World roundup: April 3 2025
Stories from Iran, China, Zimbabwe, and elsewhere
You’re reading the web version of Foreign Exchanges. If you’d like to get it delivered straight to your inbox, sign up today:
PROGRAMMING NOTE: We’re approaching FX’s annual Spring Break, which will be both a little later and slightly longer than normal this year. We’ll be on our regular schedule through Tuesday and then we’ll resume two weeks later, on April 22. Thanks for reading!
TODAY IN HISTORY
April 3, 1559: The Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis ends the Italian War of 1551-1559, the last in a series of Italian conflicts between France and the Habsburgs, with a Habsburg victory. French King Henry II was forced to forfeit his claims on any Italian territory, but for France the war hadn’t been a total bust. The abdication (and then death, in 1556) of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V resulted in the Habsburg realm being split, with Philip II inheriting Spain and its empire while Ferdinand I inherited Austria and control of the Holy Roman Empire. This ended France’s primary national security concern, its potential encirclement by a unified Habsburg Empire.
April 3, 1948: The United States government enacts the Foreign Assistance Act of 1948, AKA “The Marshall Plan,” earmarking $12 billion to the reconstruction of war-torn Europe. This helped quickly rebuild post-war European economies, though its impact has probably been overstated in subsequent American mythologizing. This in turn helped limit the kind of struggling that might have allowed dastardly leftists to gain political traction in Western Europe and laid part of the groundwork for NATO.
INTERNATIONAL
Eight OPEC+ member states—Algeria, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Oman, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE—agreed on Thursday to speed up the bloc’s global oil production increase by 411,000 barrels per day starting next month. The Gang started a 138,000 bpd increase this month to begin rolling back several production cuts members had adopted stretching back to 2023. The additional increase appears to be motivated partly by requests from Donald Trump for higher production and partly in hopes of curtailing countries that have been ignoring their quotas. Kazakhstan has apparently been the worst offender in this regard, producing 2.15 million bpd in February when its OPEC+ production limit was just 1.468 million bpd. Most global oil price indexes appeared to be down on Thursday as a result of this announcement and Trump’s newly unveiled tariffs.
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
The Israeli military (IDF) killed at least 11 people in Syria on Thursday amid more airstrikes and a ground incursion into parts of southern Syria’s Daraa and Quneitra provinces. Israeli forces penetrated further into Syria than they have at any time since former leader Bashar al-Assad’s ouster in December, shelled areas around the city of Nawa in Daraa province, and then apparently withdrew. The shelling apparently left a large number of wounded, many critically, and as a result that death toll is expected to rise. The Syrian government denounced this latest round of Israeli attacks, which began on Wednesday, as an “unjustified escalation” meant to “destabilize Syria and exacerbate the suffering of its people.”
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
The IDF bombed two schools-turned-shelters in Gaza City on Thursday, killing at least 33 people and wounding over 100 in total. Israeli officials seem to be claiming that one of these facilities was some sort of Hamas command center, which is their go-to justification for any high casualty event. The reality is that the IDF is trying to herd Gaza’s civilian population into a concentration camp in the Mawasi coastal area and any displacement shelter outside that zone could wind up being targeted in an effort to facilitate the relocation.
IRAN
Diplomatic’s Laura Rozen, citing “an Iranian source,” suggests that negotiations between Iran and the US could come together fairly quickly:
Iran has agreed to initially indirect talks with the United States on the nuclear issue, and if there is progress in the initial steps on agreeing to a framework for negotiations, then they will go for direct talks, an Iranian source tells Diplomatic.
If the United States agrees, the Iranian source believed indirect talks could take place, likely in Oman, within two or three weeks, the Iranian source, speaking not for attribution, said.
He thought the talks would likely initially take place without publicity.
He believed that Iran’s negotiators were likely to be Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Political Affairs Majid Ravanchi, a key negotiator of the 2016 Iran nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which then US President Trump quit in 2018; as well as Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal Affairs Kazem Gharibabadi.
This is obviously welcome news for anyone who would prefer to avoid another military confrontation. It also aligns with a comment from Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, who told reporters in Paris on Thursday that he “won’t be surprised” if the US and Iran begin negotiations. Al-Monitor’s Rina Bassist spoke with “an Israeli diplomatic source” who insisted that the Israeli government is not opposed to such talks “in principle” and is “coordinating positions” on Iran with the US, UK, and French governments.
ASIA
INDIA
Foreign Policy’s Sushant Singh argues that despite the border agreement that the Indian and Chinese governments reached last year, the road to a stronger bilateral relationship is not exactly a smooth one:
The two countries congratulated each other on their [75th] diplomatic anniversary on Monday. In a message to India’s president, Chinese President Xi Jinping said it is right for “China and India to be partners of mutual achievement,” embracing what he called the “dragon-elephant tango.” This sentiment was echoed by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who said that as two ancient civilizations, India and China should shoulder the responsibility of promoting peace and development. Their overwrought language gave an impression of leaving the bitterness of the last five years behind.
Rapprochement comes with challenges, especially for New Delhi. China seeks friendly ties with India—but only on its own nonnegotiable terms. Meanwhile, India has made concessions in pursuit of normalcy, driven by Modi’s affinity for China, economic and military vulnerabilities, and shifting geopolitics. This cautious approach raises concerns about New Delhi accepting a secondary status in South Asia and allowing Beijing to consolidate its influence.
