AfDB President Candidate Advocates Tapping Middle East Finance
The African Development Bank should do more to tap finance from oil-rich Middle Eastern nations and access the money held by pension funds on the continent as development needs grow, a contender for the institution's presidency said.
Africa's biggest multilateral development bank currently lends out about $10 billion a year when the continent's needs exceed $100 billion, said Mauritania's Sidi Ould Tah, who recently stepped down as the president of the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa.
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Yahoo
21 hours ago
- Yahoo
What Trump Knew About the Attack Against Iran
The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. This story was updated at 5:30 p.m. on June 13, 2025. As Israeli jets streaked over the Middle East last evening, President Donald Trump's key aides were making preparations for their next round of nuclear talks with Iran, hoping to cement their boss's reputation as the world's top dealmaker. For weeks, Trump had been warning Iran to accept the agreement that his envoy, Steve Witkoff, had offered, under which Tehran would receive sanctions relief in exchange for dismantling its nuclear program and ending its uranium enrichment. Trump had told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a call earlier in the week he believed that a deal was still possible and didn't want to risk a wider war, a White House official told us. When Netanyahu raised the possibility of a preemptive strike, Trump said he preferred the diplomatic route. But by this morning, everything had changed. Israel's largest-ever attack on Iran had left senior leaders of the Islamic Republic dead, its nuclear facilities badly damaged, and the outlook for Trump's dealmaking in shambles. What remains of Iran's leadership appears even less likely to accept the embarrassing prospect of surrendering its enrichment capability, and will feel the need to hit back against Israel without restraint. More threatening for Trump, the president now faces the prospect of Iranian attacks on U.S. interests and an unpredictable, economically damaging wider war across the Middle East. The question that has dominated international attention on the Middle East for well over a decade—whether the standoff over Iran's nuclear aspirations would be resolved with force or at the negotiating table—appears to be careening toward an answer. 'Dead,' one person familiar with the matter said of Trump's diplomatic push. 'Yes, Iran is an authoritarian state, but they care about how they're viewed domestically and internationally. They can't be seen as negotiating from a position of weakness.' [Read: Iran's stunning incompetence] A diplomat from a Middle Eastern country said that Trump is being naive if he thinks Iran will resume talks 'in any meaningful way any time soon.' 'Also,' the diplomat added, 'Israel just killed their negotiators.' Israel dubbed its operation 'Rising Lion,' and it included air strikes on more than 100 nuclear and military sites as well as the assassinations of a number of top officials, including the chief of staff of Iran's military, the senior-most Revolutionary Guard commander, and the diplomat overseeing negotiations with Washington. The details of the attack suggest that Israel had invested months or years of planning and had deeply penetrated Iran's security establishment, even beyond the espionage required to assassinate a senior Hamas operative at a Tehran guesthouse last year. Netanyahu promised there would be more to come. 'Today the Jewish state refuses to be the victim of a nuclear Holocaust,' he said in a message to the Iranian people. Former officials who have followed Israel's decades-long standoff with Iran described yesterday's assault as the 'big one' for Israel, which was hoping to take advantage of the setbacks it dealt its adversary's air and missile defenses in a series of tit-for-tat attacks over the past 18 months. Netanyahu said Israel was attacking to preempt a breakthrough moment for Iran in which the country develops nuclear-weapons capability. But the aims appeared even broader than that. 'They're not just trying to take out the nuclear program for a time,' the individual familiar with the issues said. 'They're trying to permanently set it back and potentially to destabilize the regime.' What happens next may not only change the balance of power in the Middle East—it may also come to define a chapter of Trump's presidency. A senior White House official told us that Trump continues to believe that a diplomatic solution is possible—a view that is not universally shared by those around him. He had hoped to keep Israel from striking but thinks that Tehran, which had been stalling in the talks, may now be compelled to negotiate to avoid further destruction. Trump is clearly attempting to push this message, in any case. He took to social media and spoke with reporters early this morning, touting the success of the strikes—while exaggerating his support for them—and declaring that peace was possible. 'There is still time to make this slaughter, with the next already planned attacks being even more brutal, come to an end,' Trump wrote early this morning on Truth Social. 'Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left.' While the president is projecting strength, he is also playing catch-up. The administration was given notice about the attacks only in the hours before they began, a White House official told us. The Department of Defense briefed some key congressional committees yesterday afternoon that they had been told Israel would soon attack, though the exact timing of the strikes was still unclear, according to a person familiar with the briefing. While Secretary of State Marco Rubio distanced the United States from the attacks, saying the country did not take part, the U.S. had taken steps in the days after Trump and Netanyahu's call on Monday to move personnel out of the region in anticipation of possible violence. Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican and Trump ally who has been a staunch supporter of Israel, told us that Trump was not perturbed by the attack: 'He sees Israel as the winner right now.' If Iran doesn't reengage with talks, the senator added, his perspective is that Washington should 'help Israel finish off the nuclear program.' After Israel attacked Iran, Rubio's statement did not address whether the U.S. would help with Israel's defense in the event of an Iranian counterattack. When Tehran launched two major aerial attacks at Israel last year, the Biden administration authorized the U.S. military to help Israel shoot down the onslaught of missiles. