New Delhi, May 15, 2026 — The optics were supposed to project solidarity. Eleven foreign ministers gathered in the Indian capital under India’s 2026 BRICS presidency, with the West Asia Crisis — the US-Iran War in its 77th day, the Strait of Hormuz closed, oil markets in turmoil — as the central item on the…
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New Delhi / Washington, May 15, 2026 — On April 15, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said publicly and unambiguously that the sanctions waiver allowing India to purchase Russian crude would not be renewed. Forty-eight hours later, he reversed himself. A new deadline was set: May 16, 2026. That deadline is now here. And India’s…
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Beirut / Jerusalem / Washington, May 15, 2026 — On paper, it is a ceasefire. In practice, it is a live conflict with a diplomatic label attached. Israel and Lebanon agreed on Thursday to extend their fragile truce by 45 days, following a third round of direct talks in Washington brokered by the United States.…
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New Delhi / Tehran, May 15, 2026 — The port of Chabahar sits on Iran’s southeastern coastline, 87 miles west of Pakistan’s Chinese-backed Gwadar, just outside the choke of the Strait of Hormuz. For a decade it has been India’s most ambitious strategic infrastructure bet — a sovereign foothold in Iran that bypasses Pakistan, unlocks…
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New Delhi, May 15, 2026 — Sergey Lavrov has survived four decades of superpower summits, Cold War brinkmanship, and more hostile press conferences than most diplomats endure in a lifetime. It takes something unusual to make him pause. On Thursday, at the BRICS Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in New Delhi, that something was a journalist who…
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New Delhi, May 15, 2026 — It is rare for India’s Prime Minister to personally descend into the arena of individual media fact-checks. But the report was explosive enough — and damaging enough — that Narendra Modi moved with unusual speed. “This is totally false,” Modi declared in a direct public statement on May 15.…
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Crude oil has done it again. After a brief dip on peace deal optimism, Brent crude surged nearly 8% in a single week to touch $110 per barrel — a move that has energy traders, central bankers, and household budgets all asking the same question: how much higher can this go before something breaks? Brent…
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Riyadh / Washington / Brussels — May 15, 2026 — As the guns of the US-Iran War fall into an uneasy silence and ceasefire talks remain deadlocked in Islamabad, Saudi Arabia is quietly proposing one of the most ambitious regional security frameworks since the Cold War. Riyadh is floating a formal non-aggression pact between Gulf…
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For 75 days, India has watched its energy lifeline choke. The US Iran war’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz has slashed LPG imports by 53%, tightened LNG supplies, and exposed a vulnerability that 1.4 billion people cannot afford to ignore. Now, the Modi government is moving on a solution decades in the making: a…
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Beijing, May 15, 2026 — Before a single handshake was exchanged at the Beijing bingo summit between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, another, quieter protocol had already been enforced. Every member of the most powerful corporate delegation in American diplomatic history — from Elon Musk to Tim Cook, from Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon to…