 Hello and welcome to NewsClick's International Roundup. Today we look at key developments in West Asia, especially in the aftermath of the U.S. sanctions on Iran. To talk more about this, we have with us Prabir Pulkayasar, editor-in-chief of NewsClick. Hello, Prabir. Prabir, so as we know, the second round of U.S. sanctions in Iran kicked in yesterday. The first round kicked in in August, and that was mainly targeted at its currency, gold trade and stuff. But yesterday was a more impactful once because it targets the oil sector, the energy sector, transport, etc. At the same time, the U.S. has also granted waivers to eight countries from the sanctions, claiming that they have made efforts to reduce oil imports from Iran. So how do you see the relevance of these waivers and what does it also indicate for the global oil supply and economy? As you can see, it's basically a bunch of Asian countries, including Turkey, and then two small economic terms, small countries, Greece and Italy, which are currently importing significant amount of their oil from Iran. If you look at the composition of the sanctions, we'll see that almost 60% to 65% of Iran's oil has not been sanctioned. The amount that we see is, which is still, will have to negotiate the existing sanctions is really the orange one at the bottom. And as you can see, the amount is probably less than 40%, maybe 35% or so. How much of these countries will listen to the United States is an open question. But it is very clear that the sanctions are essentially exempting the larger importers of oil. If you look at who these exporters are, of course, the biggest are China and India. These are the two biggest ones, followed by South Korea, Turkey, the other two big ones. So if you look at all of them, they are also having a certain kind of relations in the United States, except for China, which is in the stage of trade war at the moment. All others are relatively close allies in the United States, except possibly at the moment Turkey, which as you know, there are kinds of tensions so we don't know what they're a part of NATO, but yet they're not so happy with the Russians. So given this, it does not appear that the United States is in a position to really significantly impact Iran's oil exports. And of course, by agreeing to be exempted, because this has happened with negotiations at least with India, then we are also in a situation where there is a complicit-ness of these countries in the sanctions. China I think has been much more outspoken. They have said we are not going to accept the sanctions. Not valid and international law. There is no reason to do it. India, as we know, behind the scenes negotiated on the sanctions, the amount of exemptions, how much they will bring down, all of this is there. The European countries are at the moment, shall we say, the state of flux. They don't know how to negotiate the sanctions. Neither do they know what to do with their economic relationships, because they're all saying they want to be a part of the nuclear deal. They want the Iran nuclear deal to stay. But how much they're going to put their economic eggs, shall we say, in this basket. That we don't know as yet. So that is a big uncertain quantity which is hanging over this economy that we are talking about in which sanctions are biting. One interesting point about the sanctions is while Iran's oil exports, as we can see, has come down, the problem that the United States faces, that in monetary terms, because this also has seen a rise in the oil price, the sanctions have not affected the fact that people have been decreasing their import of oil from Iran. The impact on Iran has not been that significant, partly because the oil price has risen. Now, the question that arises is, if we look at the oil price, what is the elasticity in that market? What will be the export implications? All that we have to see. I think the other issue that is important to realize is the sanctions don't have international obligations. So they, in some sense, are voluntary on the countries accepting the US The real issue for the sanctions has been that the global oil prices, all global oil prices were determined in dollar and all the payments were made in dollar through the SWIFT system. Now, the SWIFT system has essentially a problem that US can impose sanctions on any country, any financial entity which trades through the SWIFT system and can sanction it. And this makes a SWIFT system a problem for settling any oil accounts. This was a problem India had faced earlier. In fact, they had used a Turkish bank to do these transactions. Now, it seems that the SPFS system of Russia, which the Russian Central Bank supports, is also now being used for clearing, shall we say, oil transactions in an international currency, which will then become the ruble for these transactions and they're not routed to the SWIFT system. So I think that's the second element of the coercive nature of US sanctions, which this time is going to weaken because alternative payment gateways have started to appear. And it also seems that China tomorrow can also use the Petro Yuan, which they have been talking about as a currency through which they will also deal with Iran oil imports and oil imports from Iran. But also if you look at a step back and look at the global picture, it also has certain, the sanctions have certain implications on, say for instance, global reserves and global production, because it means that many of the key oil producing countries in the world are right now under sanctions. So what does this imply regarding the rest of supply for the rest of the world? This is the other issue that how much can the United States really bulldoze the global economy in terms of the sanctions, sanctions in Iran. They already have sanctions on Venezuela, which is the largest reserve in the world. They have sanctions in Iran, which is another big player, which has huge amount of reserves. They have also sanctions in Russia. So three major oil or hydrocarbon producing countries are under US sanctions. These are among the top 10. They are three major countries. Then we have Iraq and Libya, which have been destroyed by war and are still essentially countries which are unable even to reach what state they were in before the US invasion of Iraq or the NATO, shall we say, air umbrella, which led finally to the breakup of the country and the killing of Gaddafi. So all of that taken together, the amount of flexibility of the system is only Saudi Arabia being able to ratchet up its production. Now Saudi Arabia therefore emerges as a key player if opaque countries have to increase their oil production, because it's the only country which has the ability to ratchet up the fall of oil from Iran or Venezuela. So given that, how much can Saudi Arabia do becomes a key question. The US has been asking for Saudi Arabia to produce much more, the opaque countries to produce much more, because they want the oil prices to fall, and it's already high. But with these sanctions, with the sanctions in Venezuela, with the kind of trade war they have launched on Russia, what they really do is also creating this artificial scarcity. And their ability therefore to, shall we say, allowing the global economy to grow, not get hit by these sanctions is now much more limited. This also explains why