Clearly the main geopolitical news story from March continues to be the ongoing conflict in the Middle East but since there is wall-to-wall coverage of this on just about every available channel, there’s little point in adding any more commentary.
Instead I’m going to look at some of the consequences that stem from this conflict. The most obvious is the high price of oil, which directly affects transport and some manufacturing, as well as other supplies such as gas, helium and fertiliser. This is caused mainly by Iran having effectively closed the strait of Hormuz, but is also due to the growing realisation that there isn’t going to be a quick solution as Iran’s missile strikes are also doing long term damage to the infrastructure used to process those supplies.
This of course is nothing compared to the carnage being wrought in the region. Dr Hanan Balkhy, regional Eastern Mediterranean director for the World Health Organisation, warned of an “unprecedented, long lasting impact” on the region if the hostilities continue to escalate, adding that the WHO was preparing “for chemical, radiological, nuclear and biological risks”.
In addition, Israel seems unable to bomb military targets without also killing multiple journalists, including three in a single incident in Lebanon. Israel has a reasonable justification for eradicating Hezbollah to protect its own people, and yet nothing says ‘illegal war’ quite like targeting unarmed journalists.
The war is also reshaping the power dynamics within the Middle East with Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey coming together to offer mediation services. This quartet is acting as a conduit between Iran and the US, and seeking to counter Israeli influence in the region. This group is also trying to draw China in as a guarantor in case the American president, Donald Trump makes good on his promise to walk away and leave Iran to own the mess that the US has made. At the very least, that’s likely to mean the Iranians charging a levy to guarantee safe passage through the strait of Hormuz in future.
Elsewhere, other alliances are also being formed. Ukraine, for example, has signed a defence deal with Saudi Arabia, where Ukraine will share its expertise in countering missiles and drones. The Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky told the French newspaper Le Monde: “We would like Middle Eastern states to also give us an opportunity to strengthen ourselves. They have certain air defence missiles of which we don’t have enough. That’s what we’d like to reach a deal on.”
North Korea has agreed a friendship treaty with Belarus with the two countries agreeing to co-operate more closely and resist pressure from the West. And the US attack on Iran will have also spurred the North Koreans on to further develop their nuclear arsenal. The North Koreans are currently trying to miniaturise their nuclear weapons technology in order to develop a missile system that can be mounted on a ship or submarine. That would make North Korea a far more potent threat to global peace than Iran.
Then there is the knock-on effect on the war in Ukraine. Not surprisingly the Ukrainians are concerned that some arms supplies will be diverted from them to the gulf. At the same time, Russia has benefited from the high price of oil and Trump has relaxed some of the US sanctions on Russian oil, ostensibly to ease market pressures and therefore pricing. It’s widely believed that the Russians have helped their Iranian allies with more precise targeting information, and that this may have contributed to the deaths of some of the US service personnel. Yet despite this, Trump is still taking the Russian side and pressuring Ukraine to give up land to Russia in the latest round of peace talks.
This is contributing to the general sense of unease across Europe over security. Trump has repeated his earlier claims that he wouldn’t necessarily help his European allies if they were attacked and is now threatening to abandon NATO altogether. And those former allies have finally realised that there is no point in pandering to him any further since he’s going to screw them over anyway. So when Trump called for help for the war that he had already won, the general reaction was that he broke it so it was up to him to fix it.
Meanwhile the Balkans, the scene of the last round of conflict in Europe, is still smouldering. Croatia, which is a member of NATO, has reinstated compulsory military service for teenagers, citing the close proximity of the war in Ukraine and potential Russian aggression. However, this has also stoked existing tensions within the region. Serbia has announced that it will implement military service within the next 12 months and voiced its concerns over Croatia’s increased defence spending and its recent military alliance with Kosovo and Albania. Meanwhile, Kosovo and Bosnia have both been rattled by Serbia’s plans to increase its military, both having been on the receiving end of previous Serbian aggression.
The fuel shortages caused by the war in the Middle East have eclipsed the concern over climate change, and yet really they are mirror images. The argument for switching to renewable energy is as much about reducing reliance on the volatile supply chain around fossil fuels as it is about reducing the overheating of the planet. And everyone has suddenly realised that fractures in the supply chain for energy and fertiliser will lead directly to crop loss, food shortages and higher inflation. But it’s been increasingly obvious for several years now that climate change is also causing these same problems.
Yet Trump has cut funding for renewable energy sources and used federal mandates to force conventional power plants to continue operating leaving the US far more reliant on fossil fuel and therefore more at the mercy of Iran’s strategy. Several polls have indicated that Trump’s popularity with American voters is plummeting, ahead of the US mid-term elections later this year.
Elsewhere, the Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen opted for an early election in the hope of capitalising on her handling of US pressure over Greenland earlier this year. However, although her Social Democrats party remained the largest party, she failed to win enough seats to form a majority and will now have to negotiate with other parties.
Italy’s right wing prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, also suffered an electoral setback, losing a referendum on a constitutional reform regarding the independence of judges from prosecutors. Meloni will now worry that her closeness with Trump is a liability ahead of next year’s general election.
In contrast, the British prime minister Keir Starmer has gained some credit for refusing to let the UK be drawn into the Middle East conflict, despite Trump’s constant goading. However, he is still likely to lose badly in the local government elections in May, thanks partly to the rising prices caused by Trump’s adventures in Iran but mainly down to his own innate Starmer-ness.
Another loser is the UAE and its carefully cultivated air of calm luxury. That’s been dented by the various missiles that Iran has lobbed at it but the thing that has really irretrievably tarnished its reputation is the heavy-handed clampdown on any mention of the war that has seen a great many westerners detained simply for posting pictures of Iranian missiles landing near their hotels and the resulting damage. Few westerners really care if an Arabic nation locks up its own citizens, but imprisoning influencers and other overly-entitled foreigners has done far more damage than the actual missiles.
Nessan Cleary 
Leave a comment