David Patrikarakos

If Iran has performed one role in the time of coronavirus it’s been as a harbinger of things to come. Early in the year, when we in the West were still blasé about the corona-thingy that would be 'nothing more than the seasonal flu', the regime was already having to deny reports that Iranians were being taken to hospital in their droves. The many flights arriving daily in Tehran from China were beginning to take their toll: as far back as 28 January three, employees of the Chinese embassy were hospitalised with Covid-19 symptoms. People began to fall sick across the country. It was a state of affairs we would all come to know soon enough. Iran then reluctantly locked down. It didn’t want to. The country is in severe economic crisis.

When you’re desperate you do stupid things, and when you do stupid things, you often make what was once merely a desperate situation dire. It’s a lesson I thought Iran’s ruling clerical elite had internalised. Seemingly not. The Islamic Republic is a revolutionary state; it came about after Iranians overthrew the Shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, in 1979. The Shah fell because when he faced unrest he panicked; he sent the army into the streets to kill people. And the more he killed the angrier they became until eventually he had to flee. Once, the Mullahs avoided this sort of stupidity.

If coronavirus has taught us anything it’s that if you really want to understand something of a state’s essential character, look at how it battles a pandemic. This crisis has divided humanity up variously, but most markedly along national, if not occasionally stereotypical, lines.  Germany reacted with organisation and efficiency; it has made, on balance, a good fist of it. The UK wavered; it twisted and turned and did stuff on the hoof. Things could be a lot better, but they could also be a lot worse. Some countries have defied expectation. Greece, for example, locked down quickly and comprehensively: it kept mass death at bay.

Yet again the news from Pyongyang is both disconcerting and vague. Yet again North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is rumoured to be seriously ill or dead. Kim went missing from public view on 11 April and has not yet reappeared. It was an abrupt disappearance after several public engagements and ample news coverage at the beginning of the month. Experts remain puzzled. On 14 April, just a few days after his disappearance, North Korea tested various missile platforms – something only Kim would have the authority to do. But as Harry Kazianis, Senior Director of Korean Studies at the Center for the National Interest, observes, he missed the birthday celebrations for his grandfather Kim Il-sung, the founder of North Korea, the following day.

They said we were going to uncouple from the Middle East. Barack Obama, they said, was going to pivot to Asia. Donald Trump was, finally, going to get the United States the hell out of there. Intellectually, politically and, most importantly of all, militarily, we were going to put this most vexatious of regions behind us. It was, they assured us, a new day. They were wrong. Obama was drawn back in by his desire to strike a nuclear deal with Iran. Trump talked a good isolationist game but then droned Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad. Now we are in the midst of a coronavirus-induced oil crash. Now the Middle East squats in our living rooms once more. Now, it seems, the bad times are here again. On Monday the price of oil hit $0.

The Great Game of the 21st century is upon us and as ever it’s a scramble for resources. This time, though, the thirst is not for land or diamonds or gold. Personal protective equipment has become the oil of the contemporary moment: desperately needed by a world that is strafed by coronavirus. Britain has its own urgent PPE supply problems. But what about the broader international struggle? The answer to this question offers the clearest glimpse of how our post-pandemic global politics is likely to look.   At the top of this scramble stands China. Ahead of the curve (for obvious reasons), it imported about 2.5 billion healthcare items between 24 January and 29 February, thereby denying vital equipment to other countries.

It’s over then. After almost five years, Jeremy Corbyn’s tenure as Labour leader has come to a close. Corbyn ended as he led: with the petulance and ill grace that has characterised his political career. As Corbyn slopes to the backbenches to resume a life of fruitless campaigning, Keir Starmer steps up to replace him. He faces a mammoth task: rebuilding Labour as a credible electoral force. This is necessary for both party and country. All of us, wherever we stand on the political spectrum, need a functioning opposition. But make no mistake: if Starmer is to make Labour palatable once more, both politically and indeed morally, he will need to reject his predecessor’s foreign policy – and quickly.

'How do you deal toughly with your banker?' This was the not quite rhetorical question that Hillary Clinton asked Australia’s then-prime minister Kevin Rudd at a lunch back in 2010. In the prophylactic language of the diplomat she was then, Clinton was asking how the world should deal with an ever more aggressive China, and she was prescient. Ten years on, Beijing is ascendant. It holds over a trillion dollars of US debt (banker indeed); as of writing, one of its major companies is set to control Britain’s 5G network; and it has spent years hoovering up Africa’s resources with little care for the (admittedly scant) international condemnation it receives or the human rights it violates so egregiously along the way.

In the name of God. These words define the Islamic Republic of Iran. They stretch across its official paperwork and correspondence; they drive its constitution; they drop from the lips of its Ayatollahs leading Friday prayers; and they imprison its people. In Iran, the Velayat-e Faqih, the ‘rule of the jurists,’ holds that those best equipped to interpret God’s laws are those best equipped to rule. Authority descends in a straight line: from God to Mullah to Man (and then woman). Iran’s laws render its citizens little more than children clutched in the paternal embrace of a near all-powerful clerical and military class.

Few words have as great a hold on the contemporary imagination as ‘disinformation.’ Few words are as ubiquitous in contemporary discourse or as pervasive in political mud-slinging. Donald Trump castigates the 'fake news' media for perceived bias against him; Hillary Clinton blames foreign influence operations for her election loss. Disinformation, propaganda, lies: whatever you wish to call it, it’s the bogeyman of our age, a convenient repository for all our sins. There is a reason for this. The author Shoshana Zuboff has correctly observed that information technology brought with it a revolution that reordered capitalism. Human experience – as found in data, which is how we now harness information – became the 'raw material' for wealth creation.

A Russian ship has just rammed a Ukrainian vessel, opened fire on it and captured its sailors. Ukraine has called it an act of war, and legally it may be right. But more than this the act reveals the nature of the true Russia. At this year’s Helsinki summit, some were aghast at how subservient Donald Trump appeared to be toward Vladimir Putin. His behaviour was seen as treasonous and supposedly pointed to the power Russia now wields. For the alt-right, Putin is seen as a model – a “strongman” who is making his country great again. Meanwhile, the Democrats see an all-powerful Russia behind everything. And there is a similar narrative about Russian meddling in the 2016 Brexit referendum. All of this could not be further from the truth.