The difference between a picture and an image may be in the eye of the beholder. A picture may freeze an instant of reality but an image lives in a larger time and space and can depart from the original picture. This may have happened in the situation of the Anti-Slavery International (ASI) story about a camel jockey event held near Abu Dhabi. The image the story portrayed was quite different from the pictures that ran with it.

For a time the assassination of Hamas leader Mahmoud al Mabhouh threatened to tarnish further Dubai’s reputation, with some commentators describing the city as the Middle East’s new “Big Easy” (a reference to New Orleans which until recently was widely regarded as the “murder capital of the world”). But decisive action by the Dubai Police seems to have spiked a perception that had been evolving since Chechens settled a score last year in Jumeirah with the murder of the former warlord, Sulim Yamadayev, and a contract killing ordered up by her Egyptian billionaire former lover took out Lebanese pop star, Suzanne Tamim.

Over the past two weeks, the juxtaposition of two criminal investigations has called into question the balance and fairness of the UAE’s system of justice. On both sides of the Atlantic, the ‘heavyweight’ media have drawn attention to the acquittal of a member of Abu Dhabi’s ruling family, apparently in the face of overwhelming contradictory evidence, while a young British Muslim woman visiting Dubai went to report a rape only to find herself and her partner on the wrong end of the UAE’s laws concerning drinking alcohol and having sexual relations outside marriage.

Patience in Washington with Iran is fast running out. The Obama administration seems to continue a twin-track approach to imposing greater sanctions on Iran: first through extensive diplomatic efforts to secure a much more punishing round of restrictions on trade through the UN Security Council and, secondly, through its own unilateral efforts.