Pepe Escobar and Glenn Diesen discuss the geopolitics of Eurasian connectivity corridors and the US war on multipolarity
Glenn Diesen interviews journalist and author Pepe Escobar on the geopolitics of connectivity corridors, the war in Iran, and the broader struggle over Eurasian integration.
Summary
Glenn Diesen interviews journalist and author Pepe Escobar, speaking from Southeast Asia, about what Escobar calls the "war of connectivity corridors" — the geopolitical struggle over the physical infrastructure linking Eurasia. Escobar argues that the US bombing of Iran is not merely a military campaign but a deliberate attack on multipolarity, targeting Chinese railway infrastructure inside Iran, the International North–South Transportation Corridor linking Russia, Iran, and India, and the broader Belt and Road Initiative. He contends that the UAE has effectively aligned itself with the US and Israel against Iran and will face consequences, that Dubai's business model is already dead, and that Iran's new toll system on the Strait of Hormuz — denominated in non-dollar currencies — represents a direct challenge to US financial power. Escobar and Diesen also discuss the Arctic Silk Road, the strategic vulnerability of the Strait of Malacca for China, and the risk that the US seizure of an Iranian ship near Malacca signals the opening of a new front in the connectivity war.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Introduction and the War of Connectivity Corridors
Glenn Diesen: Welcome back. We are joined today by Pepe Escobar, journalist and author. Thank you for coming back on. It's good to see you again.
Pepe Escobar: Always a pleasure, Glenn. And greetings from Buddhist, peaceful Southeast Asia.
Glenn Diesen: I think the first time we met in person was in Moscow. I was working there years ago, and I was thinking there for a department focusing on the Greater Eurasia initiative — that is, Russia integrating its economy through industries, physical corridors, and financial instruments from China to India and Iran. And you as a journalist have been working on this as well. This whole initiative is seen as an effort to essentially reorganize the international economic architecture, with Russia and China tending to form the core, but India, Iran, and many others having an interest in this multipolar economic architecture. I thought a good place to start today would be to ask you how you see Iran's role in this whole construct.
Pepe Escobar: Well, stepping a little bit away — but not so much — from the war, Glenn. This is one of my latest columns this week. I sent you a copy. It's an update on what I called years ago the war of connectivity corridors. Basically, we have all those connectivity corridors that are part of the new Silk Roads, the Belt and Road Initiative. There are at least six of them, maybe seven in fact, including the Maritime Silk Road — east to west. Then there's the north to south: the International North–South Transportation Corridor, three BRICS members — Russia, Iran, and India — which is something I had the privilege to follow last year in Iran when we were there at the same time. I remember they were very busy, and I was talking to them all the time. On my side I was working on a documentary — the first one in the world in English about the corridor — and we were very privileged because we had full access. We had all the permits. So we could go from the Caspian Sea to Bandar Abbas on the Persian Gulf and then to Chabahar on the Sea of Oman, and see everything — especially what's lacking, the problems, the challenges. I talked to some absolutely first-rate traders and geopolitical analysts in Iran about it.
So that is one of the key new corridors of the future: north to south across Eurasia, bypassing SWIFT, bypassing sanctions. And then there are two more corridors that I would not even say are in progress — for the moment they are more like pipe dreams. One of them is IMEC, and the denomination is a misnomer because it's not only an India–Middle East corridor. Most of all it is an Israel–Saudi Arabia–Emirates–Europe–India corridor. The idea is to place the port of Haifa as a key trading port connecting with the Arab world, connecting to Europe, and connecting to India. As it stands, we can say that this is dead. In fact, even Saudi Arabia is practically saying — by not saying — that this is dead.
And then there are the Turks. As you know very well, Glenn, they are always hedging. They are even resuscitating a long-gone idea from the late 2000s and early 2010s: a pipeline from Qatar across the Arab world to Turkey, and then they can sell Qatari gas to Europe. For the moment, that is also just a pipe dream.
So in this column I try to analyze the pros and cons of these four corridors, but the logic is the same. The 21st century is going to be a war of connectivity corridors at the core of Eurasian development and Eurasian integration.
