 Hello and welcome to News Clicks International Roundup. Today, we look at key developments in Iran and Afghanistan, which may have major implications on the entire planet. To talk more about this, we have with us Praveel Prakash, the editor-in-chief of News Clicks. Hello, Praveel. Praveel, let's start with Iran. So Iran is still under the grip of sanctions, the U.S. sanctions. And payment has been one of the key issues around these sanctions. So the swift payment mechanism, which is basically dominated by the United States, has been a major roadblock in overcoming any sanctions. And after a lot of sounds and after a lot of noise, the United Kingdom, Germany and France have finally inaugurated their own payment mechanism called INSTEX. Now, do you see this as actually having a major impact on the whole situation or is it just a token mechanism? You know, let's put it this way. As far as the INSTEX immediate fallout may be, that may not be of major implications because the big entities who could trade with Iran within Germany, France and other European EU countries would be scared to do so because of their much bigger market or links with the United States. So therefore those who could or would be able to trade with Iran would be smaller players. But the importance of this is also the visibility of trying to work out an alternate to the dollar. Because if you look at earlier sanctions, which was the response of Russians to that was to create their own payment gateway, which would allow an alternative to the SPFS, which would allow an alternate mechanism to the swift. Now, what really is the swift system? The swift system was originally a European one. They opened in one of their nodes to be in the United States and they had two major in nodes and the swift system therefore came under the US law. That's what the US said. Because you have a major node in the United States, you have to operate under our law, therefore the swift system is also to respond or has to accept whatever sanction regime the US is introducing. So what happened was that if you did any transaction with any country using the dollar and you use the swift system, the US really had two shall be ways it could say the US sanctions had to work. One is the dollar is being used, therefore obviously it is a US currency. And secondly, because of the swift transaction that is taking place with that dollar, that is also under US law. So this is the way they have been able to introduce what I would call as extra legal sanctions in the world, which means international law is not used, only US domestic law. So US domestic law has become the basis of the US sanctions and it becomes global sanctions because most countries or almost all countries when they denominate their external payments, they denominate in dollar rather than in SDRs or Euros and any other currency. And because of the swift system and the dollar being both under US sanctions, therefore US law in this sense superseded international law and in fact the US could also say I do not accept the international law and if they want sanctions I can still violate it. So this created shall be said normally in the international legal system and this was really because dollar but the de facto gold standard shall be say after the US went off gold. And once the US has been acting in this manner outside the international legal framework, then countries are now trying to de-dollarize in different ways. One is of course oil, oil respect to the dollar and when it went off the gold standard, oil is the one which gave dollar the ability to be the international currency. Now you have the two, one of the three largest producers of hydrocarbons in the world, Russia, Iran and now Venezuela are the sanctions. Now here is the problem for countries like India, if we buy oil from Iran, we are under sanctions. If we do not, then we have the problem of how much can we buy and at what cost. So this has created a need for alternate mechanisms and now with the SPSS as well as the stakes, alternate de-dollarized international exchanges are being considered and I think this is a very serious threat to the dollar in the long run and don't forget, gold is still there. So Venezuela is selling now gold. United Arab Emirates is buying gold and even Russia when it has used in its hydrocarbon account gas which it sells to Europe and so on, when it buys, it sort of buys the dollars in lieu of gas, it very quickly converts it to gold. So both Russia and China accepting that there's a long-term threat of US sanctions, of course Russia is still already under sanctions but even China there is also the move away from dollar, not keeping their money in dollar but trying to shift to gold. So already we are seeing different moves away from the currency, the dollar as an international currency and I think in the global hegemony that the US exercised over the whole world by which it considered itself outside international law, Bolton is on record that he doesn't recognize international law, international criminal court is something which is illegal according to him, he's also threatened right now Maduro to that they'll send them off to Gitpo which incidentally is in Cuba and is also illegally occupied by the United States. So this whole logic of exceptionalism of the United States, I think that is starting to unravel, would be wrong to think it has unraveled, it has not but I think the portents are very important that already you can see this unraveling of the dollar hegemony which started after the Second World War as a pact between Saudi Arabia and the United States that they will see that all petroleum trade deal would be dollars which is what really underpins the petroleum dollar economy. I think that is starting to unravel and that I think is a very, very important issue. And we've already discussed this before but this is yet another instance of countries having to make some hard choices like it is Venezuela last week when the UK seized its gold reserves, the US imposed its sanctions and then so many countries right now had to ask this question what happens if their policies fall foul of the US and its allies, its entire economic system and its trade system could actually go into doldrums. So and also the countries who trade with such countries who fall foul of the US but who are dependent on really in most cases hard