Alastair Crooke

Rejects the premise that Tehran is looking for a way out: Iran is not begging for a deal, the memorandum of understanding is a non-binding framework rather than a ceasefire or a treaty, and Tehran is running a calculated, metered escalation to force American concessions rather than facing a binary choice between a deal and oblivion. Argues Iran's power should not be measured only in weapons, population and economy, and that it holds power through consciousness, spirit and sovereignty. Says that even if the fighting pauses the United States cannot easily restart it, because expended munitions and air-defence and radar systems take years to replenish, war-weary personnel are reluctant to redeploy, and domestic sentiment does not want to return to a failed campaign.

Reports from his own recent meetings in Moscow, including with Lavrov, that Russia will not accept a ceasefire that lets the West rebuild Ukraine for a future war, and is refusing one until the root causes are addressed first. Carried as his account of those conversations rather than as established fact.

Says Israel's regional strategy, built on Saudi Arabia and the Abraham Accords, has collapsed, that its Gulf-state pillar of normalisation has been demolished by the Houthis, and that Israel is now bogged down in several simultaneous wars. Puts the scale of the problem as needing not just the IDF but seven or more duplicates of it simply to hold the present position.

Reads the Yemen war on Saudi Arabia as a genuine popular revolution, years in the planning, that is exposing the hollowness of both Saudi and American power and reverting the region to an older paradigm centred on Iran and Mesopotamia, the one that preceded the 1990s "clean break" strategy of building up Saudi Arabia and the Gulf as pillars of US and Israeli power. Says Saudi Arabia's image as a modern unified political state is largely a myth resting on one family's suppression of resentful tribes, that the kingdom is dysfunctional and cannot count on Western military intervention this time, and that Mohammed bin Salman is caught in a credibility trap between his role as guardian of Islam and the sectarian contradictions underneath the kingdom. If Riyadh concedes to Ansar Allah, he expects the revolution to spread further into Iraq and beyond.

Says the era of zero rates is over and the bond market is in deep trouble, with rates rising everywhere except China, and that the energy crisis has already arrived rather than being ahead of us. Puts Saudi Arabia's oil revenues at effectively zero with the kingdom exporting no barrels, its pipeline badly damaged and neither its oil nor its treasuries sellable, which he reads as the end of the petrodollar era in the Gulf. Notes that major European banks are increasingly borrowing and lending in Chinese-denominated credit, so-called panda bonds, because Chinese credit is now cheaper than American debt.