This also tells you that there was once a CIA station chief in Moscow called Sipher. John Sipher.
10.03.2026 18:03
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This also tells you that there was once a CIA station chief in Moscow called Sipher. John Sipher.
Ghostly Farsi-speaking broadcasts “have been sent out regularly over long-distance short wave radio from a transmitter somewhere in western Europe since the hours after the first US and Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28...” www.ft.com/content/86c4...
Interesting defence www.ft.com/content/4b61...
Wonder if Mojtaba Khamenei’s elevation has been the real turning point. US war aims were clearly shown to be receding by that point, and if the US wants to kill him now, it will have to accept a new round of escalation. Probably still without having control over the next succession.
Some examples of how the energy crisis is affecting South Asia.
1. Pakistan will close schools for the next two weeks, get government employees to work from home and universities will shift to online learning.
www.reuters.com/world/asia-p...
Incredible scenes in this photo essay & story on Istanbul's hair transplant industry (which is v evident if you transit through the airport).
Particularly enjoyed this from Dr Serkan Aygin, who has a luxuriant head of hair AND a Kehinde Wiley work in his clinic: “I myself admit I had a transplant”
Part of the bearish view I think is that Saudi might not have the spare cash it used to…
I wondered on Friday why Gulf bond markets weren't moving more... well they are moving quite a bit more today, especially in Bahrain, where the long dollar debt is close to an 8% yield. www.ft.com/content/24da...
Allister Heath fake headline If we surrender to the Telegraph's latest valuation of 575 million quid, we will lose our country forever
www.ft.com/content/e5cb...
Venezuela and the US have diplomatic relations again, just two months since Maduro’s downfall. www.state.gov/releases/off...
The Velayat of Donald Trump the Faqih www.axios.com/2026/03/05/i...
Ramaphosa very rarely does setpiece interviews with media, South African or international. Interesting that he is so direct about Trump in this one. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/05/w...
South Africa's president has given an unusually direct interview about Trump, to the NYT.
“I do think the Afrikaner policy is racist... It is that racist sort of demeanor that we want to be able to whittle down so that he can see the truth of the situation.”
SCOOP (from last night, bit late posting): on the eve of Shabana Mahmood’s big migration speech, over 100 Labour MPs sign a letter urging her to rethink new restrictions on the immigration system bit.ly/4cZQxEX
Even in Bahrain - seemingly everyone in EM is sure it should trade wider as the weakest Gulf credit with lots of long-term issues, very high debt to GDP, etc. Yet its long-term debt is back under a spread of 300bps today.
You can still see the end of Gulf sovereign haven status everywhere but their bonds. Abu Dhabi issued a 10-year bond last week at 4.27% or a 25bps spread over Treasuries. (Technically its last bond as an emerging-market issuer, as it moves to a DM index soon.) It's now 4.45% or 33bps.
A president of Argentina (not the current one, to be clear) opened a state of the nation address by misquoting one of my tweets.
![Analysts said it was not clear that destroying the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a 180,000-strong force, was possible. And Israeli officials have not said exactly how they plan to lay the groundwork for the regime's overthrow, or what might come after that, though they have suggested covert operations may be involved.
Summarising the Israeli government's position, Citrinowicz said: "If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great.
Israel couldn't care less about the future...
[or] the stability of Iran.
"That is a point of difference between us and the US. I think [Washington is] are more concerned about nation-building and threats to their regional partners," he added.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:our2qn7bzzhhcrncecvfdvja/bafkreif3xw3wm54zmvbxqb5h4q2jdkcrwzeikumjowfenicqikcjdumj3q)
Analysts said it was not clear that destroying the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a 180,000-strong force, was possible. And Israeli officials have not said exactly how they plan to lay the groundwork for the regime's overthrow, or what might come after that, though they have suggested covert operations may be involved. Summarising the Israeli government's position, Citrinowicz said: "If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn't care less about the future... [or] the stability of Iran. "That is a point of difference between us and the US. I think [Washington is] are more concerned about nation-building and threats to their regional partners," he added.
Israel’s war aims over Iran now encompass dismantling “the regime’s military infrastructure, including the IRGC.” Not sure of the underlying theory of change for Iran’s politics there. www.ft.com/content/dd07...
”As of Wednesday, the Migrant Workers Office (MWO) in Dubai has an initial list of 200 Filipinos lining up for repatriation. There are approximately 500,000 OFWs [overseas Filipino workers] in Dubai.“
www.gmanetwork.com/news/pinoyab...
The majority of “Dubai expats” come from South Asia and emerging Asia, not just labourers/cleaners but middle class professionals. One of the most important flows of people/remittances across EMs.
Fascinating how absent this is from the image war around Dubai. www.ft.com/content/a7bf...
“It undermines the ideological nature underpinning the regime. If he’s selected, it’s because of the conditions right now. People are vying for positions, it’s more open than it looks.” www.ft.com/content/b71e...
Quite something that only about two months separate the most serious protests in the Islamic republic’s history - which pointed to the regime’s approaching systemic failure on a basic, domestically driven, economic level - and the US reverting to ‘arm the Kurds’.
Brief EM FX liquidity update: not good.
If you think oil infrastructure under attack across the Gulf will unleash demand for spare crude outside the region... someone should tell Angola's, Gabon's, and Nigeria's international bondholders. Key bonds for them are marked down (or flat) today.
Meanwhile in emerging market equities, where a big part of the MSCI EM index return this year has been three AI chipmakers in a trenchcoat, you can see where the crowded trades were - Korea, with Samsung and SK Hynix both down about 10%.
In the past year, hedge funds had piled back into the local debt markets of Egypt and Turkey in particular, after these countries offered double-digit interest rates to support weakened currencies. As conflict over Iran grew closer in recent weeks, some investors exited these trades, with foreign holdings of Egyptian debt falling by $2bn to $30bn according to Citigroup. But others bought protection to stay in the trade on the bet that the conflict would not last. “In the last few days, there had been hedges put on in Turkey, Egypt and some of the more crowded positions in local markets,” including through credit default swaps and forward bets on currencies, one investor said. There was no sign yet of “serious outflows” from EM trades as a whole, they added. “Things haven’t reached that panic event. It’s not that kind of liquidity event where those lines are cut and there’s a flight to safe havens. That is the really painful event for emerging markets historically, and we’re just not there yet.”
How's liquidity in EM in this crisis? Egyptian T-bills (with a nominal 1-year yield of ~23%) have been a popular emerging market debt trade exposed to the region. Offshore investors cut exposure by a bit before the war, but didn't (or couldn't?) rush to the exits just yet. www.ft.com/content/25d6...
Also up 29%: LIG Nex1, which makes the missile systems for the Cheongung-II missile defence system (Hanwha makes the launchers and radar). The UAE used this system for the first time in combat in recent days: www.chosun.com/english/nati...
You are never going to guess which Korean stock went up 24% today while the Kospi and shares like Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix plunged.
Ironically KSA and UAE did run up large budget deficits in the 1980s while the Tanker War was going on… but because of the oil price slump
The regime insider said the retaliation, including against targets such as Dubai hotels, "makes any location hosting Americans unsafe and no one will want to stay there" He added that Iran's Gulf oil-rich neighbours would all now "face heightened investment risk" "Investors will tell them: you are close to Iran, and at any moment a missile could land in the middle of your country," the insider said.
It is a war aim for Iran to make the Gulf states appear uninvestable. So far that isn’t close to happening in bond markets. www.ft.com/content/02eb...