choices regarding hydrocarbons, European Union for gas, which comes from Russia, India for oil as well as other countries for Venezuela and oil. So all these are actually the ones driving it and you know the other part of it which I think has also been not been noted though it's peripheral to this discussion is the fact that Russia and Iran have diversified their economy to an extent that they are not so dependent on the external trade and because oil is what everybody else needs hydrocarbons or gas in this case is what everybody else needs therefore they can exchange for hard currency but internally they are self-sufficient in the whole range of things and that's the strength Iranian economy and the Russian economy has which Venezuela economy today does not have it's much more dependent on oil. And moving to the other country in the region Afghanistan so there has been rumors of a deal which in fact has been also announced although the details are not clear yet between the United States and the Taliban which would see the United States withdrawing gradually from Afghanistan in return for there not being space for terrorists so-called terrorists in Afghanistan itself. Now this deal is still very very murky because the Taliban does not seem to say be ready to negotiate with the Afghan government which is a key stumbling block for the whole process but this basically in some senses also negates the whole point of the war in 2000 let's start that began in 2001 so 17 or 18 years later we are back to square one and now it looks like it might be processes led by Russia or Iran which might actually bring further peace to the region. You know if you look at Afghanistan and I have said this I think in our discussions earlier it's a very rugged country it's a very hostile landscape for any invading power particularly for an invading power which is thousands of kilometers away so this really did not seem a very wise decision shall we say for the United States to invade Afghanistan why did it do so because it broke Afghanistan in the 80s trying to break Soviet Union and therefore had this supported this Mullah led insurgency which was essentially a shall we say Saudi Arabia Pakistan ISI and United States fomenting using religious identity not religion religious identity as a move against secular government whatever may be the differences within that government or others may have it was a secular government and Afghanistan had always a relatively secular state and unraveling all of that putting these forces in power and then complaining that they were doing exactly what they always said they would do which is to spread Islam resort which is what they you know what they had come to Afghanistan for and they had come in large numbers from Saudi Arabia Pakistan and other places and Taliban was again something as it has been said you know the Talibs were all being produced out of Pakistan's seminaries which were run by these radical clerics now it's a problem for Afghanistan it's a problem for Pakistan it's a problem for Iran it's a problem for India it's also a problem for Central Asia it's a problem for China as well because China also has RSVU Uighur population so all of this is the problem that the United States created for the region which Trump says they should solve the problem yes but the problem was created by the United States of course the regional parties have to solve the problem so I'm happy at one level that the United States which is no business being in Afghanistan is actually thinking of withdrawing I'm also happy that the United States at least is talking about withdrawal from Syria even though it has not and in fact it's put in a few more soldiers while talking about withdrawal if we take the long-term trajectory it does appear that the United States now thinks it needs to disengage for its shall we say interventions in Afghanistan Iraq Libya and Syria the four countries which they have intervened so all these interventions in the long term seems to be something that the United States may be getting out of the only problem is that having or thinking about getting out of that is also focusing them their attention on South America and therefore you see now a regime change operation in Venezuela and rewiring the whole Latin American states so Nicaragua could be target El Salvador could be target Cuba would be target Bolivia would be target already they have a regime change ruling Lula out of the Brazilian and Honduras for the matter Honduras for the matter earlier so Zelaya was removed so all of these means that their focus could be shifting to Latin America and away from West Asia so this is what one thing that will happen I think also it's important to understand that Afghanistan and Taliban does represent threats to the region of different kinds Iran we know that Iran was earlier a target of Taliban we know that you know 21 Iranian diplomats were killed by one section of the Afghan militants we know that there is a strong link between fundamentalist as I call them Islamic identity based forces in Pakistan and we know that they're also hostile to India so and we've also discussed Central Asia and other places so how does India Iran Pakistan China Russia and other Central Asian countries move to stabilize the region I think it's going to be very important and if any of the countries want to play a one-up and ship role or what is called zero-sum game role my game is your loss so your loss must be my game I think Afghanistan is almost impossible to control I think there the important issue is what is it India Pakistan Iran are willing to do together even if they have differing interests among themselves obviously the Jawahar port is an outlet for Afghanistan so both India and Iran have an interest in that it gives through Iran it gives India an access to Afghanistan which it otherwise doesn't have so all these things mean a collaborative exercise between Iran and India as well and I think Pakistan would also benefit if Iran Pakistan and India pull in together as one of the Iranian diplomats had said privately that while Taliban is a threat to Iran and India security for Pakistan is an existential threat and I think the Pakistan state and the Pakistan military which really is the quote-unquote deep state in Pakistan understands this thank you very much that's all we have time for today keep watching