🇮🇷 The victory of the moderate reformer Masoud Pezeshkian in Iran’s early presidential elections came as a surprise to many, both in the Islamic Republic and abroad.

It cannot be ruled out that what happened was the result of a well-thought-out tactic by Iran’s supreme leader Khamenei, who, by allowing Pezeshkian to participate in the elections, wanted to increase voter turnout and to confirm the legitimacy of the Islamic system, and give reformist circles the opportunity to resume the negotiation process with the West on the Iranian nuclear programme, with the prospect of lifting or at least weakening Western sanctions.

The implementation of the multi-vector foreign policy course proclaimed by the new president, which provides for the restoration of ties with the West, the development of cooperation with Russia and China, and the establishment of good neighbourly relations with Arab states, will be strictly controlled by numerous conservative bodies and the leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, who has the final word on the most important issues of domestic and foreign policy.

We can assume that the new Iranian president and his pro-reform team will strive to pursue a more balanced foreign policy course; without highlighting any of its directions, it will advance where circumstances allow, without crossing the “red lines” outlined by Iran’s top leadership, Alexander Maryasov writes.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/presidential-elections-in-iran-the-impact/

#Return_of_Diplomacy #Iran #Pezeshkian

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📆 Today, July 24, 2024, the Valdai Discussion Club will hold its second Russian-African conference, titled “Russia – Africa: A strategy for cooperation in a multipolar world,” in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

The Valdai Club's partners in organising the conference are the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Tanzania and the Russian House in Dar es Salaam.

🌍 Up to 40 experts from Russia and East African countries who are involved in the expert activities of the Valdai Club and, more broadly, in Russian-African cooperation will take part in the conference.

The Russia-Africa conference will be completely open to the media. The programme lasts one day and includes an opening and four thematic sessions.

During the sessions, experts will discuss the following topics:

• A year after the Russia-Africa summit: political dialogue between Russia and African countries at the present stage;
• Cooperation for development: economics and technology;
• Russian and African approaches to climate change;
• Shared values and cultural cooperation.

https://valdaiclub.com/events/own/the-2nd-african-conference-of-the-valdai-discussion-club/

#AfricanValdai

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🗣 Today, July 24, 2024, the opening of the second Russian-African conference of the Valdai Discussion Club “Russia – Africa: A strategy for cooperation in a multipolar world” took place in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Session 1, titled “The First Year after the Russia-Africa Summit: Political Dialogue of Russia and African States in Contemporary World,” followed the opening.

📷 Photo gallery

#AfricanValdai #RussiaAfrica #Tanzania

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2️⃣ Session 2 of of the II Russian-African conference of the Valdai Discussion Club, titled “Cooperation for Development: Economy and Technology”.

📍July 24, 2024, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

📷 Photo gallery

#AfricanValdai #RussiaAfrica #Tanzania

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3️⃣ Session 3 of of the II Russian-African conference of the Valdai Discussion Club, titled “Shared Values, Role of Media and Cultural Cooperation”.

📍July 24, 2024, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

📷 Photo gallery

#AfricanValdai #RussiaAfrica #Tanzania

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4️⃣ The II Russian-African conference of the Valdai Discussion Club in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, was completed by Session 4, titled “Climate Change, Social Development and Migration. General Discussion”.

📷 Photo gallery

#AfricanValdai #RussiaAfrica #Tanzania

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⚓️ The Middle Corridor, which is also called the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route, is not a new idea. 

It is based on an agreement that the national railway companies of Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Georgia signed back in 2013. That said, the Middle Corridor only attracted a significant deal of interest after the start of Russia’s Special Military Operation in Ukraine in February 2022 and the subsequent imposition of ever-broader sanctions against Russia by the EU led European shippers to turn away from the Northern Corridor.

The Middle Corridor, a transport corridor meant to connect China to Europe via Kazakhstan, the Caspian Sea, the South Caucasus, and the Black Sea, has received increasing attention and is often displayed as a main future thoroughfare and replacement for the Northern Corridor between China and Europe, which goes through Russia.

However, while efforts to develop the Middle Corridor are underway, there are also various questions; one uncertainty is to what extent Georgian Black Sea ports will be able to handle the increased cargo in a way that is economically viable.

Any successful development of the Middle Corridor will at best take years and at worst remain uncertain, Franz J. Marty writes.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/georgian-black-sea-ports-a-stimulus-or-stumbling/

#Multipolarity_and_Connectivity #transport #routs

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🗺️ In the context of deglobalisation, the relationships between space and time have become much more complex and interesting.

The decline of liberal globalism significantly expands our intellectual freedom, because previously Marxist historical determinism was simply replaced with the “end of history.”

Now we are able to consider time as being almost as heterogeneous as space, writes Vyacheslav Shuper, Doctor of Geography, Professor and Leading Researcher of the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Associate Professor at Bernardo O'Higgins University, Santiago, Chile. 

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/globalisation-and-deglobalisation-impact/

#GlobalAlternatives #deglobalisation

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🇫🇷 Macronism suffered a complete defeat in the elections.

The National Rally succeeds only because it is perceived as a force of real opposition (which is increasingly not the case), and it had to win because it is the party that best represents the deep malaise that plagues the working class and other sections of the population.

Of course, the local electoral system prevented this victory, because the National Rally remains a party that lacks acceptance among the rest of the political system precisely because it represents popular forces, writes Olivier P. Roqueplo.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/defeat-for-the-winners-and-victory-for-the-losers-/

#GlobalAlternatives #France #Macron

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🌏 Speaking at the Russian Foreign Ministry on June 14, 2024, Russian President Vladimir Putin revealed the key principles of the security architecture of Eurasia. The idea itself was voiced in the president’s message to the Federal Assembly on February 29. It is highly likely that it will become one of the supporting structures of the new Russian vision of security on the continent.

