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Destroyed train carriages are seen at the site of a crash, where two trains collided, near the city of Larissa, Greece, March 1, 2023.
Hard Numbers: Greek train crash, US attaches strings to chip cash, Serbia and Kosovo outline peace, camel copies for sale
43: At least 43 people are dead after a passenger train carrying people from Athens, Greece, to the northern city of Thessaloniki collided head-on with a freight train. A provincial stationmaster has already been arrested as part of the initial investigation. Greek rail unions have long complained about staffing shortfalls and outdated equipment.
10: Cash for chips now comes with strings attached. The US government has ruled that any American companies that receive money from a new multibillion-dollar fund to support the semiconductor industry must agree not to expand in China for 10 years. For more on the Great Global Chips War, see here.
15: A mere 15 years after Kosovo’s controversial declaration of independence from Serbia, the two countries reached a(nother) tentative, EU-brokered framework for peace earlier this week. Much remains to be worked out, but it’s a good sign nonetheless. See here for our recent explainer on why it’s so hard for Kosovo and Serbia to normalize relations.
50,000: Do you have A) $50,000 burning a hole in your pocket and B) a stunningly beautiful camel at your disposal? If so, please consider spending (A) on making a perfect clone of (B), courtesy of a Dubai lab that specializes in camel copies. Get over the hump — do it!Iran: lynchpin in the Saudi-Israeli relationship
US President Joe Biden didn't get much from his recent trip to Saudi Arabia — other than some symbolic progress on Saudi ties with Israel.
Indeed, Biden's plane flew directly to the country from Israel, and now Israeli airlines will be allowed to overfly Saudi airspace. But is this really a big deal?
"I would describe it as [...] giving crumbs to Biden," Bernard Haykel, a Princeton University professor and expert on Saudi Arabia, tells Ian Bremmer on GZERO World.
What would make a difference is normalizing ties with Israel — which the Saudis are not yet ready for. Haykel believes the Saudi public won't accept such a move until "something is given to the Palestinians."
Still, he expects the Israel-Saudi relationship to continue warming because, hello, Iran.
Watch the GZERO World episode: Saudi Arabia’s repressive power politics
- Prepping for a fight in the Middle East - GZERO Media ›
- Biden-MBS meeting was "total win" for Saudis, says expert - GZERO ... ›
- Crow on the menu during Biden's trip to Saudi Arabia - GZERO Media ›
- Déjà vu in Israel: Another government crumbles - GZERO Media ›
- Israel-UAE relations & the Abraham Accords are not at risk under ... ›
Models of oil barrels seen in front of a "stop" sign and the EU and Russia flag colors.
Hard Numbers: EU bans (most) Russian oil, Israel-UAE trade deal, crowdfunded drone for Ukraine, Pokemon zero-COVID protest
2/3: After weeks of tense negotiations, EU leaders agreed late Monday to an embargo on two-thirds of the oil the bloc now imports from Russia. But there's a catch: holdout Hungary will likely get an indefinite exemption in order to drop its veto.
96: On Tuesday, Israel and the UAE will sign a landmark free trade agreement, Israel's first with an Arab country. The agreement will eliminate 96% of tariffs between the two countries, which normalized ties less than two years ago under the Abraham Accords.
5 million: Lithuanians chipped in 5 million euros ($5.4 million) in an online crowdfunding drive to buy a Bayraktar TB2 military drone for Ukraine. The Turkish-made UAVs are making a difference on the battlefield for the Ukrainians because they enable high-precision airstrikes.
200: A Pokemon character who always has a headache has become one of China's most in-demand toys because people are using it to vent about the government's zero-COVID policy. Plastic figures of Psyduck, given away in KFC children's meals, are being resold for $200 after going viral on social media.
This comes to you from the Signal newsletter team of GZERO Media. Subscribe for your free daily Signal today.
What We’re Watching: Russian and NATO intentions, US strikes Syrian prison, UAE-Houthi escalation
Russian and NATO intentions.To prepare to meet a perceived military threat, planners try to understand both the intentions and the capabilities of the other side. Russia says it does not intend to invade Ukraine, but NATO planners can see it has built the capability for an attack by amassing 100,000 troops near the Ukrainian border. In response, the alliance has decided to underline its own capacities. On Monday, NATO announced it had put troops on high alert and ordered the reinforcement of Eastern Europe with additional ships and fighter jets. It has beefed up defense of the Baltic states and is publicly mulling the idea of deploying more troops to southeastern Europe. NATO commanders hope this shift in the alliance’s own capabilities will send Moscow a clear message: Any aggressive military action taken by Russia will come at a steep cost for Moscow. The UK government claims to have exposed a Russian plot to install a pro-Kremlin leader in power in Kyiv in hopes of forcing Russia to abort any such plan. The perceived Russian threat has also reinvigorated debate within Sweden and Finland about possible membership in NATO for those countries. In sum, both sides have boosted their capabilities, and bystanders are considering doing the same. It’s Russian and NATO intentions that Ukraine, and the rest of us, will be watching.
