MENA Unleashed

📬 MENA Unleashed is on Substack, providing regular analysis on the constant stream of geopolitical events in the region. We dissect the economics and trade route dynamics behind overwhelming news, breaking them down into concise, digestible insights on a region caught in the crossfire of Great Power competition. menaunleashed.com

Don't you just hate it when i am right. It is annoying.

@capitaine_snake That's dumb and nihlistic. Great days ahead. I am actually extremely optimistic. Bad blood will leave the system and life will find ways

@MENAUnleashed I just want everything to collapse man

Trump to replace the 20% United States Reimbursement Fee with Trade and Investment Deals that the various Gulf States will be making into the United States. So this is the deal originally Trump had with these governments. The problem remains they don't have the money. And a fee is not like an investment which means they can sell and recoup all funds theoretically. It is interesting how fast Trump walked back on this after gulf allies told him no. The problem Trump still expects these rulers to rasie the money for the US so it is still a difficult ask they cannot deliver on. Their economies are struggling and there are no surpluses except in a few places.

@ZYXISME2026 @Kathleen_Tyson_ The us is already at war with china wtf you on about lol

China is in the position now that US held in 1942 WW2: Dominant in manufacturing for the world, secure in its region, not a combatant, importing gold at pace.

That's basically what mbs did with the PIF. It is a scam and they are basically seizing assets from everyone else and giving them to themselves.

Mate Xi said he wanted to live till 150 years old. He will killed in a war, face a coup, or get arrested. No leader survives war easily mate. Look around you. You get done ultimately. internally or externally. Xi does not have the desire to die for an extra piece of the world he thinks he will get later without a fight.

@MENAUnleashed @Kathleen_Tyson_ I don't think you know the Chinese. Today they are very proud of their nation. They would defend it fiercely. I also think you overestimate the bravery of the Americans. It's one thing to fight villagers with AK-47s. It's another thing entirely to fight a rival great power.

IMEC is finished, and nobody is going to say it out loud. The corridor meant to carry India's goods to Europe through Israel is quietly being replaced by routes that run through Iraq and Syria, with Israel cut out of every layer. Next week Iraq's prime minister signs in Washington to revive the Kirkuk-Baniyas pipeline, 800km from northern Iraq to the Syrian coast, dead since the 1980s. A US firm funds the rebuild, an American oil major and a Qatari company are attached, and Syria's foreign minister flies in for the ceremony. Days earlier Washington moved to take Syria off the terror list it had held since 1979. None of that timing is an accident. IMEC never had the money in the first place. No secretariat, no funding mechanism, no construction timeline in 33 months. The headline numbers everyone repeated, the Saudi $20bn, the Emirati $75bn, were never actually committed to it. Then Gaza froze the Israeli rail segment 28 days after the launch, and the Iran war turned a route through Haifa into a route through a war zone. The Gulf is not waiting for the paperwork. It is buying the tollbooths on the corridors other people are building. menaunleashed.com/p/the-us-tacit…

@lebanesesami You lived your Muslims your entire history now you want israeli citizenship? The people of falsehood are uniting.

Lebanon will never be a Muslim state

@uae_aerospace Read a book

@MENAUnleashed e& sold at a 13% premium to refocus on core telecom. Calling that a sovereign liquidity crisis conflates portfolio discipline with systemic distress. I watch these institutions closely and their balance sheets do not support the forced seller narrative.

