It was no coincidence that just over a month after staunch U.S. ally-Israel and the United Arab Emirates declared that they would normalise relations and Israel and Bahrain did the same, Iran’s own neo-client state, Iraq, began to announce various relationship-enhancing deals centred on electricity and fuel oil. The geopolitical intentions of Iran and its key sponsor, China behind these Iraq deals are obvious when factoring in that Iraq itself is so desperately short of electricity and other power options that it still suffers from extreme power shortages that have repeatedly resulted in violent and deadly protests across the country. The chronic shortage of electricity and any fuel for power in Iraq is so bad that it is one of the worst offenders in the world for burning valuable crude oil to generate power and is why it is granted specific waivers from the U.S. to continue to import […]