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Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.
Bolsonaro goes on trial
A powerful and immensely popular former right-wing American president went on trial Thursday, and it’s not Donald Trump. Jair Bolsonaro, who led Brazil from 2018 until he narrowly lost to his left-wing nemesis “Lula” da Silva in 2022, faces charges that he unfairly sought to sway voters in that election with baseless claims about problems with the country’s voting system.
If Bolsonaro is found guilty of that charge next week, as many expect he will be, he’ll be banned from holding public office for eight years. Keep an eye on the streets if that happens, as Bolsonaro is the country’s most powerful opposition leader, and his supporters already view the country’s political institutions as hopelessly rigged against him.
But in the longer term, even if he is sidelined from contesting the presidency directly in 2026, he’ll remain a powerful kingmaker in a deeply polarized country.
A new 1000 Naira note as the Central Bank of Nigeria releases the notes to the public, December 15, 2022.
What We’re Watching: Nigeria’s dwindling cash/patience, Bolsonaro’s next move, China's diplomatic European tour, Armenia’s olive branch
Nigeria’s currency crisis
It’s a little over a week before voters head to the polls in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, and temperatures on the streets are rising amid protests over a cash shortage. In November, outgoing President Muhammadu Buhari began a program of phasing out currencies of high denominations, saying it would help transition the country to a cashless economy and clamp down on the currency black market and inflation. The timing appears odd so close to an election, but Buhari’s explanation has been that the measure will curb vote buying. But fast forward three months, and banks are running low on cash, with people having to line up for hours to withdraw their own savings. After being told by the government to hand in large denomination notes in exchange for new wads of cash, many are being sent home empty-handed. This is particularly problematic because the West African country of more than 213 million is highly reliant on cash, with just 45% having access to a bank account in 2021. Violence is on the rise as frustrated Nigerians take to the streets, which presents increasing governance challenges ahead of the crucial Feb. 25 vote. In a bid to calm things down, Buhari announced Thursday that one of the three banknotes being phased out would remain legal for another two months. For more on what’s at stake, see this Q+A with Eurasia Group’s Africa expert Amaka Anku.
Bolsonaro plans to return home
The famous Brazilian singer Tom Jobim once said, in so many words, living abroad is great, but it’s crap – living in Brazil is crap, but it’s great. Brazil’s right-wing former President Jair Bolsonaro seems to agree: After months of self-imposed exile in South Florida, he reportedly plans to return to Brazil in March to lead the opposition against his nemesis, left-wing President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva. Bolsonaro has been a “Florida Man” since December, after losing to Lula in a presidential election he and his supporters believe was stacked against them. Although Bolsonaro is still hugely popular in Brazil — he lost by less than 2 points — returning is risky. Brazil’s Supreme Court is already investigating his role in the January 8 riots, when thousands of Bolsonaristas ransacked government buildings in the capital, Brasilia. When Bolsonaro arrives, Lula will have a big decision to make. With things as polarized as they are, jailing Bolsonaro or banning him from politics could backfire. Who would know that better than Lula himself? He was imprisoned for corruption in 2018, only to walk free a year later and storm his way back to the presidency.
Beijing’s balancing act
Former Foreign Minister Wang Yi, a chief foreign policy advisor to President Xi Jinping, is on a whirlwind trip to Europe, where he aims to bolster economic ties. On Wednesday, he met with Emmanuel Macron, reportedly asking the French president for help in getting the US to rein in efforts to clamp down on China’s tech sector (the US recently recruited Japan and the Netherlands to join tech export controls on China). Wang is also making stops in Italy, Hungary, and finally Germany, where he’ll attend the Munich Security Conference. Relations between China and the US, as well as much of the EU, have been strained in recent months – to put it mildly. But with Beijing’s economy in decline after years of self-imposed zero-COVID chaos, Beijing is looking for friends with deep pockets wherever it can find them. This might also explain why Wang is reportedly hoping to meet with US Sec. of State Antony Blinken on the sidelines of Munich. If it happens, it’ll come just a few weeks after Blinken’s planned visit to Beijing was canceled after a Chinese spy balloon was identified – and subsequently shot down – over US airspace. EU leaders, meanwhile, are unlikely to acquiesce to China unless Beijing starts distancing itself from Russia’s aggression in Ukraine.