The Historical Roots of Connectivity Wars
Glenn Diesen: Yes, some would suggest that much of the past at least 200 years has been organized around wars over connectivity. In the early 19th century, when the Russians were expanding out from the center towards the periphery, this put them in a clash with British India. This is the Mackinder theory — that you have land powers connecting versus the sea power. Then of course in the 20th century we had the discontinuation of that. It's fascinating because if you look through the strategic documents, it always formulated — for the US and Britain — their claim to world power as controlling the seas. That's how they connect the world. And then the land powers — Russia, worst case connected with Germany, or even worse connected with China — would begin to rival the maritime powers. This has always been a key focus of geopolitics, and it does appear we're still in this.
With the BTC pipeline, for example — I remember in the 2000s that was a very big thing, the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline — and this was a way for the Europeans to skirt around Russia from below and above Iran. Even getting Ukraine connected into the NATO orbit was a way of getting the energy transit country to ally with the energy consumers against the energy producer Russia. So we already seem to be very deep in this connectivity war. But what do you see as the wider consequence of what's playing out now in this war with Iran?
Pepe Escobar: Well, I would say the number one thing would be what's going to happen with the International North–South Transportation Corridor. Russia is deeply involved. They are helping to finance railways inside Iran. They could even finance a railway skirting the Caspian Sea to the left of the Caspian, because the Russian thinking is that this is going to be much much faster than trying to upgrade the Iranian port structure on the Caspian. And they're right. I went to the port of Bandar Anzali on the Caspian and it's stuck in the 1970s. There's a lot of work to do. So they start getting, for instance, big cargo ships from Astrakhan — I saw some Astrakhan ships in the port, but small ones, not big cargos.
And what's India going to do? We're all asking the same question. What about the relationship between Iran and India, when two days before the decapitation strike on February 28th, Modi was being received in Israel and they came up with that motherland-and-fatherland schtick? It's a huge problem, because India is a huge investor in Chabahar. When I was in Chabahar it was fascinating — I was talking to the port authorities and they said, "You see those cranes over there? They were bought and paid for by India." They are investing. It was a bit slow at the moment — this was last year — but they promised that in a few months they were going to help develop other parts of the port. The port is expanding very very fast. It's very impressive. It reminds me of what Shenzhen was 30-something years ago, to give an idea.
So what's going to happen? The Chinese, of course, look at Chabahar and say, "We can go there and in ten minutes you have everything you need." And they told me, "Look, we always have Chinese cargos coming here." In fact, I saw two while I was there. Most of them go to Bandar Abbas, but some go to Chabahar — if they are, for instance, goods that are going to be sold in eastern Iran, or in Afghanistan. There's a very good road that was recently finished from Chabahar to the Afghan–Iranian border. So there's a strong possibility the Chinese will end up taking over Chabahar. It's going to be one more connection in their string of pearls of ports, and not far from Gwadar — which is crazy. The distance from Chabahar to Gwadar is 80 kilometers across the border. They are practically sister ports. China could use both easily. They're already using Gwadar, of course.
So the big "if" is what's going to happen to the North–South Corridor. And we didn't even talk about the Russian connectivity corridor, which is a thalassocratic corridor — the Northern Sea Route, which the Chinese call the Arctic Silk Road. This is a corridor that Northeast Asia specifically is immensely interested in, especially South Korea. It's something we see discussed at the Vladivostok Forum and in St. Petersburg. We're going to have the same discussion in St. Petersburg in less than two months from now. And of course the Southeast Asians are also interested in using it, because Southeast Asia can connect to Vladivostok, then take the Northern Sea Route and arrive in Murmansk, and you are almost in Europe.
The China–Iran Railway and US Bombing of Infrastructure
Pepe Escobar: Something that is in the column as well: the Chinese finally finished the China–Iran railway only a few months ago. And guess what the Americans did? They bombed a stretch of this railway inside Iran two or three weeks ago. This is very important because this railway runs from Xinjiang — of course, everything starts in Xinjiang, but then it goes everywhere: through Siberia, through Kazakhstan, through the middle corridor. This one is particularly interesting because it goes Xinjiang–Kazakhstan–Kyrgyzstan–Turkmenistan, and then it crosses the border into Iran, and from Iran it can go to Turkey, and from Turkey to Europe. For the Chinese, this is a key corridor. The Iranian stretch is part of what they call the east–west corridor, and it's one of the most important corridors of the Belt and Road Initiative. Everything is there, and everybody is interconnected. The Central Asians are connected with all these corridors as well, because they also receive Chinese merchandise that stays in their countries, with the rest continuing on.
