War has erupted in the Middle East once again. To understand why this is happening (beyond the obvious removal of the nuclear threat from a dodgy player), one needs to take a step back and look at the situation above the fog of war. What we see from this vantage point is the eruption of a kinetic hot war, in what has been an ongoing cold war for many years now between the U.S., China, and to some degree Russia. From this perspective, Iran seems to be more of a skirmish in the global fight for control of the flow of energy, the domination of technology, and national security. In this Economics Weekly, Richard de Chazal attempts to lay out our view of the conflict, how this fits into the global geopolitical framework, and what this might mean for financial markets.
