The sanctions against Iran have significantly disrupted the Iranian economy, but it is too soon to assess how complete the oil embargo has been. India announced a deal with Saudi Arabia which signals a major shift on India’s part. More importantly, both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have announced the opening of new pipelines that bypass the Strait of Hormuz, limiting Iran’s ability to disrupt oil supplies in the case of war.
Source: Financial Times, 16 July 2012.
The Red Cross has declared that the conflict in Syria is now a civil war. The line between civil violence and a civil war is always difficult to draw, and I think that the Red Cross declaration fails to take into account that the opposition in Syria has yet to congeal into an organized opposition. Nonetheless, the declaration now means that the laws of war now apply to the conflict and that Assad and the Syrian military could be considered war criminals if they failed to discriminate between combatants and non-combatants. http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Latest-News-Wires/2012/0716/Syria-Civil-war-engulfs-Damascus Russia remains adamantly opposed to UN intervention in the conflict, so the point is moot for the helpless civilians right now. But it could harden Assad’s determination to stay in power.
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