Glenn Diesen: Given that — you mentioned the attacks on the Chinese connectivity infrastructure, the China–Iran railway — this is quite important. And I also think the connection with Pakistan is important. If you follow the China–Pakistan connectivity with rail and road, cutting down to the port of Gwadar — a Pakistani port operated by the Chinese — it's quite an impressive infrastructure where you see essentially this new Silk Road recreating the world as it was before European maritime powers took over the world 500 years ago. But as you mentioned, I also noticed that the US and Israeli bombing of Iran not only targeted Chinese infrastructure but also targeted parts of the railroads that would connect the International North–South Transportation Corridor — Russia, Iran, India. So there seems to be a war on multipolarity here. That is obviously a key target. Do you think China stands out uniquely in terms of a country the US would like to weaken as a result of attacking Iran?
Pepe Escobar: Glenn, in fact this is a war against multipolarity. There's no question. The number one target is of course China. But this is a war against Iran, against China, against the interconnection, against Eurasian integration and interconnection, against Russia on another level — because that is the other war up there, which seems to be never-ending as well — and a war against BRICS. No question about that. And this has been announced since the start of Trump 2.0, when he started blabbering about BRICS — he still has no idea what BRICS is about. It doesn't matter, because the only thing that registers in his mind is: "They want to bypass the US dollar." That's the only thing that registers. So it's a war against everybody. It's the empire of chaos, lies, plunder, piracy — we bomb everybody that we don't like. This is American foreign policy now.
China's Strategic Vulnerabilities and the Strait of Malacca
Pepe Escobar: The Chinese know it's extremely complicated. It's still not clear, especially for us foreigners — even if we have access to China and talk to people there. I'm going back to China next month. I was postponing it because of the war. But one of my first questions to anybody is: "Okay, what is more important for you — BRICS or the Belt and Road Initiative, or the Silk Roads, and how do they interconnect?" And the second question is: "Are you fully aware that this is a war against especially you?"
If you follow relatively independent media like our friends at Guancha in Shanghai, when you read some of their best scholarly contributors, they don't get into detail, but more or less they understand that this is a war against China, and a war to try to prevent sources of energy reaching China. This is something they are seeing in front of them nowadays with the American blockade. And there's already the blah-blah about the Strait of Malacca, which is inevitable. But they have been prepared for a potential blockade of the Strait of Malacca for at least 20 years. That's why they diversified their sources of energy. You have oil from Kazakhstan, a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan, a gas pipeline from Myanmar, Power of Siberia now at full capacity and soon Power of Siberia 2. And of course all the effort they made to diversify internally.
When you travel in Xinjiang, it's mind-boggling. You see miles on end of everything electrified — forests of solar panels, wind turbines, those solar farms with the central pole irradiating energy hundreds of kilometers around. Something I learned from our Uyghur contacts: Xinjiang has so much energy that they sell energy to the rest of China. That explains why China nowadays is, I would say, 84 to 86% self-sufficient — they don't need to import oil and gas. Their import of oil and gas is about 13 to 14%. It's not much compared to their national needs. But they know that Malacca continues to be a very very tricky situation.
And now it gets even more tricky. There's this deal that the Minister of Defense of Indonesia made with the Secretary of Defense in Washington, signed in Washington, while President Prabowo was going to Russia and spending five hours talking to Putin. This is Indonesia hedging all the time. But they cannot hedge indefinitely. There's a limit to their hedging, because the other BRICS members, especially China, are going to say: "What the hell are you doing? Are you considering giving overflight rights to the Americans in Indonesian territory?" And at the same time, there's the idea in Jakarta: "Maybe we should monetize Malacca." They looked at what happened in Hormuz. Malacca is very strictly territorial waters, divided between Sumatra in Indonesia and Malaysia. So both of them can charge a right of passage. Why not? I'm sure this is going to happen sooner rather than later.
