What now?

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Reading Time: 8 mins
Section: Daily Rundown
Categories: Category 3
Tags: US Iran Diplomacy World News

Precursor - I have been aware of events between Ukraine and Russia for the past few months but do not have any real expertise in either country. I cannot offer any insight into what the goals of this invasion are or will be. Like most non-experts this is an exercise generating a more informed image of things (see this Irish Times article that has some helpful context). Even with my continued focus on JCPOA developments, I am quite in the dark on how things will play out even with that now. Also worth reiterating that the Daily Rundown is now more a weekly review and whatever tweets are sent out are the interesting news I have come across.

Ukraine

  1. SEE THIS TIMELINE FIRST1

  2. And then a Foreign Policy article from 26 Jan 2022 by Maria Snegovaya

  3. Also for the historians out there there are some helpful answers in the /r/AskHistorians reddit. I’m quite ignorant on the USSR breakup and some of those answers were insightful.

Things took a dramatic geopolitical turn with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Just three days prior Russian president Vladimir Putin declared two districts of Ukraine as Russian territory. Then early yesterday morning a full scale invasion was ordered by Putin.

Here’s some recent maps by Janes on the invasion.


Global Finance Perspective

I have no idea if global finance and trade will forever become fragmented after the dust settles in the years to come. This might be worth glancing at just to see what these folks think. It’s not much, but something I found that was made public and a quick read.

For a longer read please see this RBC Risk assesment for understanding what prior military engagements do to the market (its a .pdf file from OSINTELProject on its own IPFS server). Basically it will correct in about 30 days or so, so go long.

Sanctions

See below for the primary sanctions. The US basically bypassed the SWIFT system by blocking any USD transactions by various Russian Banks.

https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0608

Well now Putin has been directly sanctioned by the US by day 2. Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov were also sanctioned.

OSINT Tracking

There are a multitude of ways to continue following this issue. I find the LiveUAMAP’s and Twitter lists or feeds of OSINT nerds to be unhelpful at a time like this (still I did make a Ukraine Twitter list). Frankly, tracking the progress of the invasion feels useless for the individual. The way I understand and view OSINT is from an individual entity’s perspective, not from a government’s perspective where they use OSINT as just a piece of the various INTs. Nor is my goal one of a monetary nature for different corporate entities worried about upcoming sanctions and how it might affect their business. This is a project solely for further understanding.

JCPOA News

Before events took a drastic turn this week it was looking like the JCPOA agreement was about to be settled with an interim agreement. Iran and the US had agreed on a prisoner swap “completely separate from ongoing negotiations.” This seemed to be the final element before finalizing the JCPOA discussions.

See USIP’s Iran Primer and their weekly roundup for an overview.

Crude Jumped to over $105 USD on the first day

The largest link to these two issues is how the global economy responds to the Russian invasion. The most visible is the price of crude oil.

Extremely Simplified scenario - US and EU sanctions harm Russian crude oil exports further limiting the available supply and driving up the price further.

P5+1 agrees to remove sanctions on Iran so that they can start selling crude on the open market and increase the global supply, thus returning crude prices below $100 USD.

Most likely will not happen this way since Russia is at the table negotiating this. Extremly unlikely if Russian banking is banned from the SWIFT system. Their oil revenue would be gone and Iran would be making up the difference. Although interestingly Iran’s oil output has increased by 40% within the past year.2

Raisi visits Qatar

​ “To start with, the visit marks only Raisi’s second state visit after his election, the first such visit having been to Russia, and the first visit by an Iranian president to Doha in eleven years. There are a number of other, more important reasons for the trip’s significance. The trip comes in what appears to be the final phase of the renewed negotiations in Vienna between Iran and the world powers to renew the Nuclear Accord, from which the United States withdrew in 2018. During their meeting, Raisi reportedly briefed Qatar’s Emir, Sheikh Tamim, on the status of the Vienna negotiations. This appears to be part of a deliberate, wider strategy by Raisi and his foreign minister, Hossein Amirabdollahian, to get buy-in from as many GCC states as possible for a new nuclear accord by keeping them in the loop on the status of the Vienna negotiations.”