Armenia offers Azerbaijan a peace plan project
The search for peace in Nagorno-Karabakh continues. Armenia has presented Azerbaijan with a project it hopes will achieve lasting peace in the Caucasus region, which the two former Soviet Republics have fought two wars over since the dissolution of the USSR, killing thousands. The most recent one in 2020 ended with a Russia-brokered peace deal, but clashes late last year threatened to unravel both the ceasefire and repeated efforts at a permanent resolution to the conflict. The Armenian plan outlines monitoring mechanisms by both countries to prevent breaches of a peace deal. The region is claimed by Azerbaijan but has a majority Armenian population that has been semiautonomous since the early 1990s and enjoys close relations with nearby Armenia. Complicating matters further, Turkey supports Azerbaijan while Russia is committed to defending Armenia in case of military escalation in a region rich in oil and gas. We’ll be watching to see how Azerbaijan responds and whether the two sides can come to an agreement on ending the long-simmering conflict.A member of the Federal Police looks on as supporters of Brazil's former President Jair Bolsonaro arrive on a bus after their camp was dismantled in Brasilia.
Are the men in uniform hurting Brazil's democracy?
Hardcore supporters of far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro ransacked Brazil's democratic institutions à la Jan. 6 on Sunday, and there’s strong anecdotal evidence that some members of the security forces didn’t do much to stop them.
It was, at a minimum, a dereliction of duty. Or perhaps it reflected their thinly veiled sympathy for what the protesters were trying to do: overturn the result of the 2022 election to reinstate Bolsonaro.
Local media spotted civilian cops and members of the military police in Brasília chatting with protesters and even escorting them as they stormed parliament, the presidential palace, and the Supreme Court. Ibaneis Rocha, the pro-Bolsonaro governor of the federal district, was suspended for 90 days for failing to prevent the attacks carried out by Bolsonaristas who reportedly arrived in Brasília days before in 100 buses that went unnoticed by the friendly men in uniform. And guess who decided to skip town and is apparently hiding in Florida? Anderson Torres, the capital’s now-fired security chief and Bolsonaro’s former justice minister.
In the end, no security personnel defied the federal order to retake the buildings. Still, the dramatic events have shone a spotlight on Brazil’s capital and on the close ties between the country’s security apparatus and Bolsonaro.
It’s unclear how widespread the phenomenon is. Brazil’s military and police don’t do surveys on the politics of its rank and file. But again, anecdotally, it’s an open secret that most of them are fans of the former president, an ex-army captain himself.
On the one hand, the military is traditionally conservative and thus ideologically aligned with a right-winger like Bolsonaro. On the other, its members have a strong incentive to respect hierarchy and to defend law and order. In that sense, they are not an immediate threat to democracy, says Chris Garman, managing director for the Americas at Eurasia Group.
Brazil's security apparatus, he explains, has strong survival instincts — in part due to lessons learned coming out of military rule in 1985. Very few of its members openly expressed any willingness to support Bolsonaro's efforts to overturn the election result or to defy orders by their commanders despite rumblings of a coup.
Yet, that's not the only risk — especially under the newly minted left-wing presidency of Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva.
"It's more of a gray zone," Garman says. Bolsonarista cops and soldiers might be less aggressive in clamping down on protests that might turn violent, as they've done with thousands of pro-Bolsonaro crowds that have been stirring up trouble across the country since their idol lost re-election to Lula two months ago.
The slow-burn threat is that the crackdown against the rioters and their backers deepens their mistrust of the government and disenchantment with the political class.
A big chunk of Bolsonaro's base — including many members of Brazil’s security apparatus — "came out of this election feeling that [it] was stolen in the loose sense of the word, not the narrow sense of the word from fraud," Garman says. "They view that establishment was out to undermine Bolsonaro and elect Lula" by stacking the odds against the former.
So what, if anything, can Lula do to prevent another 8 de Janeiro? With an Erdogan-style purge of the military and police out of the question, it all comes down to how the prosecution is handled.
For Garman, Lula will have to strike a tough balance between taking effective action against the perpetrators and making sure his measures don't smack of overreach that pushes Bolsonaristas so far into their corner that next time, the security men might be even less inclined to do their job.
Supporters of Brazil's former President Jair Bolsonaro are pictured through a broken glass as they demonstrate against President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva outside the Congress building in Brasilia.