And of course, who doesn't like that? Singapore. But Singapore is not in the Strait of Malacca. The Strait of Malacca is to the north. Singapore is on the southern tip of the Malaysian Peninsula. It has nothing to do with Malacca. Malacca is a Malaysia–Indonesia affair. So all these things are advancing in parallel. It's dizzyingly complex, but it's a completely different system, and we still don't know where it's going. But the Malacca angle for China is crucial, and I'm sure they will exert a lot of pressure on Jakarta about this defense agreement with the Americans.
Glenn Diesen: When the US develops naval strategies for limiting reliable access for the Russians to seas on their western borders — they have three seas which can be cut off: the Black Sea, the Baltic Sea, and the Arctic — you see the US going after all three. That was part of the purpose of toppling the government in Ukraine, shutting down the Black Sea fleet of the Russians, essentially making the Black Sea a NATO lake. You have NATO now speaking very openly about making the Baltic Sea a NATO lake by challenging Russia in Kaliningrad, getting Sweden and Finland into NATO. The former NATO Secretary General Rasmussen said we could put a blockade on St. Petersburg if we wanted to. An American general said we can invade Kaliningrad and there's nothing Russia can do. And you see the militarization of Scandinavia and US ambitions on cutting off the Russians in the Arctic — yes, overall I think this is also a goal of taking Greenland.
So they're going after the Russians. But when you want to go after the Chinese, you have the dual island chain, which is important, but in all American documents — and also Chinese documents — there's always a special place for the Strait of Malacca, where they see this as where the Americans would come to try to shut down the Chinese connection with the world. As you said, closing it off between Indonesia and Malaysia — at the narrowest area it's just about 2.8 kilometers, something very narrow. So this is easy to shut down. But how do you see us moving towards that? Do you think this is a possible actual war? Do you see a link between Iran and Malacca essentially?
Pepe Escobar: There is already a link, Glenn. Did you see that they boarded an Iranian ship not very far from the Strait of Malacca? So this is probably a message: "We can do this." This is an Indopacom operation. I was joking with some people, saying that basically this American task force — this invincible armada — is now cowardly positioned far away. They are not in the Gulf of Oman. They are in the Arabian Sea or in the southern Indian Ocean, very very far from the Persian Gulf or the Sea of Oman. I was joking that this is already more of an Indopacom operation than a CENTCOM one. And then when you see that they apprehended a ship already in the Indopacom area — that's the beginning. This is just the beginning.
The Chinese, I'm sure, are horrified about that. I couldn't read any deeper analysis so far. Maybe it's in Chinese military channels only — on Weibo or WeChat. This is something I'm trying to do in the next few days. But obviously they are horrified, because this is exactly what they have been thinking about since the early 2000s when they started their very well-coordinated diversification. But still, every drop of oil they import from the Persian Gulf has to go through Malacca. They cannot get rid of that.
For instance, they were thinking about Gwadar — because from Gwadar they could build a pipeline across Baluchistan and then parallel to the Karakoram Highway. That would be a mega engineering feat. Yes, they could do it, but it's very costly and would take a long time. The idea is still there. Then they would completely bypass Malacca. That's one possibility.
But of course it all depends on — because we are, I would say, about three weeks ahead of the meeting between Xi and Trump in Beijing. It's going to be on the 14th. So obviously Trump is positioning himself to arrive in Beijing with strong cards in his hand, including extortion cards, intimidation cards. Typical Trump administration. The Chinese, of course, as we know, are cool, calm, collected. They play Go — this means they surround the adversary and they see long-term. They don't play this stupid poker that the Americans do.
But of course they are worried, even though they have this gigantic reserve of 1.3 billion barrels of oil. This is something we cannot even imagine. They accumulated this. They were ready for something similar to what's happening now. Not Malacca, but Hormuz as Malacca in fact. Because as it stands, not much oil is flowing through Hormuz — because of the second blockade. With the first non-blockade, the Iranian blockade, it was free for all in terms of Chinese cargo. Now with the second one it's more complicated. But we still have not arrived at a real cliffhanger. Will this invincible armada have the nerve to actually board a Chinese tanker in international waters? I don't think they will take that risk. And the Chinese are betting on it as well. But of course the quantities they are receiving are not enough compared to the past — it was 1.3 to 1.4 million barrels a day from Iran, plus the others.
