The football season in the various European lands is coming to a close, usually meaning that tension mounts over which team will end up at the top of those various leagues,* while at the same time the main cup-competitions proceed to their final stages. Then, since this is an odd year, we can look forward to a peaceful summer devoid of the big football competitions between national teams (and of any Olympics).

Not so fast, though: Had you forgotten about the Confederations Cup? That involves national teams, although not as many, since it’s a somewhat more abbreviated tournament that FIFA puts on only for the champion national teams of the six world regional football confederations, together with the current World Cup champion and the host nation.

And there’s the problem: That host nation is traditionally the same one scheduled to host the World Cup itself the very next year; you could say that the Confederations Cup, in a minor way, serves as a sort of dress-rehearsal to make sure the country can handle the big show coming around after another 12 months’s time. For 2017/2018, then, we are talking about the Russian Federation. And that is a problem.

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The Arab Spring of 2011, as we all know, is still with us as there is some blatant unfinished business. Some may take the opportunity here to bring up Bahrain, or even Jordan or Morocco, but I’m referring instead to the country now catching the vast majority of the world’s attention. That was supercharged yesterday with the reported deaths there of an American and a French journalist, so I mean Syria, of course, where anti-government agitation has now been going on at least since last March, and where the government apparently is now carrying out its ambition to blast one of its major cities, Homs, to the ground.

Governments everywhere gnash their teeth in reaction, asking what can be done in the face of Russia’s and China’s refusal to allow the passage of any UN Security Council Resolution which, under international law, is necessary for any active intervention. Still, there is some good news, brought to us today in Le Monde:

Au bord de l’asphyxie financière, le régime syrien poursuit la répression http://t.co/wBFsN8LD

February 23, 2012 1:12 pm via dlvr.itReplyRetweetFavorite

@lemondefr

Le Monde

L’asphyxie financière: financial asphyxiation – it seems that at least the economic sanctions that Europe, America, and the Arab League imposed on the Damascus regime some time back are finally starting to have an affect. Simply put, Syria is being starved of foreign exchange, since it can hardly earn any – no one will buy its oil. There are maybe “three or four months” worth of foreign currency left, is what is now estimated within diplomatic circles. After that, the Syrian pound “will crumble”; even if they can find importers for what they need in the midst of all the official sanctions, they’ll have nothing to pay them with.

Of course, this will likely make life equally uncomfortable for the rebels as well as the Syrian government. But perhaps of greater relevance is the question whether those rebels can hold out another three or four months.

Sorry, the Olympics get started today, but that doesn’t mean that EuroSavant coverage will be dominated by them. You wouldn’t want that anyway, no? . . .

One aspect of the ongoing crisis around the alleged attempts by the Iranian government to develop nuclear weapons that usually goes unexamined is the attitude of Arab states, especially those in Iran’s immediate neighborhood. (Well, it’s true that the vagaries of the Iraq-Iran relationship have certainly received their fair share of attention – but let’s treat that as a special case.) Sami Al Faraj, President of the Kuwait Centre for Strategic Studies (all I could find on the Net was this), gives an enlightening interview to Der Tagesspiegel about the Gulf state perspective on Iran (specifically, that of the Gulf Cooperation Council, which includes Saudi Arabia) in the article “Against Iran Much Harder Economic Sanctions Are Necessary”. (more…)