Gulf states with deep pockets and big appetites are asserting themselves in the Horn of Africa as never before. The flurry of new economic and military investments is reshaping geopolitical dynamics on both sides of the Red Sea, as two formerly distinct regions are fast becoming one.
In the battle between Donald Trump’s gut and contradictory evidence, it’s a safe bet which will win the president’s favor. Days after major newspapers reported on a CIA assessment claiming that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the president declared his fulsome support for Saudi Arabia.
Also Read: Trump’s Statement On Saudi Arabia
Among the most magical urban myths floating around the Trump administration is that Saudi Arabia is America’s strategic partner and the relationship is simply too big to fail. Sadly, that relationship is already failing. Indeed, under the leadership of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (also known as MBS), Saudi Arabia has willfully pursued policies that have undermined both American interests and values. Worse still, the Trump administration envisions a role for Saudi Arabia in its Middle East strategy that can only disappoint.
The Andaman Sea is flanked by the Andaman and Nicobar chain of islands in the West, Myanmar to the north, the Thai-Malay peninsula to the east, and the Sumatra island to the south. It funnels into the Straits of Malacca that connects the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The large amount of shipping that enters the Andaman Sea from the east heads to Singapore, from where it turns the Pacific Ocean. Long seen as a political backwater, the Andaman Sea is rapidly regaining its strategic salience.
With Iran’s convening of its first “Regional Security Dialogue” summit in late September 2018 with deputy national security advisors from Russia, China, and India, Tehran has taken a significant step toward creating a multilateral framework for Eurasian security cooperation in the face of renewed U.S. sanctions. Ostensibly devoted to combatting terrorism in Afghanistan, the summit’s concluding declaration indicates a wide-sweeping stabilisation agenda extending from Syria eastward to include all of Central Asia.
The United States snapped sanctions back in place to choke Iran’s oil and shipping industries, while temporarily allowing top customers such as India and China to keep buying crude from the Islamic Republic. Having abandoned a 2015 Iran nuclear deal, US President Donald Trump is trying to cripple Iran’s oil-dependent economy and force Tehran to quash not only its missile and nuclear programmes, but also diminish its influence in the Middle East.
The U.S. is pursuing a “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran that includes the re-imposition of key energy and banking sanctions. With Tehran refusing to capitulate over its nuclear program or regional policies, the U.S.-Iran rivalry could escalate across the region.
It was always hard to see why a semi-medieval Middle Eastern autocracy reliant on a single fossil fuel was the best place to discuss any of those issues. And it is just as hard to believe the world will be worse off for not hearing what the IMF’s Christine Lagarde or J.P. Morgan’s Jamie Dimon think about them.
Donald Trump’s handling of Jamal Khashoggi’s apparently brutal murder in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul is not the first time that an American president has had to maneuver between our economic interests and purported U.S. values.