The UAE, Iran's Toll System, and the Hormuz Chokepoint
Glenn Diesen: The Chinese see what's going on. They see what's happening. And there's this incrementalism in which we're moving towards it. First we see this partial blockade on Venezuela, and again the Chinese see they're part of the target. The Americans weren't subtle about this either — they've made it very clear it's not just that China has to open up to the US, it's that they have to shut down trade with the Iranians. And then of course we now know we have the blockade on Cuba, the hijacking of Iranian ships, the piracy and hijacking of Russian ships. So you see this — again, connectivity wars. Given that the Chinese see themselves as the peer rival of the United States and the ultimate target, what do you think — how do you think the Chinese are going to react to this? Because they do have a calm demeanor.
Pepe Escobar: Exactly. I'm very curious now to go to China. I decided to go because I think there may be an interval before Trump arrives — it will be the best time to go — and then start asking questions there. While Trump is there, it's the perfect moment to talk to people. Of course, as you know, talking on the record with Chinese officials in China is immensely complicated for us foreign journalists and analysts. But of course we have our connections — in my case, scholarly connections, former PLA officials now retired. Even if we talk off the record, many of them talk, but they say it has to be off the record. No problem. We always get nuggets of information that you won't find in Xinhua, in Global Times, in China Daily, etc.
But for the moment, it's typical Chinese behavior — they are reflecting upon it. It's too early to talk about it. But obviously this strikes a nerve. Malacca for them is a taboo subject. And now it's getting very very close to home with this first seizure — relatively peaceful, there was no gunfire involved apparently — but it was obviously an Indopacom message to the PLA Navy especially, and that's why this is so dangerous.
Let me ask you something if you allow me, Glenn. Considering your fabulous experience in Russia, how do you see the Northern Sea Route being implemented for good within the next few years? They say, when you go to those round tables in Vladivostok for instance, that there are lots of challenges but it can be operational by 2028–2029. Do you think that's realistic?
Glenn Diesen: Well, I've been to those Eastern Economic Forums in Vladivostok as well, on those panels. The timeline — I'm not sure if they're able to get it up and running by then. But on one hand, it's a very competitive advantage. The Arctic corridor of Russia — connecting Europe with Asia through the Arctic — saves a lot of time and money. So it's a very competitive international maritime route, and it will be pretty much the only one in the world not dominated by the United States Navy. So it has a lot of benefits. And even if the US would try to force its way in, you need search-and-rescue ports and all these things across the Russian Arctic coastline. There's no way to really circumvent the Russians there. The Russians have great leverage there.
Also, because of the relationship with China — you get the impression sometimes that the Russians can get a bit antsy because they will be more dependent on China than China is on Russia. The Russians overcome this by having a certain degree of strategic autonomy and also diversifying their partnerships, as we've seen in the Arctic. They make sure not just to invite the Chinese — they also invite the Indians and the Koreans.
Pepe Escobar: Yes. Yeah. Exactly.
Glenn Diesen: But also because the ports and all are sovereign Russian territory, it creates more balance in the relationship with the Chinese. So it has all the perfect recipe for being a good project. But this being said, it has limits as well. The Arctic can't become the main corridor — it's simply one of many, which allows countries to diversify. And I think often people see it as giving the potential of a Russian stranglehold, but I think this is exaggerated because it won't reach that degree of traffic. If anything, having more corridors prevents other countries from using corridors as a weapon, because then people lose trust in them. The Russians have an interest in keeping it open to maintain trust in it. But it can never be so powerful in terms of the amount of traffic that it would pose any threat or give the Russians too much power. So overall it seems like a quite reasonable project.
Nonetheless, the US hegemonic strategy builds on — and has always done so — maritime supremacy. That means two things: all the oceans have to be under US control, and you have to reduce the physical connectivity on the land. You want to make sure that Germany is cut off from Russia — bombing Nord Stream achieved that. You want to make sure the Chinese are cut off from the Russians, the Russians are cut off from the Indians, Turkey is cut off from Russia. It's essentially divide and rule. I think this is how the maritime powers operate.
And if you go to the Russian conservative scholars — Savitsky and others in the 1920s — they made it clear: this is why they consider the maritime powers to be naturally imperialistic, because they can only dominate if they divide. And they had a vision that the Eurasian land powers can only become competitive if they cooperate, because yes, China is more powerful, but China's objectives can't be achieved without cooperation with India, Russia, and Iran. So there's a natural incentive to cooperate. That's why they frame the land powers as being more cooperative while the maritime powers are inherently more imperialistic.
