. Iran’s Foreign Ministry said there was no reason to fear the Pact, welcomed the trend toward greater regional reliance on internal capabilities, and indicated openness to arrangements that were comprehensive, inclusive and responsive to the region’s actual security conditions. This was not an Iranian offer to join the Pact, and it should not be presented as one. It does, however, suggest that a regional framework not explicitly organised against Iran may have diplomatic space in which to develop.
Iran’s participation would alter the character of the project. Instead of functioning principally as a coalition for deterring an excluded adversary, the wider framework could begin to resemble a collective-security system in which regional competitors accept reciprocal restraints. Saudi Arabia and the other GCC states could undertake not to permit their territory or facilities to be used for attacks against Iran. Iran, in return, would accept verifiable obligations not to provide material support for attacks against neighbouring states, commercial shipping or critical infrastructure, and to use its influence to restrain organisations with which it maintains political or military relationships.
All participants would reaffirm the sovereignty and territorial integrity of regional states, the prohibition on territorial acquisition by force and the applicability of international humanitarian law to states and non-state armed groups alike. Such obligations could not rest on declarations alone. They would have to be reciprocal and supported by credible procedures for attribution, investigation, consultation, compliance and dispute resolution.
Iranian participation alone, however, would not solve the problem of armed organisations. The Houthis, Hezbollah and Iraqi factions possess local constituencies, political interests and varying degrees of autonomy. They cannot simply be activated or dissolved by an Iranian decision. Iraq would therefore need to participate in defining the relationship between the state and factions operating within or alongside the Popular Mobilization Forces. Lebanon would be indispensable to any sustainable arrangement involving Hezbollah, while a legitimate Yemeni political settlement would be necessary if the Houthis are to be dealt with as a Yemeni political and military actor rather than merely as an extension of Tehran.
Inclusion would not reward coercion or legitimise attacks by armed groups. Its purpose would be to connect every state capable of generating, enabling or restraining insecurity to reciprocal obligations for reducing it.
Building such a system would require gradualism rather than a single grand bargain. It could begin with limited and verifiable commitments: military hotlines; a regional non-aggression pledge; a prohibition on permitting national territory to be used for attacks against another participant; common procedures for attributing missile, drone and maritime attacks; protections for commercial navigation; and reciprocal restrictions on supplying weapons to armed organisations operating beyond effective state control.
An independent regional mechanism could investigate disputed attacks before governments resort to retaliation. Demonstrated compliance could then support deeper cooperation in maritime security, infrastructure protection, reconstruction, energy, trade and, eventually, defensive early-warning systems. The purpose would be to create a ladder of cooperation in which compliance at one level makes deeper integration possible at the next.
The economic dimension is important because regional security cannot ultimately rest on military arrangements alone. In my 11 August Anadolu article, “Mecca Joint Defense Agreement: Strategic Complementarity and Regional Integration”, I argued that the durability of the Pact would depend on whether defence cooperation could be translated into wider economic and institutional integration. Alliances formed solely in response to a particular threat may weaken when that threat changes; arrangements anchored in trade, infrastructure, investment and shared economic benefits create broader constituencies with an interest in preserving them.
The historic Hejaz Railway and TAPLINE corridors offer two examples. The objective would not be to recreate either in its old form, but to use their routes as the basis for modern networks of railways, highways, logistics centres, pipelines, electricity grids and fibre-optic connections linking Saudi Arabia with Jordan, Syria, Türkiye and the Mediterranean. Such corridors could stimulate manufacturing, tourism, logistics, reconstruction and cross-border investment while providing the participating states with tangible economic benefits from regional stability.
Their importance goes beyond commerce. A railway, pipeline, power grid or data corridor crossing several states gives each participant a material interest in keeping the route open and the political relationship stable. Economic interdependence cannot eliminate strategic rivalry, but it can make escalation more costly and peaceful coexistence more rewarding.
