The New Great Game, Revisited
Pepe Escobar • August 13, 2026
https://www.unz.com/pescobar/the-new-great-game-revisited/
It took only a few Yemeni missiles on Saudi refineries
to wake up “leadership” vectors of the Ummah; not over 100,000 Palestinians
killed in Gaza by the death cult.
The Mecca Sunni NATO pact between Saudi Arabia,
Turkiye and Pakistan remains a puzzle. Or dodgy sub-standard theatre – complete
with photo ops and sparse intel sharing. The full text has not been released.
Everything is quite vague, only stressing “collective deterrence”.
Against whom, it’s in the eyes of the beholder. All
options – Eretz Israel, US-Israel, India (in case of attacking Pakistan) –
might apply. The operative concept is “might”. Add to it Turkiye’s myriad NATO
constraints: a viper’s nest in itself.
Significantly, Turkiye informed Iran before signing
the Mecca deal. Extra layers of spin even promote Iran joining the deal in a
later stage, as Riyadh in theory rejects military strikes on Tehran, and Iran
might be covered by Pakistan’s nuclear umbrella.
Geography, once again, will dictate matters. Turkiye
will remain in NATO – because Turkish elites are essentially Atlanticist. Saudi
Arabia would have to perform miracles to extricate itself from the US security
umbrella – and Indian labour. Pakistan’s priority is China and the New Silk
Roads, plus the IP gas pipeline from Iran. Mecca is essentially Deterrence
Theater.
A different, more intriguing scenario would point to
the instrumentalization of Greater Turan – a key Turkiye objective – to the
benefit of the US/Zionist combo. That would point to a neo-Ottoman remix, now
reconfigured as the leadership of comprador Arab affairs. As in Ankara
recreating the Ottoman hierarchy with itself at the center – as a matter of
“saving” Zionists and Salafis from themselves.
It seems that the Mecca spark came from MbS himself
(no one really knows, as things in Riyadh are so opaque). As Riyadh is being
deprived of exporting oil via the Red Sea by Yemen – and might even lose their
oil wells if things get rough – why not bet on benign neo-Ottomanism?
Why the US can never lift sanctions on Iran
Meanwhile in Iran, under a revamped – by Leader
Mojtaba Khamenei – Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), the solidified
consensus is that Tehran will never compromise, especially under the current
“no war, no peace” status.
Washington would have to meet a set of very harsh
conditions before the Strait of Hormuz reopens, including:
1. The end to US threats and “insults”;
2. Permanent end to US wars against Iran and its allies
in Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq;
3. Lifting of the American naval blockade and withdrawal
of all US forces;
4. No less than $300 billion in compensation for war
damages;
5. Lifting
of all sanctions;
6. Unconditional release of all frozen assets;
7. Iran’s right to charge up to 7% on cargo transit;
8. A ban on US and Israeli vessels;
9. A 20% violation toll on ships if conditions are
breached.
Call it an intimation for a US surrender: a
capitulation on every front – from “follow the money” to military expulsion,
end of sanctions and total Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz.
Even grains of sand across the Old and New Silk Roads
are aware that humongous US debt is avid for new mechanisms to be fed with
control over natural resources – from oil and gold to rare earth minerals. And
these natural resources must be priced in US dollars and the petrodollar.
Iran – the key crossroads of Eurasia – has absolutely
everything the US needs. Yet it’s sovereign, independent and intimately aligned
with the Russia-China strategic partnership.
So this has all the makings of a Forever War.
Washington will never lift sanctions on Iran. That’s politically – and
geoeconomically – impossible. And Washington, whoever is in power, will never
accept Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz, administrative fees included,
because that seals, in practice, the imperial failure to use economic sanctions
as its “diplomatic” tool of choice.
The result is that some of the serious consequences of
the war unleashed on February 28 are already quite clear. Those include the
possible financial destruction of the GCC, complete with the collapse of their
ruling regimes; Yemen’s nearly inevitable geographical expansion; virtually
complete international isolation of the death cult; a massive global economic
crisis in tandem with a US financial crisis; and Iran’s accession to the status
of prominent West Asia power, prominent Eurasia power, and prominent Global
South power.
All that implies a massive geoeconomic game-changer
facilitating a much faster rise for BRICS – and BRICS+ – complete with the
solidification of Shanghai as the ideal solution for Global South capital to
secure their savings.
Watch out for the “Eurasian Axis”!
The Empire of Chaos, Lies, Plunder and Piracy will not
take any of that lying down. So the chessboard will continue to be destabilized
even in nodes that in theory are controlled by the Sovereign Independents.