I do think the Northern Sea Route has a lot of potential. The Russians have all the icebreakers. They're building the infrastructure. New technology — especially drones — makes a lot of the infrastructure required for search and rescue much cheaper and more reasonable, especially in areas that aren't heavily populated. So I tend to be optimistic about the Arctic route.
Pepe Escobar: But the problem is, in the past it was just a frozen desert — not that much competitive strategic interest. But now with the maritime corridor and all these natural resources becoming available, it's lined up for being at the center of a zero-sum geopolitical standoff. Again, that's why the Americans want Greenland.
Glenn Diesen: Exactly.
Pepe Escobar: And Putin is personally implicated. It's what he tells us in Vladivostok every year. This is a federal project and they are investing a lot of money in Arkhangelsk, in Murmansk, in the ports. They take this as a matter of national security. So it's extremely serious.
And at the same time, the Chinese interest — because one of their corridors, the Trans-Siberian, they cannot use anymore because of sanctions. That's why they are investing so much in these middle corridors, the east–west corridor, etc. Going south, going through the deep north in the Arctic — that's perfect and relatively fast.
And it's funny that Vladivostok on the Pacific coast of Russia is now connected with India as well. So India will also partake in the Arctic project. People don't consider India to be an Arctic country. But this is the weird stuff — because once Sweden and Finland became part of NATO, you essentially have all the Arctic states as NATO members except for Russia, which is half of the Arctic. In the past, the Russians — because they wanted to integrate with the Europeans and have a common European home, as Gorbachev framed it — essentially earmarked all Arctic cooperation with the western countries. But now that it's become obvious there will be no common European home and only bloc politics, the Russians are looking towards the east. The Arctic is becoming this roof of Eurasia in which they're inviting Eurasian powers instead of the west.
I think in the future we're going to kick ourselves for what we've done — that is, the Europeans — because all this Arctic gas which was supposed to fuel our industries with cheap gas for the next 30 years has now been signed over to the Chinese instead, because we are obsessed with defeating the Russians instead of finding a political settlement. Historians will look back at this period as one of the most ridiculous and self-inflicted wounds in history.
Glenn Diesen: Yes. And you saw the latest €90 billion — and they actually think in Brussels that this is going to be paid by Russian reparations.
Pepe Escobar: Yeah. But that's why they call it a loan — €90 billion to Ukraine. How is it a loan? They can't pay it back. And then they explain: "Oh well, after we defeat Russia, they will pay in reparations." So essentially the Europeans can't afford peace anymore, because peace means they don't get their money back either.
Glenn Diesen: Otherwise they're not going to get their money back. I always ask: what exactly is this plan? If Russia considers this to be an existential threat, how do you defeat the world's largest nuclear power which considers itself to be in a fight for its survival? To what extent do you want to be successful? I mean, this is a horrible war on so many levels — the humanitarian, the strategic. Anyways, I wanted to get back to the Iranian–Chinese aspect of this, because from what I hear now, the Iranians have begun to outline the rules of a new toll system — that is, everyone has to pay a toll. If I'm not mistaken, those who participated in the attack on Iran or sanctioned Iran get a little bit of an extra bonus on top in terms of what they have to pay. Also, they don't want dollars.
Pepe Escobar: Yes. Probably. But obviously they will accept yuan — but they won't advertise it. The backup currency will be yuan.
Iran's Strategic Position and the UAE's Vulnerability
Glenn Diesen: So how do you see this impacting things? This is why countries want control over international corridors — maritime corridors — so they can extract political and economic concessions. This would effectively strip the US of much power. Is this why the Americans can't leave? Even though they more or less lost the war against Iran, is this why Trump can't go home?
Pepe Escobar: Of course. Because if he takes this off-ramp, wherever that is, this is admitting strategic defeat. The strategic defeat is already there for the whole planet to see. The thing is, the degree of this strategic defeat is going to be extremely humiliating, or there's going to be some face-saving built in. We still don't know. But he has to take an off-ramp, and he's begging for an off-ramp. That's a completely different story.