ISIS tries a jailbreak. The Pentagon has launched a series of air raids on a prison in northeast Syria that was recently attacked by Islamic State fighters who hoped to free comrades imprisoned there. The raids marked a rare intervention by the US military, which has focused its operations in the area mainly on advising and training the Kurdish-led Syrian Defense Forces, which was largely responsible for the Islamic State’s territorial defeat in 2019. The US bombing came four days after ISIS fighters stormed the prison where about 12,000 of their comrades and family members have been held since the last ISIS stronghold fell. At least 120 people have been killed since clashes broke out on Thursday. Though ISIS no longer holds much territory in Iraq or Syria, Islamic State sleeper cells have launched attacks in recent years and remain active in some areas. The US, meanwhile, has 900 troops stationed in northeast Syria to support Kurdish-affiliated militant groups, though they rarely engage directly with ISIS fighters.
More missiles rain on the UAE. For the second time in a week, Iran-backed Houthi rebels have fired rockets from Yemen toward Abu Dhabi, the UAE’s capital. The missiles are part of a deadly recent escalation in Yemen’s eight-year civil war. In a rare move, the Houthis recently launched a drone attack on oil tankers at the Abu Dhabi port, killing at least three people. The UAE’s government, which supports a Saudi-led coalition against the rebels, responded to the first Houthi attack with a series of attacks on Sana’a, Yemen’s capital, that killed at least 70 people. The UAE has tried to reduce its involvement in this conflict in recent years, but it now finds itself ensnared in an intensifying confrontation with the rebels. Yemen’s war is partly a proxy battle between regional foes Iran and Saudi Arabia, and this latest expansion of hostilities comes just as the two rivals were exploring an unprecedented detente. We’re watching to see whether this ongoing escalation will derail their progress.Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin space flight & the new space race
Ian Bremmer shares his perspective on global politics this week with a look to outer space, in a special edition of (Out of The) World In 60 Seconds:
Was today's Blue Origin space flight a big deal for humankind, or just a big deal for Jeff Bezos?
I'm not sure the space flight itself was such a big deal for humankind, but I do think the advances in space technology, which are increasingly stepping up, they're much quicker. I mean, reusable rockets that land exactly where they took off. That's very different from the space shuttle a couple of decades ago, and very exciting in terms of the ability to not just engage in space tourism, but explore both what's outside of our Earth and beyond. So yeah, I think the fact that's being driven by the private sector is a big deal for the United States, a big deal for the planet. I, having said that, the planet that we're right now all on, is the one that matters, I think, the most to everybody for the foreseeable future.
Did Richard Branson steal Jeff Bezos' thunder?
No, I don't think he did. I think more relevantly, Richard Branson saved his company, Virgin Galactic. They had a problem. One of their planes or rockets, if you will, had malfunctioned. There were huge delays, and now suddenly they showed right before Bezos. They got an enormous amount of media attention. Branson's always been a genius at that. I'm much happier that he decided to apply himself to outer-space travel or near-space travel and tourism rather than trying to run for political office, frankly. It's better aligned towards that, and I think it will get more attention to space. Frankly, as someone who always loved space stuff and dinosaurs, when I was a kid, I think that's a good thing.
Will this flight have geopolitical implications like the 20th-century Space Race?
Sort of in the sense that in the United States, NASA has long been seriously underfunded. A lot of scuttled missions, not a lot of grand vision and ambition like we used to in the days of the Apollo missions. The Chinese, the Indians, the Emiratis are doing a lot more of that than NASA is, but the United States is still, in many ways, way out in front of the space race because of Jeff Bezos, because of Elon Musk. In fact, I'd argue that it's the guy that's not in the headlines this week or last week that matters most for space. That's Elon. He's kind of dominating near-Earth orbit. The truly interesting thing about Elon Musk though, and this is geopolitical, is that SpaceX is really an arm of the American military. It's like over 90% of all of their contracts are with NASA and the Pentagon, while Tesla is doing enormous business with high tech in China, with Chinese partners. And the ability for Elon to engage in that geopolitical balancing act. It is probably the most problematic business model out there of all of the advanced tech players. I'm not sure it's sustainable and I'm not sure which one he's going to choose. So we'll see where that goes.The geopolitics of the Middle East shake up
How have geopolitics in the Middle East changed over the last few decades, and what does it mean for the Biden administration's strategy in this region? Like the two presidents before him, Joe Biden is eager to shift focus and resources away from the Middle East to China and the growing competition it presents. But there are some loose ends to tie up first in the Middle East, to say the least. Ian Bremmer explains on GZERO World.
