The Elephant in the Room
The situation in the Middle East has been entangled since the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War. The dominant powers, including the UK and France, with the consent of Russia, decided to divide the Ottoman territories in the Middle East. They engaged two diplomats – Sir Mark Sykes and his French counterpart, François Georges-Picot, to draw the political boundaries of the Middle Eastern countries. These arbitrary boundaries were determined by the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916.These powers divided these territories into their protectorates. France took Syria, Lebanon, and some parts of modern Türkiye, including Anatolia, while the UK took over Iraq, Transjordan, Palestine, South Yemen, Bahrain, and some other Arab tribal territories. North Yemen restored its Mutawakkil (Zaidi) Kingdom in 1918. Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud had already established his kingdom in a vast territory in 1930. This was the political landscape of the Middle East at the time.The UK authorities had allowed Ibn Saud to occupy Hejaz and Medina, expelling Faisal II and Abdullah, two brothers of Hashemite and Qureshi lineage. In 1921, the UK installed Faisal as the king of Iraq, while Abdullah was crowned as the sovereign of Transjordan. Free from the Hashemite brothers, Ibn Saud began consolidating the borders of the kingdom. A war erupted between the Saudi and Zaidi Kingdoms in 1934, in which North Yemen lost vast territories of Asir, Najran, and Jizan.Ibn Saud had stood by the UK throughout the World Wars and was backed by the latter in consolidating his kingdom. The UK signed an agreement with King Abdul........
