Weekend Gleanings

As usual, I've dedicated my weekend to family, but before I start my own commentaries on the week, I'd like to refer you to a couple of useful reads over the weekend from other sources:

• The Doha Summit. It's started now, and one of the oldest hands at Mideast blogging, Marc Lynch, in his Foreign Policy blog, has offered "A User's Guide to the Doha Summit." It is exactly that, and a good introduction. I'll offer commentary as the results become obvious.
• Prince Nayef Next in Line of Succession? Saudi King ‘Abdullah, before leaving for Doha, and faced with the fact that the Heir Apparent, Prince Sultan, is in the hospital recovering from surgery and reported to be in poor shape, named his half brother (full brother to Sultan and the late King Fahd) Prince Nayef as Second Deputy Prime Minister. That does not officially put him next in line to the throne (since there's a new process for officially naming heirs), but it traditionally puts him there. Nayef is not terribly popular in the West: he was a strong denier of the 9/11 Saudi link for a long time and a hardliner domestically as Interior Minister. But the fact that the next in line after Sultan has been left up in the air even as Sultan is indisposed seems to have made it necessary to identify someone as, at least, the putative next in line. This Financial Times article plays the story straight. But this is Saudi Arabia, and like the old Soviet Union watchers, the Kingdom-watchers love to speculate about what is really going on. This leads to lots of rumors based on what somebody heard about the real intrigues within the Royal Family; former Washington Post correspondent Tom Lippman, a colleague of mine at MEI, has often noted that these rumors need to be dismissed, and other old Saudi hands I know agree: whoever is talking doesn't know what's going on; those who do don't talk. But if you want the conspiracy theory, Britain's The Independent has one ready for you, complete with the fact that no one has allegedly seen Prince Bandar in weeks. (The cynic in me wonders if they've looked in Aspen.) I really doubt that this is anything more than it appears on the surface: ‘Abdullah is leaving the Kingdom; his heir is in the hospital and ailing; he needs some sign of continuity. I could be wrong, but I sure wouldn't bet on The Independent's interpretation. The Kingdom doesn't work that way.
• UPDATE: On the Saudi situation, Gregory Gause posts at Marc Lynch's Foreign Policy site, saying "Nobody Knows What it Means." Greg Gause is a very well-informed Gulf watcher, and he knows better than to buy every rumor floated by the press. The succession is obviously important, but reading the tea-leaves is not so easy.
• UPDATE II: Simon Henderson at the Washington Institute offers his take.
  

I refer you to these for reading until I'm able to offer some comments of my own later today.