The Gulf's richest funds are selling, not buying. That is the tell. The UAE has just sold its entire 16.2% stake in Vodafone for almost $6bn. The official story is that it wants to sharpen its focus. The honest version is that it needs dollars. Abu Dhabi went to Washington in April asking for a dollar swap line and came back with nothing, so it is now doing what states do when the backstop is refused. It sells the good, liquid assets it spent years buying. This is not really a telecoms story. It is a liquidity story, and it is the same move Riyadh has been making for a while. The Saudi fund is financing itself through debt and asset sales, quietly pulling its foreign book back toward 20% and leaning on a shrinking Aramco cheque. Sell abroad, bring the money home, keep the dollars moving. All of it under headlines that say the opposite. Record oil in nominal terms. Trillion dollar funds. Yet the behaviour is defensive, because high prices do little when the Strait is a risk and the cash does not arrive when you need it. A fund that has to sell its best holdings to stay liquid is telling you where the pressure really sits. Petrodollar power was supposed to mean never being the forced seller. In 2026 the two biggest economies in the Gulf are quietly becoming exactly that.

Test post from the MENA Unleashed posting system. Please ignore. 14 July 2026, 12:29 London.

@WhatsThaPo1nt @nypost He would never be celebrated. Killing civilians is haram moron even if infidels. This is dumb

@MENAUnleashed @nypost lol he would not be killed for killing a subhuman western infidel. In some countries he’d be celebrated. Why lie?

NY mom Jamey Carney's migrant beau asked her for hefty dough a week before her murder in Ireland trib.al/5x2Gptk

@MiddleEast_24 This is clearly ai

Caught on Camera: Woman's Bizarre Meat Heist at Moroccan Butcher Shop 🇲🇦

@FreeSyrianMemes this was hilarious. well done

Coinciding with America’s first suicide boat attack, the Pentagon has released America’s first nasheed. x.com/NotWoofers/sta…

Allah Akbar! Make American Great Again

@NasserAwadQ الحوثي اسوا من الايراني في التعريط والكذب والمبالغة وفي الاخر كبيرو صاروخين

إعلان الحوثيين فرض حصار جوي على جميع المطارات السعودية هو إما جنون أو بداية حرب مفتوحة !! اللهم سلّم البلاد والعباد !

Unironically, the quickest fix for Saudi is to make peace with yemen and put a pipeline to the ocean and give yemens reconsutruction money in exchange. saudi is an enemy of itself.

@HonderaG6705 mate inflation has a network effect. prices go up in multiples across the chain until it reaches the citizen. disruption becomes the norm. supply shortages become real. it is no joke mate.

@MENAUnleashed This mixes facts with speculation. Higher shipping costs may raise prices, but claims of Gulf economic collapse, 50–80% inflation, or a U.S. “occupation” of Hormuz are unsupported.

Huge. Trump de facto imposes 20% tariffs on all gulf countries' imports and exports through the Strait of Hormuz. He also reinstates the maritime blockade on Iran. This is huge. At these rates, Gulf economies will simply collapse. Prices will go through the roof, and inflation will jump 50-80% This is not just war on Iran it is also war on the Gulf. And it is also a form of global tariffs. Trump effectively announced the Strait of Hormuz an Occupied American Zone run by the US military and tolling will start soon. Notice how Trump singles out China and says China will be banned from entering and leaving the Strait. Hence, Trump is also explicitly imposing an embargo on China. Trump wants to be King of the Gulf and he is doing it.

@ShaunPinnerUA mate worse things are happening in the west. it is a global trend innit

For years, I’ve argued that Russia wasn’t moving forward, it was moving back. Back towards the USSR. Step by step, the Kremlin has expanded state control, dismantled freedoms, militarised society and revived many of the instincts of the Soviet system. Now comes another warning sign. Moscow is reportedly considering the return of Soviet-style exit visas, meaning Russians could once again require state permission to leave their own country. Officially, it’s about “protecting citizens abroad.” In reality, it appears far more likely to be about preventing talent, wealth and dissent from walking out of the door. I’ve written for years that Putin’s Russia isn’t simply authoritarian; it is steadily recreating many of the mechanisms of the Soviet state, led by a political elite who came of age and built their careers during that era, only now adapted for the 21st century. If this proposal becomes law, it won’t just restrict travel. It will mark another milestone in Russia’s long journey back behind a self-imposed Iron Curtain, reinforcing a trend I first began writing about years ago. Worth keeping an eye on.