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned that Israel 'should anticipate a harsh punishment,' and after nightfall in the Middle East today, dozens of rockets arced toward Israel; explosions echoed across Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Most of the incoming missiles were shot down by Israel's Iron Dome defense system, but some broke through and crashed into populated areas. A U.S. official who spoke to us on the condition of anonymity confirmed that American forces based on land and at sea helped shoot down the Iranian missiles. Since Hamas's October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel, the United States has maintained a heightened military presence in the Middle East, giving it greater ability to come to Israel's aid. [Read: Israel's bold, risky attack] The Pentagon must also be ready for strikes against U.S. troops or other American interests in the region. While Iran's proxies, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, have been weakened, the ability of Iranian-backed groups to wreak havoc with asymmetric attacks remains significant, as the Houthi militants in Yemen have continued to demonstrate. In addition to major bases in Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, the Pentagon has an array of naval assets in the region that could mount defenses for an Iranian counterattack, including the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier, with some 5,000 sailors aboard and its suite of F-18 and F-35 jets, along with five guided-missile destroyers. Since the October 7 attacks, the United States has also moved additional air-defense assets to Israel. Daniel Shapiro, who served as U.S. ambassador to Israel during the Obama administration and was a senior Pentagon official during the Biden administration, told us the moment posed a significant dilemma for Iran: It would also want to hit back against the United States, Israel's chief military backer, but the prospect of war with Washington in a moment of internal chaos and military weakness was likely to be daunting. Ironically, the blows to Iran's conventional military might make Iran's leaders less willing to accept limits to their nuclear ambitions than they would have been otherwise. 'It's more likely that Iran will now feel a desperate need to sprint toward breakout capability, because they're now so damaged,' said Shapiro, who is a fellow at the Atlantic Council. 'They've always viewed the nuclear program as part of their regime survival strategy.' Yesterday's attack revealed the extent to which the Middle East has been remade since October 7, allowing Israel to extend its military advantage against Iran and its allies far more than most imagined possible. But that altered reality may pose a political danger to Trump, driving a wedge between his duties as Israel's chief foreign ally and the wishes of his political base. If Iran does attempt to accelerate its drive to obtain nuclear weapons, it would pull the United States more deeply into the conflict. Trump has vowed that Iran will not get a bomb and that only the United States has the military capabilities to reach the deeply buried facilities at the Fordow nuclear site. But some 'America First' influencers, such as Tucker Carlson and Charlie Kirk, denounced the possibility of the U.S. becoming further embroiled overseas. In the hours after the attack, the stock market went down while the price of oil went up. And a president who campaigned on promises of quickly ending foreign wars was suddenly on the precipice of another conflict. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
Oil Market Long Numb to War Risk Confronts Weekend of Worry
(Bloomberg) -- The past two years of escalating tensions in the Middle East have taught oil traders to be sanguine about the risk of disruption to oil supplies. Shuttered NY College Has Alumni Fighting Over Its Future Trump's Military Parade Has Washington Bracing for Tanks and Weaponry NYC Renters Brace for Price Hikes After Broker-Fee Ban Do World's Fairs Still Matter? As Part of a $45 Billion Push, ICE Prepares for a Vast Expansion of Detention Space The barrage of headlines has revived memories of the political upheavals and prices spikes of the 1970s — and yet even when oil prices have jumped, it inevitably proved short-lived. As Iran and Israel traded volleys of missiles in April last year and again in October, Middle Eastern oil continued to flow to the global market unaffected. Now, the latest assault by Israel is putting oil traders' nonchalance to the test. There's been no impact on supplies so far, but the strikes have shaken a market that for most of this year has been overshadowed by worries about a looming surplus driving down prices, with OPEC+ quickly unwinding production cuts and output rising elsewhere from Brazil to Guyana, while President Donald Trump's trade war threatens demand. Even if many believe that the oil market may ultimately escape unscathed, the widespread uncertainty over how strongly Iran will respond, whether Israel will launch further attacks, and how the US will react is forcing traders to price in a huge range of possible outcomes. With hours left until the end of the trading week, few were brave enough to risk going into the weekend short. Brent futures spiked as much as 13% early on Friday and settled 7% higher at about $74 a barrel. 'When there's a war on you're not going to be short anything over the weekend,' said Andreas Laskaratos, chief executive officer of energy trading house AB Commodities. 'Although the fundamentals haven't changed you can't trade against the headlines over the weekend.' Traders and analysts began to game out scenarios for possible escalation or de-escalation almost as soon as the first Israeli missiles hit Iran in the early hours of Friday morning. Laskaratos says his Europe-based traders were at their desks by about 4:30 or 5:00 a.m. Read Bloomberg's live blog on the latest from the Middle East Analysts at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. raised their oil price forecasts for the coming months $2-$3 a barrel, but laid out possible scenarios ranging from a surge in prices above $100 a barrel in the worst-case scenario, to a drop below $50 next year in their most bearish scenario. 