The principles revealed by the president indicate that Eurasian security will be understood comprehensively. It implies not only military-political issues, but also other areas.

First of all, we are talking about economics. Economic security issues were explicitly identified as a separate dimension and include a wide range of issues - from poverty and inequality to climate and the environment.

However, the further reference of the president’s speech to the policy of sanctions and the reliability of deposits in the debt obligations of Western states suggests that the key aspect of the economic dimension of Eurasian security architecture may be precisely the question of using the economy as a weapon; to protect against its use for political purposes.

The Eurasian economic security system can become a flexible and decentralised set of mechanisms that reduce “dependence on interdependence,” giving rise to a new reality of international economic relations, writes Ivan Timofeev, Programme Director of the Valdai Discussion Club.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/eurasia-s-security-system-the-economic-aspect/

#Multipolarity_and_Connectivity #Eurasia #security #economy

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🌎🌏 The 75th anniversary NATO summit in Washington, which took place on July 9-11, 2024, in addition to the issues it typically addresses, paid significant attention to the expansion of the bloc’s activities to the Asia-Pacific (now called the Indo-Pacific in the West), as well as strengthening cooperation with its partners in East Asia.

First of all, this applies to the well-known QUAD: Australia, New Zealand, Japan and the Republic of Korea, whose leaders have become active participants in the NATO summit for the third time.

As we know, the decisions of this meeting, reflected in the “Declaration of the Washington Summit” adopted on July 10, 2024, are imbued with the spirit of increasing confrontation and deepen the dividing lines between this military alliance and those states that reject the hegemony of the West in the world.

The reaction of Moscow, Pyongyang and Beijing, voiced essentially in unison by states which are organisationally independent and despite the lack of any special coordination on their part, is not only not accidental, it is quite natural: it reflects a common or very similar vision of strategic threats and challenges to their own national security both in the East Asian region and in the world as a whole, Alexander Vorontsov writes.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/the-common-strategic-vision-the-reaction-of-russia/

#Multipolarity_and_Connectivity #NATO #WorldOrder

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🌍 African countries have long considered advanced information technology to be a key tool that can provide a new impetus to the development of their economies, making them more innovative.

Russia is ready to cooperate with African countries in all areas that involve their use.

At the same time, from our point of view, the most significant of these areas will be the following: information security, cloud technologies and artificial intelligence, Konstantin Pantserev writes.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/technological-cooperation-between-russia-and-africa/

#GlobalAlternatives #AfricanValdai #Africa #IT

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🇷🇺🌍 In late July 2024, the Valdai Discussion Club held its Second Russian-African Conference.

A year ago, ahead of the Russia-Africa Summit, the club organised the first conference of this kind in St. Petersburg. This time, the event was held on African soil, in Tanzania, with the support of the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Tanzania and the Russian House in Dar es Salaam.

Experts from the three African BRICS member countries — Egypt, Ethiopia, and South Africa — were invited to participate in the conference. More than 20 Tanzanian representatives from politics, business, the media, science, higher education, and civil non-governmental organisations also took part in the conference.

The conference significantly contributed to strengthening ties between Russian and Tanzanian experts and to a better understanding of each other’s positions. All this laid the foundation for the development of fruitful bilateral cooperation in the future, writes Oleg Barabanov, Programme Director of the Valdai Discussion Club.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/a-year-after-the-summit-development/

#AfricanValdai #Africa #Tanzania #RussiaAfrica

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🗽 We are at the beginning of a major confrontation involving several fronts, and our task is to use our own resources wisely.

The Americans have a long history of redefining the goals of their military involvement in a number of crises: from the grandiose — democratisation of Iraq, transformation of the Middle East, etc., to a reasonable scale. As the commander in Iraq David Petraeus formulated it in 2006, the US goal was no longer to build a “Jeffersonian democracy”, but to create conditions for the withdrawal of troops so that it would not look like a defeat.

Washington’s goal in Ukraine — from a grand defeat, the “decolonization of Russia”, and creating conditions for internal upheaval — may gradually begin to shift to an attempt to end the confrontation in a way that does not look like a defeat, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Andrey Sushentsov.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/the-us-presidential-election-and-the-dilemmas/

#Return_of_Diplomacy #UnitedStates

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💸 In April 2024, the United States approved H. R. 8038, the 21st Century Peace through Strength Act, which provides for the possibility of confiscating Russia’s sovereign assets. It represents a serious precedent that entails a number of questions.

❓What does the decision mean for the global economy and the current financial system?
❓What are the prospects for replicating such solutions within the collective West?
❓How symmetrical is the Russian response, embodied in Presidential Decree No. 442, establishing a special procedure for compensation for damage caused to Russia by the United States?

The adopted decision contradicts not only the norms of international law, which is designed to guarantee the immunity of the sovereign property of states (and the official reserves of the country and the property of the Central Bank are precisely that), but also America’s own laws, particularly the US Foreign Immunity Act of 1976.

Legalising the possibility of confiscation of Russia’s sovereign assets, as well as denying Russian owners of frozen assets the right to apply to American courts for legal protection, will further exacerbate the crisis of confidence in Western jurisdictions, reserve currencies and the global financial system in its current configuration.

As practice shows, the implementation of legislatively formalised decisions on the confiscation of sovereign assets can be difficult due to the lack of procedural issues, Ekaterina Arapova writes.

Despite the intensification of confiscation rhetoric, the Western authorities cannot fail to understand that the cascading of such practices from the United States both causes serious damage to the reputation of a reliable financial hub of their jurisdictions, and provokes retaliatory measures from Russia.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/confiscation-of-russian-assets/

#Multipolarity_and_Connectivity #sanctions #RussianAssets

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