Brazil's Jan. 6 came two days late
We warned you this might happen …
In Brazil's answer to Jan. 6, hundreds of supporters of far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro stormed the country's parliament, presidential palace, and Supreme Court on Sunday. The mob marched from army HQ in Brasília towards the heart of Brazilian politics, the Praça dos Três Poderes (Three Powers Plaza), where they broke police lines to enter the buildings housing the legislative, executive, and judiciary powers while being tear-gassed by cops.
Huh? Didn’t Bolsonaro already concede the 2022 election? Technically he didn’t, although he did agree in vague terms to a transition of power to his nemesis: the left-wing Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva — a nuance that fell on deaf ears among Bolsonaro’s most diehard fans.
Indeed, thousands of the former president’s loyalists who refused to accept his defeat by Lula have been camping out for weeks in Brasília and other cities calling for a military coup presumably to reinstate Bolsonaro. Meanwhile, as Lula was sworn in for his third term as president exactly one week ago, Bolsonaro was spotted eating KFC in Florida after skipping the inauguration to spend new year’s eve at Mar-a-Lago with his buddy, former US President Donald Trump.
Like Jan. 6 in the US, it was all (mostly) over in a matter of hours. Lula immediately declared a "federal security intervention" in the capital district — a state of emergency that gives his government special powers to restore law and order in Brasília until the end of the month. The security forces retook control of the three buildings briefly occupied by the protesters, and at least 400 people have been arrested.
But unlike in America, it seems that members of the security and intelligence apparatus were in cahoots with the rioters. In a televised national address, a visibly angry Lula blamed his predecessor for encouraging the uprising and accused local cops of being either ill-willed or incompetent for having let the mob breach the security perimeter.
The president also vowed to go after the rioters and their financial backers. (The first head to roll was Brasília's pro-Bolsonaro governor, suspended by the Supreme Court for 90 days despite firing his security chief, a former Bolsonaro minister who's reportedly now in Florida.)
And what about Bolsonaro? It took him a while, but hours after the crisis ended he fired off a series of tweets to condemn the violence, deny he had anything to do with it, and note that the invasion of public buildings "crossed the line."
What happens next? Once the dust (quite a bit of it) settles on Brazil's ransacked capital, expect Lula's government to launch a full-scale investigation into what happened, who was behind it, and whether Bolsonaro played any role. And whatever the outcome, it'll likely further fan the flames of political polarization in Brazil.Israel's PM Benjamin Netanyahu with other members of the new Israeli parliament after their swearing-in ceremony in Jerusalem.
What We’re Watching: Bibi’s big plans, Lula’s tough choice, US-bound travel from China, Zelensky's plan, Santos' unraveling
Meet Israel's new government
When Israel’s new government is sworn in on Thursday, it will be the most right-wing coalition in Israel’s history. Led by Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, whose right-wing Likud Party reaped the most votes in last month’s race, the bloc is made up of two ultra-Orthodox parties as well as right-wing and far-right parties. To get coalition partners on side, Netanyahu made several overtures to Religious Zionism, a far-right alliance that finished third in the polls, including agreeing in principle to annex the disputed West Bank and applying Israeli sovereignty to the settlements. Still, Bibi, a fluent politician, hedged his bets, saying that the timing and implementation of such a policy would depend on the PM’s judgement. What’s more, the coalition agreement includes 1.6 billion shekels ($450 million) annually for development and building roads in the West Bank, while also plans for legislation allowing business providers to refuse service based on their religious beliefs – broadly seen as a measure to legalize discrimination against the LGBTQ community. Bezalel Smotrich, the ultra-nationalist head of Religious Zionism and incoming finance minister, penned an op-ed in theWall Street Journal titled “Israel’s New Government Isn’t What You’ve Heard” in which he pushed back against claims that the new government will undermine the independent judiciary, but many Israelis are worried.
Lula’s decision on demonstrations
Tensions are running high ahead of Sunday’s presidential inauguration in Brazil. In a number of Brazilian cities, protesters who claim this year’s election was stolen from outgoing President Jair Bolsonaro have camped outside military headquarters in hopes of persuading the army to overturn the result. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the incoming president, has so far said little about this problem, but after police detonated a bomb and arrested a suspect connected to one of these camps in Brasilia ahead of Lula’s inauguration on Sunday, anger has approached the boiling point. Flavio Dino, who will serve as Lula’s justice minister, has warned that these camps have become “incubators of terrorism.” Security concerns ahead of Lula being sworn in are high, and Dino is reportedly considering ordering police to break up the camps. We’ll be watching to see if this can be done peacefully and how the protesters will change tactics if they’re forced to disperse.
