Lucky timing

Fortunately for me, my week on the road (*) coincided with the Arab summit in Riyadh, which means that nothing of any real value was missed.   Much adulation of the Custodian of the Holy Places in the Saudi media (and American), and blithering on about how this time things might go differently because of the astonishingly amazing Custodian et al - a relief, because saves me the trouble of trying to catch up!   Because nothing much is likely to come of any of it - the Iran stuff likely more important than the Israel stuff, from what I can tell.

Comments

[Ms .45]

What do you make of Pelosi's visit to Damascus?

[Non-Arab Arab]

I'll tell you this much about the Iran stuff, it's been driving the oil markets completely bonkers this week. First somebody decided to jack the market $5 a barrel in after hours trading last week (an utterly unheard of price change in normally sleepy trading hours and it all happened in the span of about 15 minutes), supposedly on a rumor of an Iranian attack on a US ship. Even if that was rubbish, in the week since every twist and turn of the Iran saga was followed and allowed follow through on that move. Then with the price having run up and stayed up on Iran rumor-mongering with the sailors, producers (oil companies, European ones in particular) were persuaded it was a good time to hedge their forward production so they started selling like mad and they drove front to back crude spreads insanely upwards to levels that hadn't been seen in a year, all within the matter of a couple of days.

That may all sound kind of arcane and hard to understand to most of the folks who aren't in the oil markets, but the bottom line is this: 15 sailors on Al-Alam TV and UK/US-Iranian relations are causing huge turmoil in the oil markets, more than has been seen in a good long time. This stuff does have an economic impact, even in the short run.

[Gregory Gause]

The behind the scenes stuff on Lebanon might be the most important (only important?) thing to come out of the summit. We will have to see if anything develops there.

It is worth noting the both the Turkish and the Iranian foreign ministers, as well as Musharraf himself, were there as observers. I think that might be a first for Arab summits.