From Michael Every at RaboResearch, January 14:
Officially it’s 2,000, but reportedly as many as 12,000, Iranian protestors could have been killed by their own government over the past few days. While the West has seen none of the mass protests that the last two-plus years have been full of, President Trump told those on Iran’s streets to keep going and that “Help is coming,” adding if the government starts hanging those it’s arrested, matters will be even worse. What might this mean though? It’s unclear. The Wall Street Journal reports that US Gulf Allies, led by Saudi Arabia, have been lobbying the US not to get involved (as the Trump admin labelled three Muslim Brotherhood branches as terrorist organisations).
The intricacies of the Middle East defy the space available here (or on protesters’ placards), but alongside tensions in Yemen/South Yemen and Somalia/Somaliland, a key takeaway is that the Western assumption of a more moderate Saudi-led GCC is perhaps being called into question.
Rather, it looks as if there is a Saudi-UAE split, with the former moving closer to Qatar, Turkey, and Pakistan as it loses fear of Iran as a regional hegemon and instead works with those it sees as able to fill that power vacuum who aren’t Israel (see ‘From partners to rivals: What the Saudi-UAE rupture means for Europeans’). That will matter hugely ahead, if so; and for now it’s wait and see on what the US will do in Iran.
That isn’t the only energy story, as two Russian tankers were hit by drones in the Black Sea; that’s as 70% of Kyiv’s power went down as Russia goes all out to try to plunge Ukraine into darkness. Europe is also going to redouble efforts to stop China and India buying Russian oil: how, without sanctions or Trump-style tariffs? (One asks, as the EU is now close to dropping tariffs on Chinese EVs in favour of a minimum price – which effectively means the EV is the same price for the consumer but the tariff flows to China instead of the EU. Realpolitik is hard for some.)
On Greenland and NATO, tensions remain high. Greenland’s PM said the territory chooses Denmark over the US, which Trump rejected; Russia trolled that Greenland might vote to join it,not the US; US senators introduced a bill to prevent the US from invading NATO territory; and France continued to lobby for the EU military aid package for Ukraine to only be spent on EU weapons – which they cannot provide in the volumes required, in the same way that the US underlines that they can’t actually provide adequate forces to cover Greenland.
Meanwhile, help came for embattled Fed Chair Powell. Not the CPI print of 0.3% m-o-m and 2.7% y-o-y headline and 0.2% and 2.6% core, which frankly don’t matter much against the current backdrop....
....MUCH MORE