US to require COVID tests for travelers from China
The CDC announced on Wednesday that the US will require travelers from China, Hong Kong, and Macau to record negative COVID tests before entering the country starting on Jan. 5. Washington joins a growing list of countries – Japan, Italy, Malaysia, and India – in enforcing such travel restrictions as Beijing clumsily transitions away from its zero-COVID policy, resulting in millions of infections and fears of new mutations (no!). Still, it’s hard to know what’s really going on inside China given the Chinese Communist Party’s predilection for secrecy. While official state data claim 62,592 symptomatic COVID cases were recorded in the first 20 days of December, a leaked memo from China’s National Health Commission seen by the Financial Times and Bloomberg claims that as many as a whopping 250 million Chinese residents contracted COVID in that period. (Beijing previously said it would stop gathering data on asymptomatic cases.) President Xi Jinping, for his part, does not take kindly to being embarrassed – particularly by Washington. How will he respond?
The curious case of George Santos
There’s been a lot of attention in recent weeks on George Santos, a GOP Congressman-elect who wrestled an open House seat from a Democratic incumbent in Long Island, New York, in last month’s midterms. Now, the district attorney in Nassau County says she is opening an investigation into claims that Santos’ “numerous fabrications” misled voters. Indeed, Santos’ unraveling in recent weeks has been astonishing. He referred to a business acumen developed during his time at Goldman Sachs. He claimed his mother survived the 9/11 attacks as a financial executive at the World Trade Center and that he was tossed out of a prestigious New York high school after his parents fell on hard times. Santos backtracked on claims about being Jewish after journalists dug into his family history (later clarifying that he was raised Catholic, Santos says he feels “Jew-ish”). He’s reportedly never worked at Goldman Sachs, and he allegedly lied about his education, including about graduating from college, and his mother’s work. Republicans winning a number of seats in New York state, a longtime Democratic stronghold, was a decisive factor in helping the GOP secure a very narrow victory in the House. Meanwhile, GOP House leader Kevin McCarthy, who is looking for votes wherever he can find them to become House speaker next week, has stayed mum on the Santos case.
What We’re Ignoring: The Zelensky Plan
For the past month, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has talked up a 10-point peace plan to end Russia’s war on his country. He shared it at November’s G20 summit in Indonesia and with President Joe Biden during a recent trip to Washington. One of the 10 items Zelensky demands is the complete withdrawal of all Russian troops from Ukraine and restoration of the borders that separate the two countries. In other words, he’s asking for a full Russian surrender. There’s nothing in this plan that can form the basis for genuine negotiations with Vladimir Putin because Russia’s president appears to believe that a Russian defeat in this war is unthinkable. By contrast, Zelensky believes, perhaps correctly, that Ukraine will win the war, and he sees no reason to compromise either. This is not a peace offer but a statement of defiance. The one true significance of this plan is that it signals Ukraine’s confidence that Russia can’t win. Both of these leaders will be sorely tested in 2023.Supporters of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu demonstrate as a Turkish court reaches a verdict in his trial.
What We're Watching: Turkish political verdict, Nagorno-Karabakh flareup, Sunak's immigration plan, Lula's military
Bombshell ruling in Turkey
On Wednesday, a Turkish court sentenced Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu to 2.5 years in prison for the obviously heinous crime of calling election officials "fools" after they annulled the result of the May 2019 race he won. Context: Imamoglu's slim victory then was questioned by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling Law & Justice party, which forced a rerun only to see Imamoglu win again by a wider margin. The double loss was a slap in the face for Erdoğan, who is running for re-election just six months from now — with Imamoglu favored to be his main rival. On the one hand, Erdogan is trying to pull the oldest authoritarian trick in the book by getting loyalist judges to throw his enemy in jail. On the other, since Imamoglu will surely appeal, the snail-pace legal system won’t confirm his conviction ahead of the presidential vote. Will Erdogan’s move further boost the mayor in the polls, convincing an alliance of six opposition parties to pick Imamoglu as their candidate? Throwback: in 1997, when Erdoğan himself was mayor of Istanbul, he did time in jail and was banned from political office for … reciting a controversial poem. Five years later he was elected as Turkey’s first Islamist PM.
