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Iran-Israel crisis: Dangers still high with little room for diplomacy
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
Does the Iran-Israel crisis offer a unique opportunity for diplomacy?
I don't think so. They certainly give an opportunity for a bunch of countries to reengage with Israel. We're seeing that with Jordan, with Saudi Arabia, and to show the Iranians that they are still considered to be the big concern as an enemy in the region, a disrupter. But that's very different from saying we're going to see a breakthrough in relations. You're not resetting deterrence. Iran is going to continue to lead the axis of resistance and provide weapons and intelligence and engage in strikes against targets across the region. Israel will still hit Iranians that are operating there. So going forward, I think the dangers are still pretty high.
Is Germany's Scholz meeting with Xi in Beijing indicating a shift in Europe-China trade tensions?
Not really. Here, the fact that Scholz has a large number of German CEOs in tow means that, yes, he's concerned that the Chinese are providing support to Russia, maybe even increasingly dual-use military support to Russia in the war in Ukraine. He's concerned about Chinese industrial policy that's undermining, the interests of Americans and Europeans economically. But ultimately he is very reliant on investment and trade with China, and he's going to continue to support that. He is not fully aligned with his government on this issue, not his advisors, not his foreign minister, and certainly not the other parties in the coalition. But it is Scholz's perspective. And as a consequence, it is going to be a pretty friendly trip.
Why is Sudan's year-long conflict gone largely unnoticed?
Well, we write about it a fair amount, but I mean, the fact that it is in a part of the world that doesn't have economic implications. So you blow up Ukraine, and Russia is in a fight, and energy prices and food and fertilizer prices go up. Major conflict in Sudan. A lot of people suffer, a lot of people die, but the rest of the world has no impact economically. Also, most of the refugees, people fleeing, fleeing to neighboring African countries, they're not coming over to Mexico, the United States or to Poland and to Germany. And that just doesn't lead to a lot of attention. Final point is that there aren't a lot of journalists on the ground from the West in Sudan. And so not a lot of people are actually covering this. So for all of those reasons, not getting a lot of attention, but we'll keep talking about it.
FILE PHOTO: Lieutenant General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, deputy head of the military council and head of paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), greets his supporters as he arrives at a meeting in Aprag village, 60 kilometers away from Khartoum, Sudan, June 22, 2019.
Sudan’s warring parties resume peace talks
Six months into the civil war in Sudan – which has killed 9,000 people and displaced over 5 million – the armed forces and their paramilitary enemies in the Rapid Support Forces have resumed peace talks in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
Representatives from the United States, Saudi Arabia, and the African Union’s Intergovernmental Authority on Development are moderating the talks, and they set modest expectations. “The talks will not address broader political issues,” according to the US State Department, and instead are focused on setting up cease-fires, humanitarian corridors, and confidence-building measures that will eventually lead to “permanent cessation of hostilities.”
Neither side seems prepared to make concessions that would end the war, but a temporary pause in the fighting likely serves both of their military interests. Six months of war has taken a toll on their armies without scoring a decisive blow, and the conflict may now shift to lower intensity. Their interest in a pause has more to do with rearming and reorganizing for another push than bringing relief and organizing a permanent peace.
Eurasia Group Africa analyst Connor Vasey says that while a temporary arrangement may emerge from Jeddah, the war will drag on. “So far, there is limited – if any – reason to believe that either side has hit a wall in terms of fighting spirit,” he says. “Inasmuch as some frontlines may be solidifying and forcing the two ‘big men’ to rethink their aspirations in the conflict, both will see continued fighting as a way to gain leverage in any mediated talks.”
A snapshot of the humanitarian crisis in Sudan.
The Graphic Truth: Crisis on top of crisis in Sudan
Recent clashes between two military factions in Sudan have brought fresh misery to a people long plagued by conflict – and in some regions genocide – under longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir (1993-2019). Violence in Khartoum, now in its third week, has displaced more than 330,000 people, adding to the millions already displaced as a result of ethnic violence in South Sudan in recent years. When al-Bashir was ousted in a popular uprising in 2019, there were hopes that Sudan could undergo a democratic transition, but those aspirations have mostly been quashed. Here’s a snapshot of the humanitarian toll of recent fighting.
Fleeing Sudanese seek refuge in Chad.
Sudan at risk of biological hazard
As if things weren’t bad enough in Sudan, there’s now growing fear of a biological catastrophe after one of two warring military factions took control of Khartoum’s National Public Laboratory.
The World Health Organization warned Wednesday of a “high risk of biological hazard” at the lab, which stores pathogens like measles and cholera and other hazardous materials.
After militants forced lab technicians to leave, WHO said the situation was “extremely dangerous,” though it wouldn’t say which group – the Sudanese army or the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces – had seized the compound.