From - https://www.dohainstitute.org/en/PoliticalStudies/Pages/Irans-Raisi-Visits-Qatar.aspx

Iran’s Economy

I found a new article on Iran’s post-covid economy.3 The most important quote though is the last sentence of the article

“It is important to note, though, that delays in talks on the Iran Nuclear Deal mean more serious challenges for the Iranian economy in the near future such as increasing fiscal deficits, higher inflation and lower economic growth."

Middle East Region

So I might as well link a few articles about this portion of the world.

  1. Mark Lynch on Term Middle East.4 An interesting exersise by Lynch arguing for a different understanding of this part of the world. US policymakers are still stuck in Cold War paradigm of thinking and less unity among Arab countries.

    1. “Dubai has more in common with Singapore or Hong Kong than with Beirut or Baghdad. Similarly, Saudi Arabia’s and the UAE’s use of Israeli-made digital surveillance tools mirrors China’s model as much as it does those of other Arab regimes. Such global ties in economics and technology may soon come to play as much of a role in these states’ foreign policies as any traditional regional priorities do—pushing them closer to Asia, say, or providing new incentives for them to manipulate elections in Western democracies.”

  2. https://orientxxi.info/magazine/why-the-houthi-drones-struck-abu-dhabi,5378

    1. Good article explaining why the Houthi’s struck against the UAE and escalating their role. I had the basic question of why engage Abu Dhabi in such an overt way.

  3. https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/russia-ukraine-war-invasion-seven-ways-middle-east-affect

    1. I forgot to mention that Ukraine and Russia export a large amount of wheat to Middle Eastern countries. Egypt will take the largest hit, along with Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen and Lebanon.

Drones and Air Power

An article about drone proliferation in the Middle East might be one of the best I’ve come across recently.5 This might not be a great suprise to anyone following these developments, but one of the most succinct and correct analysis on this trend.

In Short

  • Ongoing advancement in drone mimicks the 1960-70s period of ballistic missle proliferation
  • Drones have not changed any country’s strategy, only added another tool. Quote, “In other words, while the drones have exacerbated the regional arms race, they have not changed the nature of the conflicts.”

Another article by International Crisis Group on Turkey’s use of air power against the PKK.6

I found this helpful in understanding the intra-Kurdish factions. Mandıracı states that the KDP and Ankara have grown their economic ties over the past few years.

That’s the main nugget of information I gleaned from this article. Aside from that my knowledge of the PKK and various Kurdish political factions is extremely limited. Doubtless it will make more sense to someone more familiar with ongoing events.

  1. SBS News. “The key events that help explain the unfolding Ukraine-Russia crisis.” https://www.sbs.com.au/news/the-key-events-that-help-explain-the-unfolding-ukraine-russia-crisis/abc3f874-e6a8-4ebc-9de8-4be39e4a71a9 ↩︎

  2. IRNA. “Iran oil exports increase by 40% despite sanctions.” https://en.irna.ir/news/84662491/Iran-oil-exports-increase-by-40-despite-sanctions ↩︎

  3. Ebadi, Ebad. “The Iranian Economy’s Challenges Amid the Pandemic and Sanction.” 21 Feb 2022, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mec/2022/02/21/the-iranian-economys-challenges-amid-the-pandemic-and-sanctions/ ↩︎

  4. Lynch, Mark. “The End of the Middle East: How an Old Map Distorts a New Reality.” Foreign Affairs (March/April 2022). https://outline.com/fc7cBE ↩︎

  5. Samaan, Jean-Loup, “The Proliferation of Drones in the Middle East Has Done Nothing to Change the Strategic Order There” https://orientxxi.info/magazine/the-proliferation-of-drones-in-the-middle-east-has-done-nothing-to-change-the,5393 ↩︎

  6. Mandıracı, Berkay. “Turkey’s PKK Conflict: A Regional Battleground in Flux.” 18 Feb 2022, https://www.crisisgroup.org/europe-central-asia/western-europemediterranean/turkey/turkeys-pkk-conflict-regional-battleground-flux ↩︎