Iran

Authored by Brett Redmayne-Titley via ActivistPost.com,

“Tolerance and apathy are the last virtues of a dying society.” – Aristotle

Supporters of the nuclear deal with Iran hoped (but did not guarantee) that the successful completion of the deal would strengthen the relative moderates in the Iranian government and undermine the hard-liners. Fortunately, it appears that this is what has happened in the first Iranian elections since the deal was finished:

In what amounts to a referendum on President Hassan Rouhani’s leadership, voters in Tehran turned out overwhelmingly for moderates in closely watched parliamentary elections that may serve as an important signal for where Iran is headed.

Pro-Rouhani candidates are set to sweep all 30 of Tehran’s parliamentary seats. The 290-member body is dominated by hard-liners, but that looks set to change under the President, whose decision to negotiate with the US over the country’s nuclear program was an enormous political gamble.

Presidents have more latitude in foreign affairs than in domestic policy, and the trend over the past two administrations has been for presidents to be more hawkish than their campaign pledges led voters to expect. George W. Bush promised a “humble foreign policy.” Instead, he gave us the Iraq War. Barack Obama was elected in part to end Bush’s wars. But he too pursued regime change, with Pyrrhic success in Libya and abortively in Syria.

While the prevailing dour (or perhaps sour) overnight mood was a continuation of the weak oil theme which started yesterday after Iran said the production freeze proposed by Saudi and Russia as "ridiculous", and Saudi oil minister Al-Naimi said that Saudi won't cut supply and that high-cost producers need to either "lower costs, borrow cash or liquidate” (ideally the latter), risk sentiment was further dented when BOJ Governor Kuroda says he won’t target FX rates or stocks, which is clearly nonsense, and further spooked Japanese asset prices (Nikkei -0.85), while s