This logic should eventually extend beyond the three founding members. If Iran, the remaining GCC states, Iraq and other neighbouring countries become part of a wider regional framework, economic integration should be structured so that all participants gain visibly from stability through trade, infrastructure, investment, energy, transport and industrial cooperation. The objective would not be to create a closed bloc, but a more connected regional economy capable of dealing with the wider international system from a position of greater stability and strength.
The present crisis makes this argument more relevant. Threats to Red Sea shipping, Bab el-Mandeb and Saudi energy infrastructure demonstrate the danger of relying on a limited number of exposed routes. The same principle applies in the Gulf. In my paper Breaking the Hormuz: The Musandam Alternative, I proposed examining a navigable connection across Oman’s Musandam Peninsula as a strategic fallback capable of reducing dependence on a single maritime chokepoint. The proposal has since attracted attention in Persian-language regional media, where it has been discussed not as an announced Omani project but as a longer-standing strategic alternative whose relevance has increased with renewed tensions around Hormuz.It is not a substitute for the Strait of Hormuz, but an example of the wider principle that regional security requires redundancy in transport and energy infrastructure as well as military deterrence.
The central question is therefore not which guarantor should replace the United States. Turkish and Pakistani cooperation can diversify Saudi Arabia’s security relationships and provide valuable capabilities, but substituting one set of guarantees for another would leave the deeper regional problem unresolved. A more durable order would bring the region’s competing powers into a common framework in which none could increase its own security by transferring insecurity to its neighbours.
About Dr. Rashed M. Aba-Namay
Dr. Rashed M. Aba-Namay is a legal scholar specializing in institutional resilience and coercive statecraft. He developed the Abanamay Sovereignty Spectrum Theory and its analytical formula, which examines how authority is distributed in complex states and how external pressure produces divergent socio-political and legal outcomes. He is president of the National Law Center, a Riyadh-based legal firm specializing in energy security, maritime law, and strategic infrastructure analysis.
Over recent months, the straits of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb have become synonymous with geopolitical jostling. Whoever controls these narrow waterways governs the flow of maritime traffic from the Arabian Sea and the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean – and with it, a vitally significant chunk of global trade.
However, conflict over these straits is almost as old as modern maritime trade itself. The war between the US and Iran over these chokepoints is just the latest chapter in a centuries-long history of extra-regional powers attempting to influence or dominate the Middle East by sea.
Ming China offers one of the earliest examples of an extra-regional power projecting its power through naval might and diplomacy. In 1405, the Chinese Muslim admiral, explorer and diplomat Zheng He embarked on the first of seven expeditions across the Indian Ocean. Commanding fleets of more than 300 vessels, he reached the town of Hormuz around 1414, then Aden in Yemen, passing through Bab el-Mandeb into the Red Sea.
This Pax Sinica did not control the straits. Instead, it established a strong trading presence based on displays of naval power, diplomatic missions, and lucrative gift exchanges. Unlike later colonial powers, Zheng He did not establish colonies at Hormuz or along the Arabian coast. Instead, he entered the existing trading system established by the region’s Arab, Persian, Indian, and East African merchants.
The voyages also demonstrate the limits of overextended maritime power. After Zheng He’s final expedition in the 1430s, shifting priorities in the Ming dynasty brought the voyages to an end. The state was unwilling to invest in its navy and its upkeep.
Today, China invokes Zheng He’s voyages to bestow historical legitimacy upon Chinese-Middle Eastern relations. Beijing presents its modern investments in infrastructure, energy, and ports, such as Gwadar in Pakistan, as the revival of an ancient and peaceful relationship that stretches back to the pre-modern Silk Road.
Back in the 1500s, however, the rise in global shipping traffic and the arrival of Europe’s colonial powers would soon mark a shift towards more violent, aggressive efforts to control the straits.
Portugal’s naval dominance
The Portuguese were naval innovators, introducing a more coercive form of maritime power employing heavy cannons on ocean-going ships. In 1513, Afonso de Albuquerque attacked Aden in an attempt to control access to the Red Sea. He failed to capture the fortified mainland city, which was surrounded by steep mountainous terrain.
