Full transcript
[[00:05.0]
Hello, my name is Zsolt Csepregi. I’m the senior regional analyst for the Middle East and North Africa at Everbridges Global Insights team. Today I will deliver an Update on the US Iran conflict. As of Thursday, July 30, the conflict appears to be again on an escalatory trajectory.
[00:23.1]
And while this round of escalation is still limited compared to the most dangerous previous rounds that we had in the last couple of months, there are still two developments that seem to be reshaping the conflict’s trajectory in the near term and also the Middle Eastern regional environment in the long term.
[00:43.2]
The first is that Saudi Arabia has carried out airstrikes together with the United States against Iran allied militias, inside Iraq that have been carrying out drone strikes against Saudi energy infrastructure in the last week.
[01:03.9]
Now we had unconfirmed reportings in the previous months that smaller Gulf states have been carrying out retaliation strikes against Iran after Iran was striking their territory. But this is the first time when we had a confirmed news that Saudi Arabia, the largest Gulf Arab state, has carried out major military operations against Iranian proxies and possibly Iranian operatives in another country.
[01:36.6]
This means that Saudi Arabia may be entering the conflict in a more robust way in the coming days and weeks. And this also raises the risk of retaliation by Iran or proxies and attacks against Saudi or other Gulf states, infrastructure in the near term.
[01:59.8]
The other development that is worthwhile to highlight is that after carrying out a number of attacks against Saudi shipping and energy infrastructure, the Yemeni Houthis, who are controlling the northwestern part of the country and are a group which is supported by Iran, they’re floating the idea that as Iran is threatening to collect fees from the Strait of Hormuz in any post war arrangement, the Yemeni Houthis are intending to collect fees in the Red Sea and thereby tax global shipping.
[02:43.6]
Now this is creating a significant pressure for global shipping because if the future of the Middle east transportation corridors is that both of these vital locations would be in effect taxed by a local, by a local state, in the form of Iran and local terrorist militia in form of the Yemeni usis, this would mean that not only the financial burden of these fees but the associated disruptions, military, any pressure, and threats that are connected to any kind of contested arrangement.
[03:28.7]
So we see that the US Iran conflict by while some may claim that it’s in some kind of a stalemate. It’s true that on the macro level we have some kind of a stalemate type of competition between the US and Iran where both are trying to calibrate the level of escalation.
[03:48.2]
But these two trajectories are showing that in the near term the conflict may involve the Gulf states more deeply so not only as a territory for Iranian strikes on US assets and other infrastructure but also as participant of offensive operations.
[04:08.0]
And also that the long term future of the Middle east and also global shipping will be decided in this conflict because if fee collection will be the norm in the Middle east that will reshape global logistics for many years to come.
[04:26.1]
We at Everbridge’s Global Insights team are going to monitor this rapidly developing situation in the coming days and weeks as the conflict progresses.