The two sides agreed this week to a 72-hour ceasefire that will expire on Thursday night. While fighting has ceased throughout much of the capital, allowing people to leave their homes and access food aid, clashes persist in some pockets of the city.
But things were already dire at NPL and throughout Khartoum’s health system since clashes erupted in the capital almost two weeks ago. At the lab, lifesaving treatments – including blood bags for transfusions – couldn’t be stored properly due to electricity outages. Meanwhile, officials say that 61% of the city’s health facilities aren’t operational due to shelling.
This development comes amid a greater sense of lawlessness in Khartoum after a number of former officials associated with longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir escaped from prison.
The WHO says it is still conducting a thorough risk assessment, but the situation is deteriorating quickly as a tenuous truce frays.
People gather at the station to flee from Khartoum.
Fleeing Sudan
As fighting in Sudan between two warring army factions reached its ninth day on Sunday, a wave of countries evacuated their embassies in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital. (See this primer on what’s fueling the conflict and who the main players are.)
The US and UK, for their part, announced that they’d evacuated embassy staff and their families in a mission that’s proved increasingly difficult amid heavy shelling that’s kept Khartoum’s five million plus residents hiding in their homes.
Indeed, the Pentagon said it had flown in Navy Seals and Army Special Forces for a mission that lasted less than one hour and resulted in around 70 diplomats and family members being flown out. Still, the US State Department has said that evacuating the 16,000 American citizens there, mostly dual nationals, remains a long shot.
The Netherlands, Canada, Japan, Italy, and other countries say they are conducting similarly complex operations as Khartoum’s airport remains closed amid ongoing bombardments.
But these missions are anything but straightforward. A German evacuation attempt had to be aborted in recent days due to shelling. On Sunday, a French convoy came under fire while evacuating its citizens and had to turn back to the embassy.
Also on Sunday, a UN convoy started a 525-mile drive toward the Port Sudan on the Red Sea to evacuate UN staff and aid group workers. While the two warring factions refused last week to honor a number of ceasefires, it appears that they agreed, for the most part, not to fire on aircraft carrying foreign diplomats or on UN vehicles.
However, for millions of Sudanese stranded in the war-torn country, there is no safe haven. Many of those trying to flee have been turned back from neighboring countries, like Egypt, for not having appropriate travel documents. There's growing fear that this could spiral into a full-blown regional crisis: Around 20,000 people in the western Darfur region have crossed into neighboring Chad since the fighting began, and more than 2,000 have fled to South Sudan.
The humanitarian situation is becoming increasingly dire. Food and water supplies in the capital are dwindling. Many are resorting to getting water from the River Nile to get by. Meanwhile, Netblocks, a watchdog group, says that the internet is functioning at 2% of ordinary levels, making communication and evacuation efforts even more difficult.
Fox-Dominion settlement won't change US politics
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
How will the Fox-Dominion settlement play into GOP politics ahead of 2024?
Honestly, not at all. It's a really big settlement, almost a billion dollars. And Fox basically is admitting that they posted a lot of disinformation, but it's not changing Fox's position as having the most watched of the cable news programs. It's not changing them from, after a couple of years of having a soft ban of Donald Trump, they're now regularly interviewing him and they will continue to, especially assuming he gets the Republican nomination. So I think that the continued erosion of US political institutions, particularly in the media space and the polarization, is going to continue apace. That is where we are. Kind of like January 6th, not a big enough crisis to have much of an impact.
What's Russia up to with its North Sea sabotage plans?
Oh, a pretty big deal in the sense that there's been investigations by the Danes, the Germans, and others, showing that there are these ghost ships, Russian ships operating in the North Sea that have plans in place as the conflict, if the conflict continues to escalate to sabotage wind farms and undersea communications cables. Not a surprise. That's what a rogue Russia's all about. Remember, the Ukraine War we could easily see freezing as the troops get exhausted and they don't have military capabilities to tack a lot of the land. But Russia is still seen as a rogue state by the G7, by the NATO countries, by the EU, and that's going to make them angrier and angrier. And so the likelihood you see this kind of confrontation, it'll have big impacts, especially on frontline NATO states and on the EU, is very likely going forward.
Is Sudan on the brink of civil war?
Does kind of look that way. There was, in principle, an agreement to a ceasefire, end of hostilities. It led to absolutely no change in both sides fighting each other. And at least you need to get humanitarian supplies in and you need to evacuate a lot of the Western citizens that are trapped there right now. As of now, very low likelihood that's going to happen. Already a couple of hundred dead and not a lot of journalists on the ground really able to report that news, but a very severe humanitarian crisis that is playing out in front of us in Sudan.
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