As the US has learned centuries later, naval superiority did not translate into immediate victory on land. Portuguese warships could destroy vessels and bombard a harbour, but commanding the waters outside a port was not the same as controlling the land behind it.
However, in 1515, Albuquerque managed to seize the town of Hormuz, where he imposed the cartaz, a paid permit for merchants to sail through the gulf and Indian Ocean. This regulation of trade is, in essence, what Iran’s toll is attempting to do in the present.
This “Pax Lusitana” was more violent than its Chinese predecessor, and in 1622, forces from the Iranian Safavid dynasty and English East India Company vessels joined forces to expel the Portuguese from Hormuz and open up trade.
British and Dutch takeover
With Portugal ousted, Ottoman, Safavid, Omani, Dutch and English forces vied for control. The system was dominated by powerful European ships, and by local rulers who controlled both the ports and the goods that flowed through them.
The Dutch East India Company entered these waters in 1614. Supported by heavily armed ships, it established itself at the port of Mokha, in Yemen.
While the British were famous for the tea trade, the Dutch came to dominate coffee. Previously the domain of traders based in Mokha, the Dutch broke Yemen’s monopoly over the coffee trade by smuggling Arabica coffee plants to the Indonesian island of Java, where they were cultivated on a massive scale.
The Dutch thus demonstrated that the balance of maritime power could shift through control of production and trade, rather than through cannons and coercion.
However, once the British captured Aden in 1839 they gained the upper hand. They signed agreements with neighbouring rulers and tribes in South Yemen that gave them de facto control over Bal al-Mandab at the dawn of the industrial era.
Aden soon became a naval coaling station and communications centre, connected to India by telegraph cables. When the Suez Canal opened in 1869, the British also dominated this chokepoint, as the Red Sea offered the shortest maritime route to its crown colony in India.
British hegemony soon came to rely on steam-powered warships and ports, as well as loans and treaties. Much of this was sustained by local proxies along the coast, stretching from Aden to Kuwait.
Lessons for the US today
After the second world war, the balance of power shifted once again. The US replaced the UK with bases, carrier groups, and arms sales in exchange for Gulf oil. In 1980, US President Jimmy Carter declared that any Soviet attempt to control the Gulf would be treated as an attack on American interests and resisted by military force.
Track forward 45 years, and Trump has effectively (though perhaps inadvertently) dismantled the Carter Doctrine. While US naval vessels are now in the strait of Hormuz to protect freedom of navigation, it was Trump’s February 2026 war that endangered shipping in the first place, as it prompted Iran to disrupt Gulf trade in retaliation.
The historical lesson is that, while extra-regional maritime hegemony is possible, it is temporary and ephemeral, as fleeting like the waves that carry it. China abandoned its fleets, Portugal lost Hormuz, the Dutch focused on Java, and Britain left Aden. Dominance shifted when hegemonic powers became overextended, technologies changed, and local alliances realigned.
Iran and the Houthis, who have recently seized Mokha, do not require carrier fleets. Instead, their missiles, mines and drones weaponise the cost of maritime insurance. For all its naval might, the US cannot eliminate the local agency of societies surrounding Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb. Every empire before it has discovered that controlling a chokepoint does not translate into control of the political world and will that surrounds it.
Research integrity (RI) guidelines around the world increasingly recognise fairness, diversity, equity and inclusion.
But a new analysis suggests that fairness is still understood predominantly in procedural terms – for example, through fair authorship, peer review and misconduct procedures – while the structural inequalities that shape who conducts research, whose knowledge is recognised and who sets the rules are usually neglected.
This neglect risks reproducing colonial hierarchies and reinforcing the marginalisation of Indigenous and Global South actors and epistemic and ethical frameworks, the study argues.
