Bold Gambits on the West Asian Chessboard

Pepe Escobar In the Great Power competition, everything is connected: Uncertain negotiations between Russia and NATO over Ukraine may be impacted by Turkiye’s post-election pivot and Syria’s return to the Arab League West Asia is a region that is currently experiencing a great deal of geopolitical activity. Recent diplomatic efforts, initiated by Russia and overseen…

Will SCO Become New United Nations for Non-Western World?

Ekaterina Blinova The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a Eurasian political, economic, and security bloc founded in 2001, has great potential to become a United Nations for the non-Western world, according to Robinder Sachdev, geopolitical and economic diplomacy analyst and founder president of the Imagindia Institute. The two-day summit of the SCO foreign ministers kicked off…

Russian Oil Floods Global Markets via Major Asian Intermediaries

F.M. Shakil Despite western sanctions, there is more Russian fuel being exported around the world than before the Ukraine crisis. It’s just coming via Saudi Arabia, India, China, and other trading states – with steep commissions. Despite western sanctions imposed on Russia over the Ukraine conflict, some Asian and specifically West Asian economies are importing significant…

Conflict in Sudan: International Implications

Yoselina Guevara López Violence in Sudan continues to rage and is unlikely to abate. Since April 13, the country has become a battlefield between rival armed factions; on the one hand the Sudanese army, led by General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, and on the other the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a powerful paramilitary group led by…

Sudan: Alignment of Forces, Players

M. K. Bhadrakumar People fleeing fighting in Khartoum, Sudan, April 19, 2023 The worst-case scenario is coming to pass, apparently, in Sudan. That is, at any rate, the apocalyptic message streaming out of Khartoum in the western media. President Biden lent credence to the alarmist perception by confirming that on his orders, the US military…

9/11 Hijackers Were CIA Recruits

Kit Klarenberg At least two 9/11 hijackers had been recruited into a joint CIA-Saudi intelligence operation that was covered up at the highest level, according to an explosive new court filing. A newly-released court filing raises grave questions about the relationship between Alec Station, a CIA unit set up to track Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden…

US Flexes Muscle in Persian Gulf, to No Avail

MK Bhadrakumar A panicked US tries to insert itself into West Asia’s tsunami of political, economic, and diplomatic shifts, but is anybody listening? Three ominous US-related developments last week grate against the overall easing of tensions in the West Asian region: Firstly, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s phone call on Tuesday to UAE President Mohamed bin…

Iran and Saudi Arabia: A Chinese Win-Win

Pepe Escobar The single Iranian-Saudi handshake buried trillions of dollars of western divide-and-rule investments across West Asia, and has global leaders rushing to Beijing for global solutions. The idea that History has an endpoint, as promoted by clueless neoconservatives in the unipolar 1990s, is flawed, as it is in an endless process of renewal. The recent official meeting between…

How China’s Iran-Saudi Deal Transforms Geopolitics

Scott Ritter Just a year ago, the US was in the ascendant when it came to Middle East politics, working to isolate Iran by helping to normalize relationships between Israel and the Mideast Gulf states. The reality just changed — literally overnight — after China successfully brokered a reconciliation between Saudi Arabia and Iran which,…

Documents Reveal True Motives Behind Canada’s Support for Saudi Arabia

Owen Schalk Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman Canada’s relationship with the kingdom is based solely on cold economic calculations On March 11, online media outlet The Breach published a document that shines a light on Ottawa’s usually secretive policies toward Saudi Arabia and the wider West Asian region. The document illustrates that Canada’s cozy relationship with the…

China’s Example of Leadership Injects Hope into a World of Uncertainty

Danny Haiphong Wang Yi, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the CPC Central Committee, presides over the closing meeting of the talks between a Saudi delegation and an Iranian delegation in Beijing, capital of China,…

Saudi-Iran Deal: A Possible US ‘Suez Moment’

As`ad AbuKhalil Smoke rises from oil tanks beside the Suez Canal hit during the initial Anglo-French assault on Port Said, Nov. 5, 1956. (Fleet Air Arm, Imperial War Museums, Wikimedia Commons) The U.S. does not want to experience what Britain experienced in Suez in 1956: a watershed moment signaling its global decline. The announcement in China…

Xi of Arabia and the Petroyuan Drive

Pepe Escobar Xi Jinping has made an offer difficult for the Arabian Peninsula to ignore: China will be guaranteed buyers of your oil and gas, but we will pay in yuan. It would be so tempting to qualify Chinese President Xi Jinping landing in Riyadh a week ago, welcomed with royal pomp and circumstance, as Xi…

Xi Jinping’s Visit to Saudi Arabia and the Overthrow of Atlanticism

Matthew Ehret The historic China-Arab Summit currently underway in Riyadh symbolizes the emerging Eurasianism in the Persian Gulf. As Atlanticists continue their commitment to a future shaped by energy scarcity, food scarcity, and war with their nuclear-capable neighbors, most states in the Persian Gulf that have long been trusted allies of the west have quickly come…

Everybody Wants to Hop on the BRICS Express

Pepe Escobar Eurasia is about to get a whole lot larger as countries line up to join the Chinese and Russian-led BRICS and SCO, to the detriment of the west Let’s start with what is in fact a tale of Global South trade between two members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). At its heart is…

The Global Links of the Recent Escalation in Yemen Conflict

Abdul Rahman The UN resident coordinator for humanitarian affairs in Yemen, William David Grisley, visited the site of the Saudi-led coaltion’s bombing in the reserve prison in Sa’ada province on Thursday. (Photo: Saba) The failure of the UN to play its primary role of a peacemaker in Yemen affects its humanitarian interventions and provides opportunities…

UN Human Rights Council Abandons Yemen

Charles Pierson The UN Human Rights Council has quashed an ongoing investigation into possible war crimes in Yemen.  The HRC rejected a draft resolution on October 7 which would have continued the mandate of the UN Group of Eminent Independent and Regional Experts on Yemen (GEE) to investigate war crimes and human rights violations in…

Can Saudis/US Use Water Crisis to Bring Yemenis to Their Knees?

Ahmed Abdulkareem SANA`A, YEMEN — When the well ran dry, Abu Yahya al-Hamdani, who provides water to many residents of the Saruf neighborhood in northeastern Sana`a, had no warning. Last week, the water table dipped lower in his water well and the pump began to suck air. For the families in the neighborhood, to whom…