Nagorno-Karabakh tensions rising again
For three days now, protesters tied to the Azerbaijani government have blocked the road connecting neighboring Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed ethnic-Armenian exclave that Azerbaijan claims as part of its territory. The blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh’s only tie to the outside world has raised fears of a humanitarian crisis among the mountainous region’s 150,000 people, especially after Azerbaijan reportedly cut gas supplies on Tuesday. For background, Karabakh was part of Soviet Azerbaijan, but since a brutal war in the early 1990s, the region has enjoyed a fragile de facto independence, backed by Armenia. After fresh fighting in 2020, Azerbaijan fully encircled Karabakh and has demanded that Armenia recognize Karabakh as Azerbaijan’s territory. Nothing doing, says Yerevan, which warns of an Azeri “genocide” against the Karabakh Armenians. A Russian peacekeeping mission has mostly kept a lid on things since 2020, but was reportedly unable to dislodge the current road blockade. The EU, meanwhile, has shown its usual “serious concern,” but the two main outside players are really Russia, which is Armenia’s closest ally, and Azerbaijan’s main backer: Turkey.
What’s Sunak’s immigration plan?
After first placing a tourniquet around the British economy, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is now tackling another thorny policy: immigration. Sunak, Britain’s fourth PM since 2019, outlined on Wednesday a new plan to stop migrants from traveling in rickety boats across the English Channel. (Just today, four bodies were found in the channel after a small boat capsized.) As part of his effort to clear the UK’s asylum backlog of nearly 100,000 people, Sunak’s government will resume “hostile environment” checks, meaning that asylum seekers from countries not deemed dangerous enough will be returned without having their claims processed. This is thought to be aimed at deterring Albanian nationals; 11,240 Albanians crossed the English Channel in the first nine months of this year, up from 800 in 2021. Though Sunak supports many of the hardline immigration policies floated by his former boss Boris Johnson – including the controversial Rwanda resettlement plan – the milder-mannered Sunak has taken a more pragmatic approach to the immigration issue. Unlike Boris, he’s sought to work with French President Emmanuel Macron on the issue rather than antagonize him.
Brazil’s president & its military
Brazil’s incoming president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has named a civilian to lead the military as Defense Minister. After several years of military men running the armed forces under outgoing President Jair Bolsonaro, it’s a move meant to send a message: the military should remain out of politics. During this year’s bitterly contested presidential campaign, many Bolsonaro critics feared that the former army captain, who admires Brazil’s past as a military dictatorship, might ask his old pals to save him from defeat. In the end, he resisted the temptation, but his supporters are still protesting the election result, particularly outside army barracks, where Bolsonaro is popular among rank-and-file soldiers. The leftist Lula’s choice, José Múcio Monteiro, is actually a member of a right-wing party – a nod to the need for someone who can appeal across the political spectrum. Monteiro has already named new commanders for the armed forces. As Lula’s January 1 inauguration approaches, we’re watching to see how Brazil’s military, and Bolsonaro himself, respond to Lula’s attempt to ease soldiers away from Brazil’s political stage.
Richarlison (L) and Neymar (R) of Brazil celebrate after scoring the first goal during the FIFA World Cup 2022 match against Serbia in Doha.
At the World Cup, Brazil plays both soccer & politics
When five-time winner Brazil takes the stage in its first World Cup knockout-stage match against big surprise South Korea on Monday, most Brazilians will put political divisions aside to unite behind the national soccer team in its quest to win another trophy in Qatar. But not all.
In a country where soccer is followed like a religion, the squad has become yet another flash point for political polarization amid the fallout from the recent presidential election. On one side are the diehard torcida (supporters) of outgoing far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, who campaigned for re-election wearing the team's first-choice canarinha (canary yellow) shirt.
On the other side are the fans of left-wing President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who accuse the Bolsonaristas of co-opting the color yellow and now proudly go in blue — Brazil’s second kit — to cheer for the country. In other words, these days the color of the shirt you wear to support the national squad shows whether you’re for Bolsonaro or Lula.
(Some) players have picked a side. In the run-up to the presidential vote, mega-star Neymar shocked many by endorsing Bolsonaro to his 188 million Instagram followers. That gesture made many fans sour on the world's most expensive player, who got injured in the opening game and hopes to return against the South Koreans. Neymar's response to his haters: I want to win the World Cup and dedicate it to the president.
But the PSG striker is at political odds with two big names: Richarlison, Brazil's top scorer so far, and Tite, the coach.