Therefore, there is a need for the integration of non-Eurocentric, Indigenous knowledge and ethical frameworks in RI guiding documents for researchers.
These were the conclusions of the study, “Fairness in Research Integrity Guidelines Across the World: A Critical Discourse Analysis”, which was published in the Journal of Academic Ethics on 2 September.
The conclusions were drawn after analysing 66 national and international guidelines and codes of conduct for RI originated from 39 countries in Europe, Africa, South America, North America, Asia and Oceania.
“The topic of ‘research fairness’ is receiving growing attention in Research Integrity (RI) initiatives, with increasing acknowledgement of the relationship between RI and fairness concerns such as diversity equity and inclusion (DEI) and responsible collaborations,” the study says.
“However, initiatives usually neglect addressing structural injustices and their relationship to RI. Furthermore, RI standards are mostly set in economically powerful countries but are applied globally, posing a risk of ethical imperialism and reinforcing existing colonial hierarchies.”
The study analysed three aspects of ‘fairness’: Addressing injustices, attention to colonial hierarchies and DEI.
The authors – Clàudia Pallisé Perelló, María de los Ángeles Crespo López, Natalie Evans, Johannes Ket, Mariëtte van den Hoven and Krishma Labib at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands – say their study provides the “first systematic scoping review” of RI documents critically assessing the treatment of fairness.
“Moreover, it is also the first one that takes an explicit anticolonial and systemic justice perspective, putting structural inequalities in the centre of the analysis.”
Maura Hiney, an adjunct professor of Research Integrity at University College Dublin’s Institute for Discovery in Ireland, told University World News that the study is “very timely and will be an important consideration for the revision of the All European Academies (ALLEA) European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity and the ongoing development of an African Code of Conduct for Research Integrity and AI”.
“While the necessarily high level of such frameworks precludes detailed elaboration of the concepts explored in the paper, they can nonetheless seek to clarify their importance for research integrity in more meaningful ways,” added Hiney, who served as chair and co-authored the ALLEA European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity (2017 and 2023).
Zeenath Reza Khan, founding president for the Centre for Academic Integrity at the University of Wollongong in Dubai, United Arab Emirates and Audit Group member for the European Network for Academic Integrity, told University World News that it was a “valuable and timely study” that offered an important opportunity for the research integrity community to “reflect on whether our existing frameworks adequately represent the diverse environments in which research is conducted”.
However, the research findings also raise questions about how research systems maintain common expectations for reliability, transparency and accountability while allowing legitimate contextual, Indigenous and epistemic diversity.
Lokman Meho, Professor and University Librarian at American University of Beirut in Lebanon and the developer of the Research Integrity Risk Index (RI²), told University World News that greater fairness in funding, collaboration, authorship, and participation should help create better research but not become a separate goal that competes with research quality and integrity.
Scant mention of injstices
The study found that RI documents originated mostly from European countries, with limited representation from elsewhere – of the 39 national documents, 24 came from European countries, with the rest originating from Africa (2), South America (1), North America (1), Asia (9) and Oceania (2).
The majority of the included documents referred to fairness only as “procedural”, covering issues such as fair authorship, peer review, and misconduct investigations.
A large number of guidance documents addressed diversity equity and inclusion (DEI) principles with at least one of these words being mentioned in just under half of the documents, but their uses vary significantly in terms of depth and meaning, the study found.
More than half of the documents either do not mention DEI or approach these in a more symbolic or superficial way, reflecting a more tokenistic or performative vision, the study said.
In these cases, the word “diversity” often appears without further elaboration, concrete actions, or clear links to research practices.
In general, the study found few documents explicitly mentioned issues of injustice, such as knowledge and material extractivism, epistemic injustice, and socioeconomic inequities.
It noted that Global North documents often fail to acknowledge in a meaningful way three forms of systemic injustice – injustices related to colonial history, socioeconomic injustices and injustices affecting the environment.
