Positive thinking

Nafis Alam, University of Reading   The US has unnerved the world oil market by ramping up the pressure in its long-running dispute with Iran. It has announced that, after May 1, it won’t renew the exemptions given to eight countries that enable them to buy Iranian oil. Those affected, which include China, India, Japan, Italy and South Korea, will face sanctions from Washington if they don’t comply. The move will likely squeeze global oil supply at a time when it is already struggling from disruptions in Venezuela , Libya and Nigeria . Indeed, the Brent crude price has already risen on the back of the announcement to US$74 (£57) per barrel, the highest since last November. President Donald Trump has said he is confident that a supply crunch can be avoided thanks to extra output from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, but traders and Asian petrochemical firms are sceptical that these countries will fully comply. In recent months, Saudi Arabia and other OPEC mem...

   Vincenzo Bove, University of Warwick UK arms exports to Saudi Arabia increased by 175% in the first nine months of 2017 according to an investigation by the Campaign Against Arms Trade. Similarly, France and the US are major exporters of arms to the oil-rich Gulf state – in 2017 alone, they were worth around US$2.6 billion. Selling weapons is a lucrative business. As well as the money to be made, the arms trade is also a barometer of the quality of relationships between states and it creates an interdependence that gives current and future recipient governments incentives to cooperate with arms suppliers. Oil dependency is another reason. Sometimes this idea is disregarded as a conspiracy theory , but colleagues Claudio Deiana, Roberto Nisticò and I recently researched the extent to which oil-dependent countries transfer arms to oil-rich countries. It turns out it’s a lot. The international transfer of weapons is one of the most dynamic and lucrative...

Simon Mabon, Lancaster University Thanks to Donald Trump, the hard-won deal that set up a process to end Iran’s nuclear weapons programme is on its deathbed. After weeks of entreaties and visits from his counterparts in the other states that signed the accord, Trump has announced that the US will be withdrawing from it and reimposing the sanctions the deal lifted. That makes it hard to see how the deal will survive. Given Trump has spent years referring to this as “the worst deal ever”, perhaps his decision to back out is less than surprising – but that doesn’t mean it isn’t shocking. To be sure, there are real problems with the deal. Struck in 2015 between Iran and the P5+1 powers – the US, the UK, Russia, China, France, and Germany – it fails to address longer-term concerns about the nuclear programme (the Iranian government is renowned for playing a long game) and does not limit the country’s ballistic missile capability. Perhaps the biggest criticism, though, concern...

Fiona Robertson-Snape, Staffordshire University Two anti-arms trade activists, Sam Walton and Dan Woodhouse, have been found not guilty of criminal damage after they were accused of breaking into the BAE Systems plant in Warton, Lancashire, with the intention of disarming warplanes bound for Saudi Arabia. Their protest has strong echoes of a case in 1996, when four women broke into the same plant and used a hammer to damage a Hawk jet . Known as the “Ploughshares Four”, those women made legal history when they were acquitted despite having admitted criminal damage . The court accepted that their action was lawful because it prevented the greater crime of genocide by the regime of former Indonesian president Haji Mohamed Suharto against the people of East Timor, which was then under an illegal Indonesian occupation . The trial of the Ploughshares Four put defence exports firmly on the political agenda. When Labour came to power in 1997, arms sales became a litmus t...