The Iranian rial: crash. The Turkish lira: crash. The Argentine peso: crash. The Brazilian real: crash. There are multiple, complex, parallel vectors at play in this wilderness of crashing currencies. Turkey’s case is heavily influenced by the bubble of easy credit created by European banks. Argentina’s problem is mostly to do with the neoliberal austerity…
“Boxing the compass” is an old nautical term for locating the points on a magnetic compass in order to set a course. With the erratic winds blowing out of Washington these days, countries all over Asia and the Middle East are boxing the compass and re-evluating traditional foes and old alliances. India and Pakistan have…
Dug in for the long haul in its increasingly bitter dispute with the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, Qatar is emerging as a key player in efforts to prevent tension between Israel and Hamas, the Islamist group that controls Gaza, from spinning out of control. Qatar’s increasing role counters Saudi and UAE efforts to…
Iraq’s parliament by numbers Iraq’s new parliament will meet to form a new government following the first national elections since the terror group Daesh occupied vast swaths of the country’s territory. After a lengthy manual re-count of votes, the major factions had the following number of parliamentary seats: –Saairun Alliance of Muqtada al-Sadr=54 seats –Fatah Alliance…
Last week we looked at the upcoming campaign to liberate Idleb. The attack will commence only after the September 7 summit of the presidents of Russia, Turkey and Iran in Tehran. Meanwhile the U.S. detailed its future role in the war on Syria. The new U.S. aim in Syria is to hinder all potential progress…
The United States and Turkey, as of the second week of August 2018, are ready to break off diplomatic relations as a result of broad US sanctions on Turkey. However, not only is Turkey a full NATO member, an organization whose charter legally prohibits President Trump’s actions under its “mutual assistance” tenets, but Turkey also…