Watch the episode: Is the US Misjudging the Middle East's Power Shifts? Vali Nasr's View
Podcast: Is the US misjudging the Middle East’s power shifts? Vali Nasr's view
Listen: "Pivot to Asia." It was the catchphrase floating around Washington DC's foreign policy circles in 2009 when President Obama first took office. And yet twelve years later, the Middle East continues to consume the attention of the United States' military and diplomatic efforts. Now President Biden is determined to change that, and to turn Washington's attention to Asia once and for all as he moves to confront a growing China. But according to Johns Hopkins University Middle East Scholar Vali Nasr, President Biden's approach to the Middle East will have to adapt to the once-in-a-generation power grab occurring between Iran, Israel, and Turkey while Arab nations in the region increasingly lose influence.
Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your preferred podcast platform to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.- Podcast: Rep. Mike Waltz’s case against ending the war in Afghanistan - GZERO Media ›
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- Podcast: Biden’s recognition of Armenian genocide: ramifications for Turkey, Armenia & the US - GZERO Media ›
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- Podcast: The human tragedy of Yemen’s intractable civil war - GZERO Media ›
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Israel-UAE relations & the Abraham Accords are not at risk under Biden
In a Washington Post op-ed, commentator Hugh Hewitt states his concern that President Biden will continue his streak of policy reversals in the Middle East, specifically regarding the peace deals that Trump brokered in his final year in office. But in fact, Biden has consistently supported the Abraham Accords, even during the heat of the presidential campaign. Ian Bremmer and Eurasia Group analysts Jeffrey Wright and Sofia Meranto take out the Red Pen to point out that Hewitt may be overreacting to Biden's recent freeze on a fighter jet deal to the UAE.
We're taking our Red Pen to an op-ed from the Washington Post, written by well-known radio host and columnist Hugh Hewitt. It's titled, "The Biden Administration could derail the Abraham Accords. It mustn't."
Hewitt is arguing that one of the most important foreign policy accomplishments of the Trump presidency, no question there, the normalization of diplomatic relations between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco should not be unraveled by President Biden and his foreign policy team.
Now in fairness, President Biden has spent the bulk of his first few weeks in office undoing many of Trump's policy decisions. Rejoining the Paris Climate Accord for example, and the World Health Organization, ending the Muslim ban, reversing the ban on transgender people joining the military, to name just a few. But does that mean the Abraham Accords are kaput? Not a chance. Let's get out the red pen.
Hewitt hangs the bulk of his evidence on a specific aspect of the deal with the UAE involving the sale of US fighter jets to the Gulf nation. The Biden administration has halted that sale for the moment. And Hewitt writes, "With the announcement last week that the new administration will review a sale of a batch of fighter jets to the UAE, one of the most important diplomatic achievements could be in question."
That's a really big leap. To be clear, we're talking about one specific aspect of the deal, for starters, not the whole enchilada. Let's look at the context. It's not actually unusual for a new administration, either Democrat or Republican, to press pause on arms sales initiated by the previous one. It happens frequently, and those deals usually tend to get approved and eventually move forward. Further, the UAE doesn't seem all too worried. Its US Embassy, which had fantastically close relations with Jared Kushner in the Trump administration, tweeted that the pause was expected, and the nation is looking forward to working with the Biden administration.
Next, Hewitt argues that the fighter jets are "the crucial glue holding together US interests in the regions" and that the Abraham Accords could unravel without them. The Accord was important because it recognized the reality that Israel and the Gulf States had actually built a productive and quiet relationship, something frankly not appreciated under the previous Obama-Biden administration. The Trump deal didn't actually create that relationship, though it certainly did help it along. Remember, Trumps first trip as president was actually to Saudi Arabia and Israel, very unusual. And the UAE is not about to throw away its relationship with Israel, which it finds strategically very important, much less with the United States it's critical ally, even if the fighter jet sale were to go south. Which again, we don't expect.
Hewitt also writes, "The Iranians are not happy that the UAE may prove to be our wingman in any future conflict with the mullahs in Tehran." Well, to be fair, the UAE didn't actually sign up to be a "wingman." The US and UAE have differing views about the threat that's posed by Iran. And the Iranians are more concerned about the political alignment against them than they are more fighter jets in the region.
And finally, if you want to have a better sense of where the Biden Administration is heading on this issue, all you have to do is look at what they've already publicly said. During his Senate confirmation hearing, Secretary of State Tony Blinken said the US would keep its embassy in Jerusalem. And National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan described the Abraham Accords as "positive" for both security and the economy in the Middle East. Two big Trump accomplishments that the Biden team is absolutely signed up for. And keep in mind that even at the height of an incredibly heated presidential campaign, Joe Biden himself never denounced the deal. In fact, he actually openly supported it.
So, a great undoing really isn't in the works, at least when it comes to the Abraham Accords. We can expect a different approach to a lot of things in the Middle East from the Biden Administration, in terms of the Iranian Nuclear deal for example, no question. Also, restoring aid to and diplomacy with Palestinians who were not directly engaged in the Trump deal.
But a 180 on the Abraham Accords, that's not happening.
So, that's your Red Pen for this week. Stay safe, stay warm, and watch the Super Bowl, but be sure to avoid people. Talk to you soon.