they have been so soft on Saudi Arabia, even after the fact they have taken out Khashoggi, which we have said earlier was an American asset. It was very much a part of what was going on in Saudi Arabia and Turkey, brokering various deals between Qatar, the Islamic Brotherhood, and the United States. So you're sort of acting as a B team of the United States, if the A team, i.e. Saudi Arabia, Israel, acts escape under pressure, then they would have a B team as it were in play. But now you can see why they have been so soft in Saudi Arabia, why they have accepted almost laughable arguments that Saudi Arabia has produced. We didn't know about it. It was few rogue elements who did all this. We don't know where the body is. It's been disposed of. So all of this would also explain why the United States has been soft on Saudi Arabia. And Turkey finally is probably looking how to mend its fences in the United States. So it still has some leeway and also gets some money from Saudi Arabia to counter the effect of the drop of the Turkish money. So given all of this, I think the U.S. sanctions are going to affect the global economy hard. I think it's also going to hit the United States hard. It's effect of in Iran, yes, there will be some effect, but if the oil prices rise, as we said, the effect is going to be lesser. And I think Iran, with its history of weathering sanctions, has the ability to rally the people and weather the sanctions. And I don't think the regime change which the United States wants to induce by creating civil unrest in Iran as a consequence of economic sanctions. I don't think that is going to happen. On the contrary, it may affect its allies in the region more than it affects Iran. So moving on to another area where the U.S.-Saudi collaboration has produced all kinds of problematic results, if you look at Palestine for right now. So last week, the Palestine Central Council, the top advisory body to the PLO passed a resolution saying that asking the PLO to revoke recognition of the Oslo Accords, cancel all treaties with Israel, and also urging President Abbas to not give in to any of Trump's demands. And this is, although this has happened before in 2015 and the body itself has no binding nature, it's more of an advisory body, nonetheless it does mark as far as the Palestinians are concerned another key moment in their protests or their resistance against Trump and what is happening right now. So how do you see this move, especially in the light of the global situation? I think PLO has symbolic importance because it is the body which gave birth to essentially the Palestine Authority. So though the embassies in different parts of the world or present supposedly Palestine Authority, they really represent the PLO because that's the only entity at the end of the day which the Palestinian people would still recognize having shall we say some representative capacity for them. It also represents people outside the occupied territory. So therefore it is not just a body for the occupied territory, which is what it could be argued Palestine Authority is, but it also represents all those who have thrown out of Palestine, historic Palestine as a consequence of establishment of the US state and also the NAGPA, which happened soon after. So given all of this, I think the essential part is that Palestine Authority is trying to flex its non-existence muscle, so to say, because if it wants to really take a position against Israel, then it probably will find itself very difficult to govern the West Bank and they're really governing the West Bank as a kind of occupation forces for Israel because they are the first line of defense of any protest in West Bank. So effectively the Palestine Authority listening to this would be to give up their government or whatever trappings of government they have and say, we now recognize your occupied territory and we will not execute any order you want to follow and you now take over the occupied territories as the legal entity occupying Palestine instead of us becoming your BT. Now that step, the Palestine Authority really walking out of Oslo Accords and saying we shall not govern Palestine in the interest of the occupied West Bank in the interest of Israel, I think is the key issue and there we do not see, apart from making noises, the Palestine Authority really willing to lead the struggle or PLO leading the struggle, which would mean this rupture and this rupture is the one which can make a difference in occupied territories of Palestine. We have also seen Gaza, again bombings are taking place. If there are some rockets which are basically more a sign shall we say of frustration of the Gazan population who are under what has been called open air prison and also conditions which are increasingly a disaster in terms of any index that we can talk about electricity cuts, huge cuts in electricity, water purification is difficult, infrastructure crumbling, food not available, no viable economy in Gaza is possible. If you take all of that into account, the fact that there is frustration is obvious and the fact that Israel is maintaining the outer walls of this open air prison as you called it, this is I think the key issue in Gaza which is sought to be wished away by continuous bombings, sniper fire and other issues. And then of course, the shifting of Jerusalem is to say, well, we will now impose a unilateral quote unquote peace on the territory and with the latest three months back, what was the constitutional amendment? What Israel has essentially said that this state is not entirely ours and we are not going to accept any Palestinian territory over here. So the Bantustan argument which had been given has now been incorporated in the constitution and only issue is how to handle Gaza and therefore the repeated attempts to bomb Gaza, shoot Gaza and protest and so on and hope that the prison guards would become Palestinian themselves. So reduce Gaza into an occupied territory and have the Palestine, like Palestine authority and internal police force composed of Palestinians who then will confront the prisoners. So that's a system they seem to be wanting for Gaza. They have asked the Egypt to take over Gaza. Egypt has still yet refused to do. We'll have to see how this pans out. But yes, while strategically the issues in the region are turning against the United States, Israel and also Saudi Arabia. And this whole NATO in West Asia which is what the United States was trying to do. While that is unlikely to happen, the reality is the Palestinians are paying the most heavy price for this state of affairs that's going on right now. So unless there is a significant strategic shift in balance at the Palestinian positions, Palestinian people will face a very unhappy situation and this is something that how the global citizenry comes to the support of Palestinian people we have to see. But as we have always said in our discussions here, Yemen is the other one which has been also suffering and with the, shall we say, West Asian NATO, Saudi Arabia, United States, United Arab Emirates and Britain all combining to bomb Yemen. So what happens there also we'll have to see. I think these are the two areas which are bearing the brunt of this strategic alliance in the area. Thank you, Poblin. That's all we have time for today. Keep watching Newsweek.