'The potential of further escalation in the Middle East implies that the short-term risks to our price forecast are now skewed to the upside,' the analysts including Daan Struyven wrote. Still, they maintained their call for prices to drop below $60 by the fourth quarter of this year. A surge of trading in out-of-the money call options showed that many were seeking to hedge against the possibility of a price spike. Among the most traded options were call options that would pay out if prices rise above $85 a barrel by Jun. 25; a measure of the price of WTI call options relative to the price of put options surged to the highest since March 2022, when the market was rocked by Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The most worrying possibility for the oil market is a disruption of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, through which about one-fifth of global oil supply flows. Most analysts reckon that's unlikely. 'It is our understanding that it would be extremely difficult for Iran to close the strait for an extended period given the presence of the US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain,' said Helima Croft, head of global commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets LLC, and a former CIA analyst. Still, even if small, any increase in the chance of disruption is enough to drive prices. 'The possibility that the Strait of Hormuz closes is such a huge binary event, it makes forecasting balances challenging,' consultancy FGE NexantECA wrote in a report. 'Most market participants we have spoken to are not expecting the Strait of Hormuz to be closed; the consequences are just too great.' Other possible scenarios worrying oil traders include the possibility of strikes on Iran's oil infrastructure – though Israel has so far avoided that – or the potential for sanctions against Iran to be ramped up if Tehran responds to the strikes by accelerating its nuclear program. For now at least, most traders are viewing current events through the lens of recent history. 'For the past decade, events like this have been sell-the-rip situations. They didn't escalate. Fears were worse than what actually happened,' Dan Pickering, chief investment officer at Pickering Energy Partners LP, an energy-focused investment bank in Houston, wrote on X. The strikes may even turn out to be bearish. Trump on Friday called on Iran to make a deal or face 'even more brutal' attacks. If Tehran were to heed his advice, a nuclear deal would likely involve a relaxation of sanctions, potentially lifting Iran's exports. FGE NexantECA said that market participants were 'looking at the recent price action and starting to consider the events as a 'sell' opportunity.' 'However, they acknowledge that taking a short position right now is hard given the risk/expectation of further escalation in tensions in the weeks ahead.' Even if there is a disruption, OPEC+ members Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have significant spare capacity that could be brought on to potentially help cool prices. 'It would take a lot of courage for someone to go against it but that said we can't see this rally being sustained in the long term,' said Laskaratos of AB Commodities. 'We don't believe the fundamentals have changed on supply and demand as things stand.' --With assistance from Anthony Di Paola, Nayla Razzouk, Salma El Wardany, Hayley Warren and Demetrios Pogkas. American Mid: Hampton Inn's Good-Enough Formula for World Domination The Spying Scandal Rocking the World of HR Software New Grads Join Worst Entry-Level Job Market in Years As Companies Abandon Climate Pledges, Is There a Silver Lining? US Tariffs Threaten to Derail Vietnam's Historic Industrial Boom ©2025 Bloomberg L.P. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
CNBC
a day ago
- CNBC
Where oil prices may go next, based on a history of Middle East conflicts
The spike in oil prices may soon stall and reverse course if the Israel-Iran conflict does not widen, according to historical data examined by TD Securities. Daniel Ghali, a senior commodity strategist at the firm, said in a note to clients that the initial moves in oil markets already put this week's developments on par with the average comparable event since the 1980s. "Historically, geopolitical risks typically faded within one month, and completely evaporated within six months, in line with subsequent macroeconomic headwinds and deployment of spare capacity. Expanded wars (incl. involving USA) have a more significant impact," Ghali said. In 14 similar events since 1948 identified by TD, it took an average of 2.36 months for oil prices to peak, with an average increase of 17%. However, that includes a 135% spike around the Yom Kippur War in 1973. Focusing only on events after 1980 shows a smaller average advance for oil prices. By comparison, West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures rose more than 8% on Friday. Prices have risen by more than 20% in all of June thus far, and some of the run-up before the conflict could be due in part to traders anticipating rising tensions. What happens over the weekend could play a big role in whether the spike in oil continues. Oil prices moved higher intraday Friday after Iran launched retaliatory missiles toward Israel. In particular, traders will be looking to see if oil infrastructure such as production platforms, pipelines or refineries are damaged in any back-and-forth exchanges between the two nations. Most Wall Street commentary from major investment banks pointed toward a narrow conflict and a short, limited move in oil prices. One outlier was Piper Sandler's global energy strategist Jan Stuart, who said in a note to clients, "we would not fade any oil price rally; this is war." Another variable to consider is the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC. A change in production from this group could offset or exacercebate the price impact of an Israel-Iran conflict. "Iranian crude grades may be replaced by Middle Eastern grades, but given regional politics, OPEC nations may hesitate to capitalize on weaker Iranian exports by ramping up the speed at which voluntary production cuts are unwound," Ghali said. — CNBC's Michael Bloom contributed reporting.
