An Outcast at the Summit

In defiance of medical advice to eschew the Internet, I am briefly out of my coma and attempting to catch up on world affairs. I see Operation Epic Fury has evolved into Operation Economic Outcast, as the US sanctions first imposed on Iran in, oh, November 1979 are apparently starting to bite.

So how's Operation Economic Outcast going? The picture above is from the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation's summit this week in Bishkek. I doubt many readers have heard of Bishkek, possibly because until 1926 it was known as Pishpek. But I gather it's the capital of some no-name stan in the murky territory marked on official State Department maps as the "Rest of the World": here be dragons. I doubt many more readers have heard of the "Shanghai Cooperation Organisation", but its member nations represent over forty per cent of the world's population spread over two-thirds of Eurasia. And lookee here: that's the President of Iran standing on stage with Chairman Xi, Tsar Putin and Sultan Erdogan among those on his left, and on his immediate right Prime Minister Modi of India. Notwithstanding Secretary Bessent's sanctions-rattling, none of the A-listers suggested moving the global pariah to the back row. If the Iranian bloke were to get any more outcast, he'd be unanimously acclaimed UN Secretary-General.

Aside from the souvenir snap, there was also a communiqué, which almost en passant reprised "the SCO's previously stated position condemning military strikes on the territory of the Islamic Republic of Iran... Such actions violate the principles and norms of international law and the UN Charter and create serious risks to international peace, security and stability." That's just boilerplate compared to the blunter message conveyed by the group shot, but the Indian press found it a notable development given Delhi's close relations with America and Israel.