Richarlison — who gives Signal writer Alex Kliment strong Blade Runner vibes — has been outspoken about promoting the COVID vaccines that Bolsonaro famously hates. Meanwhile, Tite has been publicly coy about his politics but the Bolsonaristas suspect he's a leftist because he’s given the president the cold shoulder and used to manage Corinthians, a São Paulo club with a rich history of backing progressive politics.
It's not the first time the World Cup team has gotten mixed up in divisive Brazilian politics. Before winning the Mexico '70 edition led by O Rei (King) Pelé, the democratic opposition accused the players of being puppets of the military junta running the country at the time. And in Spain '82, captain Sócrates trolled the generals by wearing a pro-democracy headband. He later went on to found a democratic movement at Corinthians and left Brazil to play in Italy until the military agreed to step down.
More recently, Tite snubbed the sitting president when the latter tried to take credit for Brazil's victory in the 2019 Copa América, and then again for hosting the 2021 edition in the middle of a pandemic. The coach says that if the canarinha wins its much-awaited O hexa (sixth World Cup) in Qatar, he won't go to Brasília to present the trophy to Bolsonaro.
The next enemy wears ... red. Will facing the South Koreans, a team that plays in the color of Communism — and Lula’s own Workers’ Party — make Bolsonaro fans even more fervent in their support of the national soccer team? As long as Brazil wins, rest assured that (almost) everyone will be overjoyed and samba all night long.This comes to you from the Signal newsletter team of GZERO Media. Sign up today.
Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro gives a press statement in Brasilia.
What We’re Watching: Bolsonaro's broken silence, Iranian attack plans, Bibi’s return, Colombia & Venezuela’s lunch date
Bolsonaro lets his friend say the hard part
In a prepared and combative statement lasting less than two minutes, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Tuesday did not concede the election he lost on Sunday. He also failed to congratulate — or even mention — his opponent, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Instead, he welcomed ongoing nationwide protests by pro-Bolsonaro truckers, saying they’re the result of a “feeling of indignation and injustice about how the elections were conducted.” He cast himself as a person who plays by the constitutional rules and said he was proud to have stood for freedom of markets, religion, and expression. “The right has truly risen in Brazil,” he said. After Bolsonaro walked off without taking questions, one of his closest allies stepped up to the podium to say Bolsonaro had in fact authorized him to begin the presidential transition. As that legal and logistical process gets underway, we are watching closely to see how far Bolsonaro pushes the popular protests to try to gain political leverage. Bolsonaro lost to former President Lula by the narrowest electoral margin in Brazil’s modern history. Buckle up.
Will Iran attack Saudi Arabia?
Tehran is reportedly preparing imminent attacks on targets in Saudi Arabia and northern Iraq that could put the US military at risk. Based on shared Saudi intelligence, the news has put the Pentagon on “high alert.” The US has 10 military bases and about 3,000 troops in Saudi Arabia and roughly 2,500 troops in Iraq. Riyadh says the plot is an attempt by the Islamic Republic to distract from the combustible situation at home, where nationwide protests – bordering on revolution – over the in-custody death of Mahsa Amini, 22, have consumed the country for more than six weeks. In recent weeks, Tehran has also bombarded Kurdish towns in northern Iraq that it blames for fomenting unrest in Iran (Amini was Kurdish). While many called for President Joe Biden to sever ties with Saudi leader Mohammed bin Salman after Riyadh recently snubbed the US by cutting OPEC+’s daily oil production, this episode reveals that – for better or worse – Washington and Riyadh’s national security interests remain intertwined.
Bibi is almost back
Israelis went to the polls on Tuesday for the fifth time in under four years, and the results look very good for … former Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu. With 85% of the vote counted, Bibi’s Likud Party has won the most seats – 31 – while his right-wing allies also appear to have the numbers to help him pass the 61-seat threshold (out of 120) needed to form a government in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. Interestingly, voter turnout was at a two-decade high. Far-right parties including the anti-Arab, anti-LGBTQ Religious Zionism bloc, as well as several ultra-Orthodox parties, reaped solid results and will be Bibi’s coalition partners. Still, there are about 500,000 votes from soldiers, prisoners and diplomats that are yet to be counted, but soldiers' votes traditionally skew right. Longtime leader and divisive figure Bibi Netanyahu appears to be on the cusp of victory.