Enter the Caspian Sea – a key node of the International North South
Transportation Corridor (INSTC), one of the premier connectivity corridors of 21st
century pan-Eurasia trade, linking BRICS members Russia, Iran and India to
Central Asia while bypassing Western sanctions and NATO-controlled maritime
chokepoints.
Hybrid War in the Caspian perfectly fits the imperial
scenario of provoking negative systemic fallout expanding beyond Russia and
Iran all the way to China and Europe. After all China regards the Caspian as a
key connectivity channel between Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects and
Central Asia and Europe.
So the Caspian could become the apex of a geopolitical
divide near the center of Eurasia, contraposing Washington/Tel Aviv/Kiev to the
BRICS/SCO Sovereign Independent civilization-states.
Enter, once again, Turkiye – now as the possible
missing link in the Zionist axis drive to connect both wars (NATO on Ukraine,
US/Israel on Iran): after all they are the one and same war from the beginning.
Still it will be a hard sell to seduce Sultan Erdogan
to go after Russian and Iranian strategic assets in the Caspian, even
indirectly via Azerbaijan. An even more complex replacement would be
Kazakhstan, which for all of its “multi-vector” policies is a full SCO member,
a full Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) member and a BRICS+ partner.
Turkiye’s actions should be ultimately measured by the
official drive to strengthen the Organization of Turkic States (OTS; Azerbaijan
and Kazakhstan are both members) and what they might come up with to try to
choke Iran’s geopolitical maneuvering.
Once again: it’s all about how they will play the
Greater Turan card across the Caucasus and especially Central Asia, with their
vast reserves of oil, uranium, lithium and critical minerals.
Moscow is carefully observing it all, with extreme
discretion. Incidentally, last November Kazakhstan became the first Central
Asian “stan” to join the Abraham Accords, in connection with a massive
US-Kazakhstan minerals deal.
History Repeating is always quirky: we’re back to the
original, late 19th century Russia-Britain Great Game. MI6 after all fully
supports Greater Turan – as a premier counterpunch to the Three Sovereigns,
Russia, Iran and China. Or what Trump has recently defined, for the first time
ever (Elbridge Colby whispering in his ear?) as the “Eurasian Axis”.
At the National Museum in Astana, Kazakhstan, there’s
a flashy panel representing all Turkic peoples, over 40 ethnic groups. Uygurs
are in the mix, as well as Kazakhs and Azeris. But to translate that into
Turkiye moving as a great player across Eurasia – complete with support from
fake mythological narratives – is a whole new ball game.
The whole drive is not more sophisticated than
creating a market for outright Turkic nationalism, with the Central Asian
“stans” incorporated at best as junior partners.
Mecca as a Hail Mary pass
As the imperial pressure over The Three Sovereigns
won’t relent, interlocked signature moves make all the difference. For
instance: China investing in the Wakhan Corridor in Afghanistan as an extra
road to reach Iran.
It’s The Great Game all over again: the Wakhan
Corridor came out of nowhere at the end of the 19th century to “protect”
British India from Russia’s advances in Turkestan. It connects with China’s
Xinjiang for only 70 km or so, as I saw during my Pamir Highway travels before Covid.
This is one of the most high-altitude strategic
borders on the planet. Only 5 months ago, Beijing came up with a new county in
Xinjiang, Cenling, overlooking the border. Everything in this mountain
wilderness is run from Kashgar, where the $60 billion China-Pakistan Economic
Corridor (CPEC) begins.
Translation: on top of the China-Iran railway –
previously bombed during the war on Iran by the Americans – this is an extra
overland path from China to Iran bypassing the maritime routes, susceptible to
Trump’s blockades.
China, in trademark win-win mode, will go all the way
betting on both options simultaneously: CPEC, via Pakistan, and the Wakhan, via
Afghanistan.
To round up our travels across selected spots of the
New Great Game: in the end everything will be decided in West Asia. And that
brings us back to the Mecca Sunni NATO pact.
This sharp analysis points to Mecca as a Hail Mary pass linked to
the current sore lack of petrodollar recycling by the petro-monarchies – the
mechanism propping up that monster, unpayable US debt; the pyramid of
derivatives; and Wall Street’s solitary AI mega-bubble.
And this is what’s really driving the imperial
desperation to settle something, anything with the Persians.
Because Iran has defined the prime geoeconomic
battleground for the RICs (Russia, Iran, China, the new Primakov triangle),
much more efficiently than endless BRICS discussions: the collapse of the GCC
petrodollar racket.
Without this racket, a financialized neo-colonial
empire run by remote control is absolutely impossible.
