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The Great Game: What to make of the Iran-Saudi Deal and Ukraine holding on to Bakhmut

Are the Chinese taking over management of the Middle East? Have Sweden given up on NATO? Why was I completely wrong about Bakhmut? Read all the answers in this year's Great Game!
2023-03-15

Welcome to this week’s Great Game – completely free of any bank talk! It’s been a crazy week in the macro space and we are actively following that in our liveblog as well as through coming articles, so in this space we will turn our eyes to something else – Geopolitics! We’ll be giving our hot takes on several issues this week – the Iran-Saudi Deal, Sweden’s NATO troubles and the latest from the frontlines in Ukraine.

The Iran-Saudi Deal

Major news from the Middle East this week as the arch-rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia signed a co-operation deal. The deal is almost entirely symbolic and it’s not like the two are suddenly best buddies or partners. So why the deal?

Both Teheran and Riyadh are tired from decades of rivalry that saw them taking opposing sides in various conflicts across the region. With the 2022 truce holding up in Yemen, the Syrian Civil War being all but finished and the Qataris having finished their World Cup project, the main sparks of conflict between Iran and Saudi have died down, however. There’s simply not a lot dividing them anymore. Iran still takes a more critical stance towards Israel and the West in general, but that’s becoming less and less of an issue for the Saudis, who are increasingly fed up with being critizised and questioned by Western media and by US officials. The Saudies were angered by US condemnation and interference with the Saudi oil production and allegations of the Saudis actively working to get Trump re-elected in 2024.

So in short, Iran and Saudi are not really battling each other anywhere in the Middle East and with Saudi slowly distancing themselves from the US, the obstacles to a cross-gulf detente are few. And in steps China as the proverbial midwife of this deal. But why?

 

 

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