The Iranians can sit on the current situation for months, even though they are paying a horrible price. They already pay a horrible price in terms of the infrastructure that has been destroyed. There are numbers floating around reaching as much as $270 billion to rebuild what was destroyed during the war. So obviously they badly need a toll booth in Hormuz. This is going to help. They cannot expect the Americans to pay reparations — this will never happen. Or they will have to force the Gulf states — especially the Emirates, which are for all practical purposes at war with Iran now, not Saudi Arabia but the Emirates — to pay reparations. So what are they going to do? Attack the Emirates again? Yes, they can. They can immobilize the Emirates in a matter of hours. Very very easy.
And in fact, if the Americans attack again, the number one target apart from Israel is going to be the UAE — Abu Dhabi specifically. Dubai. The business model of Dubai is already dead and it's not coming back.
Glenn Diesen: How so?
Pepe Escobar: Because the conceptual brain of aligning with the US and Israel in a war against Iran is MBZ — Mohammed bin Zayed. He's a very very dangerous gangster. In fact, did you see that he sent his son to Beijing, received by Xi Jinping, and he was lecturing Xi Jinping in Beijing about the Iran–Russia relationship? It's absolutely mind-boggling. These people are self-entitled gangsters — and that's even worse. They made their bet a long time ago. Those famous — I think it's a little bit too much — but probably much less than the stated figure — that they committed to invest in the American economy. And the Americans can build all the data centers they want in the Emirates. And of course the direct connection with Israel, which is part of IMEC as well — assuming IMEC one day would happen, which is probably not going to happen. The link between Haifa and the UAE is essential for the corridor, and they still have to build it. Those rails don't exist. If you sum it all up, I think it's over 1,000 kilometers of rails that still have to be built linking Israel with the UAE.
So they made their bet even before the war, and obviously they provided their own territory for US attacks against Iran. The Iranians won't forget that ever. There will be payback. It has already started, but it can get much much more hardcore later on.
And if the Americans try something funny in the next few days — rumor mill, but we have to deal with the rumor mill as well — there could be something happening within the weekend. Well, the Iranians already said what's going to happen. It's very very simple: we attack Fujairah, we attack Yanbu, and we close the Bab-el-Mandeb. That's it. Can you recover from that? No. Nobody can.
Glenn Diesen: When Yemen closes down the Red Sea, I think this is —
Pepe Escobar: Then it's game over. That's game over. And everybody knows that, Glenn. Everybody doing models or whatever — everybody knows that. And that's why nothing happened with the Bab-el-Mandeb so far, because this is the ultimate joker. Then it's total collapse.
The global economy is already collapsing even more because of this absolutely ridiculous blockade which is not blockading anything. Ships continue to go through. And it's fascinating, because if you navigate in Iranian territorial waters, Pakistani territorial waters, and Indian territorial waters very close to the coastline — that's it. You go from Karachi to Mumbai. Very simple. And I'm sure a lot of cargos and tankers are doing that now. Why do you need to navigate in the middle of the Arabian Sea? You know the Americans are there — or at least they tell us they are. We still don't know where exactly they are placed. There's no visual identification of where these destroyers are placed. Somewhere between the Arabian Sea and the southern Indian Ocean — that's very very far away from the coastline of Iran and Pakistan.
Glenn Diesen: Given that they're so far away, the region gets so stretched out as well, which means you need a lot of ships. From the amount of manpower and ships being used, they're really exhausting the resources. Making matters worse, at some point — where do you dock, where do you do the maintenance? A lot of these are going to make them very vulnerable. So it's a dangerous strategy they're playing. If we're going to go back into full-out war, the US could be in very bad shape.
Pepe Escobar: Yes. If we go back to war, these ships are going to be attacked by missiles and drones — swarms of missiles and drones. There's no question. The Iranians are just waiting. This will be part of war 2.0. One of the first things: let's attack the US Navy, wherever they are. As the Chinese would say, interesting times.
Glenn Diesen: So thank you very much for taking the time. Any final thoughts?
Pepe Escobar: My pleasure, Glenn. Well, hope to see you in Russia soon.
Glenn Diesen: Yeah, I'm going soon. Thank you.
Pepe Escobar: Cheers. Take care. Bye-bye.