None of the documents explicitly mention ‘colonialism’. A small number discuss inequities in knowledge production in different countries, although they do not refer to these as colonial legacies or realities.
Only a minority of the documents acknowledge the validity of diverse epistemic values and systems, with most instead promoting Global North knowledge systems.
In general, many of the documents frame ‘objectivity’ as the approach of scientific research, but the study authors argue that this implicitly excludes diverse epistemic values.
The few codes of conduct that explicitly confronted colonial hierarchies came from colonised nations.
The study found some documents acknowledged diverse knowledge systems and ethical frameworks, but even these documents often reflected assumptions of colonial hierarchies in their language. For instance, they portrayed Indigenous and marginalised groups as “passive” agents and receivers of research rather than as “active” groups capable of conducting research.
Overall, the study unveiled that most European RI frameworks tended to frame fairness without taking into account structural injustices, colonial hierarchies and DEI systematically, reinforcing watered-down, “procedural” rather than “structural” visions of fairness.
“While most dominant RI initiatives can be considered Eurocentric, they have global influence, for instance via funding frameworks, publishing ethics, and data management requirements.
“Therefore, they might be considered a form of ‘ethical imperialism’, in which Eurocentric understandings of RI and responsible conduct of research are imposed across the world,” the study argues.
Speaking to University World News, lead author Perelló said the study found that the predominant standards that define “ethical” and “good” research, or define which issues are considered Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) or RI concerns, are mostly coming from Western contexts that “frequently fail to consider or include local frameworks, epistemic traditions, or histories of injustice and their associated concerns”.
She added that “deeper questions of structural injustice and equity in science are rarely addressed”.
Key messages for policy makers
Perelló said RI guidelines should acknowledge both the structural conditions in which research is conducted and ethical and epistemic plurality.
“This involves, on the one hand, recognising that universal and culturally neutral ethical frameworks do not exist, and, on the other hand, legitimising the existence of diverse epistemic traditions.”
She said there are good existing examples, such as the “Te Ara Tika Guidelines for Mori research ethics: A framework for researchers and ethics committee members or the San Code on Research Ethics”, which show that it is possible to “explicitly integrate non-Eurocentric, Indigenous knowledge and ethical frameworks in RI guiding documents for researchers in a situated way”.
Impact of funding inequality
Khan said the study “reminds us that fairness in research integrity cannot be understood only through procedures such as authorship, peer review or misconduct processes.
“As research becomes increasingly global and collaborative, our integrity frameworks also need to remain attentive to context, inclusion and different knowledge traditions,” she said.
Meho said the study shows that research integrity is not only about whether individual researchers follow rules and procedures.
“It is also shaped by the conditions in which researchers work, such as unequal access to funding and research resources, unequal power in international collaborations, and differences in who sets research standards and whose knowledge is recognised,” he said.
Call to widen perspectives
He argues that standards intended to apply internationally should not be developed mainly from the perspective of a small number of countries.
“Researchers from different countries and research systems, especially those currently under-represented, should have a meaningful role in deciding what constitutes responsible research,” Meho suggested.
Independent Research Ethics and Integrity Consultant, Dr Lyn Horn, former director of the Office of Research Integrity at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, told University World News she is grateful that scholars are taking this conversation forward.
“One of the biggest challenges for researchers in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), especially in Africa, is that a huge amount of research funding comes from the Global North, and they dictate leadership requirements and project management aspects, not without reason, as they need to ensure that the high-income country (HIC) taxpayer money produces the intended outcomes,” said Horn, who is the lead author for “The Cape Town Statement on fairness, equity and diversity in research” made in 2023.
“One structural change that I believe would shift the balance would be for LMIC governments to provide a lot more funding for good-quality research directly and for HIC funders to provide a percentage of co-funding but enable projects to be LMIC-led and managed, providing support rather than dictating all administrative aspects, which is currently usually the case,” she added.
“This would advance LMIC research management systems, including ethics and integrity monitoring, at both institutional and national levels,” Horn said.
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