Iran, WMDs: Supply chain reactions
Also: Turkey, the Horn of Africa, Guinea, Belarus, India, and China..
In addition to our daily risk monitoring brief, the team behind Geopolitical Dispatch also provides advice, risk audits, scenario planning, executive masterclasses and board briefings among other services. Click here to get in touch.
IRAN. WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION. Supply chain reactions
A light is shone on the trade in dangerous goods.
US prosecutors indicted a Yakuza boss on plans to smuggle nuclear materials from Myanmar to Iran. The IAEA said Monday Iran continued to enrich uranium beyond civilian needs. Iran dismissed the idea of a visit from the watchdog.
INTELLIGENCE. Iran, which is building four nuclear plants, said Wednesday it would instead invite the IAEA to a conference of 130 international atomic researchers in Tehran. Iran’s hutzpah may explain the timing of the indictment of Takeshi Ebisawa, who had, disturbingly, managed to source weapons-grade plutonium, and a separate Reuters report on Wednesday that Iran has sent Russia hundreds of surface-to-surface ballistic missiles since January.
FOR BUSINESS. Tehran is finalising a deal to purchase Russian jets and planning joint exercises next month with Beijing and Moscow. On suggestions of seeking plutonium, there is plausible deniability, and it will likely be protected by its northern neighbour, even though this goes against Russian policy. Controlling WMDs has been something Russia and the West could agree on, but the war in Ukraine has upended norms that survived even the Cold War.
Geopolitical Strategy is the advisory firm behind Geopolitical Dispatch. Our partners are former diplomats with vast experience in international affairs, risk management, and public affairs. We help businesses and investors to understand geopolitical developments and their impacts with clarity and concision.
TURKEY. HORN OF AFRICA. Zero Somali game
Ankara’s deal with Mogadishu could have unintended consequences.
Somalia announced details of a defence deal with Turkey on Wednesday, which would give Ankara authority over the defence of Somalian waters, including those off the disputed region of Somaliland, where Ethiopia proposes a base.
INTELLIGENCE. Ankara has promised to stand by Mogadishu in its dispute with Addis Ababa – as has Cairo, which Turkey’s president visited last week after a 10-year freeze. Yet the move goes well beyond anything Somalia’s other partners have contemplated, including the US, which has said it will build five new counter-terrorism bases. The arrival of Turkish ships may help anti-piracy operations, but equally, they could just exacerbate an already tense situation.
FOR BUSINESS. The Gulf of Aden is already crowded with external navies, including those operating from Djibouti's various foreign bases. And while these assets have failed to eliminate the threat of Somalia's pirates, let alone Yemen's Houthis on the other side of the Bab-el-Mandeb, an equilibrium of sorts has been established (allowing for major US and Chinese bases to be just seven miles apart). Red Sea shippers have another reason to be nervous.
GUINEA. Signed and sealed
A major project is overshadowed by a government purge.
Guinea's military said Monday the country's government would be dissolved and the borders sealed. Rio Tinto's CEO told the Financial Times Wednesday his board had just approved a $20 billion Simandou iron ore project in Guinea.
INTELLIGENCE. The dissolution is the junta's biggest move since its 2021 coup. Having promised to return to democracy this year, it instead mirrors the wider region's illiberal turn. As neighbouring Senegal faces threats to its own democracy, and regional bloc ECOWAS deals with the exit of Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso (who have proposed a new confederation some expect Guinea may soon join), the generals are enjoying a period of strategic distraction.
FOR BUSINESS. After waiting 27 years to get Simandou off the ground, Rio may be prepared to wait a little longer,but the latest developments illustrate the difficulty of diversifying into places like Guinea, even with the prospect of enormous long-term gain. Final approval for Simandou is still pending from Rio's Chinese partners, who are helping build a rail line to a new deep-water port. Meanwhile, China’s property woes continue to cloud the iron ore outlook.
Emailed each weekday at 5am Eastern (9am GMT), Geopolitical Dispatch goes beyond the news to outline the implications. With the brevity of a media digest, but the depth of an intelligence assessment, Geopolitical Dispatch gives you the strategic framing and situational awareness to stay ahead in a changing world.
BELARUS. Not Minsk matters
Lukashenko parrots Russian talking points, with an accent.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko called for armed street patrols Tuesday to combat "extremists". Lithuania said Wednesday it would seal two more of its six checkpoints with Belarus, leaving just two border crossings open.
INTELLIGENCE. Belarus has long been Russia’s weird manikin, yet it enjoys a sufficient degree of autonomy to both allow the Kremlin deniability and pose risks of its own. In recent months, Belarus has hosted decommissioned Wagner troops (who have since trained with Belarus’s own military), sent African migrants across the border, and promoted conspiracy theories of a German-Polish operation to seize Belarusian and western Ukrainian territories.
FOR BUSINESS. Lukashenko is not entirely irrational, as can be said for anyone who has stayed in office for 30 years. Yet there is an element of unpredictability that will continue to test nerves in Poland and Lithuania, where a thin strip of land – the Suwalki Gap – is all that connects the Baltics to the rest of NATO and the EU. What’s more predictable, at least, are the results for Belarus’s parliamentary elections on Sunday. All four competing parties back Lukashenko.
INDIA. CHINA. That’s what frenemies are for
As the West scolds, two rivals begin to make amends.
India Wednesday said talks with China over border disengagement in the Ladakh region had been "friendly and cordial". Greece's prime minister Wednesday told a Delhi audience that nobody could sit on the side-lines regarding Ukraine.
INTELLIGENCE. Indian media have focussed on there being no breakthrough with Beijing, and there being the option for US help against a “bullying” China. Yet between the lines, the results look positive for Sino-Indian relations, and with a hidden message to Western governments that Beijing and Delhi are perfectly capable of settling their own policies and disputes. India’s foreign minister defended Delhi’s ties with Moscow while visiting Munich last week.
FOR BUSINESS. India will remain a close partner with the West, but it is becoming obvious to all sides that this will not mean ditching Russia or turning further against China. Narendra Modi’s government has emphasised a continuation of India’s traditional non-aligned policies, albeit with Hindu nationalist characteristics (and a rebranding as “multi-alignment). Western investors should likewise expect less a new Western market, than a new Indian one.