MYANMAR
The official death toll from Friday’s earthquake has topped 3000 and according to Myanmar’s ruling junta now stands at 3145. Officials say that 221 people are still missing and I think it’s reasonable to question how full a picture the junta actually has as to the extent of the quake’s impact. The real figures may be higher than these official numbers. A new United Nations report estimates that the quake has impacted some 17 million people across 57 townships, including heavily populated areas like Mandalay. There continue to be reports of fighting between the Myanmar military and several rebel factions, despite ceasefires put in place after the earthquake.
CHINA
The Financial Times suggests that Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs may be the death knell for any possibility of a “grand bargain” between the United States and China. Although China wasn’t the country hardest hit in Wednesday’s announcement, cumulatively the US is now taxing Chinese imports at levels of 60 percent or higher. Certainly this is going to throw a major crimp into China’s export economy and may spur Beijing to take greater measures to find alternative trade partners and increase domestic consumption. But beyond that, the bad blood this trade war is generating seems likely to preclude progress on any other issues—like, say, Taiwan. I guess this isn’t as big a loss as it might seem, given that the most urgent issue demanding US-Chinese cooperation is climate change and the Trump administration wouldn’t have any interest in discussing that anyway, but it’s still not great. If these tariffs are the thing that decouples the US and Chinese economies that’s going to come with a great deal of economic upheaval and will make it easier to intensify the New Cold War.
AFRICA
SUDAN
Responsible Statecraft’s Elfadil Ibrahim argues that Sudan has become another front in the emerging rivalry between Saudi Arabia and the UAE:
In the final days of Ramadan, before Mecca's Grand Mosque, Sudan's de facto president and army chief, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan knelt in prayer beside Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. Al-Burhan had arrived in the kingdom just two days after his troops dealt a significant blow to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), recapturing the capital Khartoum after two years of civil war. Missing from the frame was the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the Gulf power that has backed al-Burhan’s rivals in Sudan’s civil war with arms, mercenaries, and political cover.
The scene captured the essence of a deepening rift between Saudi Arabia and the UAE — once allies in reshaping the Arab world, now architects of competing visions for Sudan and the region.
As he notes, the Saudis early on tried to play a mediating role in Sudan while the UAE threw its support behind the RSF. But that mediation effort failed, and apparently the RSF’s recent move to form a rival Sudanese government was too much for the Saudis. It’s unclear how far the Saudis are prepared to go in supporting the Sudanese military or what effect their support might have on the conflict.
NIGERIA
Intercommunal violence in central Nigeria’s Plateau state left at least 10 people dead on Wednesday and has left at least 20 people dead over the past week, according to local officials. Plateau lies along the fault line between Nigeria’s herding and farming communities and is frequently plagued by violence as those two groups compete for resources. The rivalry is exacerbated by the fact that the farming communities tend to be predominantly Christian while the Fulani herding community is predominantly Muslim. The attackers in this case appear to be Fulani.
SOUTH SUDAN
Similar farmer-herder violence left at least 30 people dead in northern South Sudan earlier this week. Details are spotty and contradictory but it sounds like there was some sort of dispute over cattle in the town of Abiemnom, in South Sudan’s Ruweng administrative area. The danger in South Sudan is that this type of intercommunal violence could blend into and exacerbate the country’s ongoing political crisis. I’ve seen suggestions that the attackers in this incident were linked with the Nuer ethnic group of Vice President Riek Machar and possibly with the “White Army” militant group, which has been engaged in an escalating conflict with South Sudanese security forces over the past several weeks.
ZIMBABWE
Al Jazeera’s Shola Lawal reports on an emerging political crisis in Zimbabwe:
Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa is facing what experts say is the biggest threat to his rule yet as a succession battle erupts ahead of general elections scheduled for 2028.
Recent manoeuvrings by the president and his supporters to extend his rule to 2030 have led to calls and protests from within his party for the president to step down or be forced to do so. The upheavals have seen the dismissal of top security officials, a move experts say Mnangagwa is taking to avoid being overthrown in a coup.
The president has long faced criticism from Zimbabweans, but dissent within his ZANU-PF party is rare, and public calls for demonstrations against him are unprecedented. On Monday, demonstrators took to the streets in protests called by a top ZANU-PF member.
The party officially supports extending Mnangagwa’s current term through 2030, which would require a referendum. But there is a faction that has coalesced around Vice President Constantino Chiwenga that seems to prefer Mnangagwa step aside as scheduled and let someone else take over.
SOUTH AFRICA
South Africa’s “national unity” government may be in trouble after the Democratic Alliance party voted against an African National Congress-backed national budget on Wednesday. The budget passed anyway thanks to the unexpected support of the ActionSA party, but the DA is threatening to challenge its increase in South Africa’s Value Added Tax in court. The DA and ANC formed a tenuous coalition after the latter lost, for the first time since the end of apartheid, its sole parliamentary majority in last year’s election. The parties have not meshed terribly well overall, but this budget dispute may be serious enough to put their coalition in jeopardy.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
Fighting is reportedly fairly intense along the sliver of territory that the Ukrainian military still controls in Russia’s Kursk oblast. According to Reuters, citing “war bloggers,” Ukrainian forces are holed up in a monastery in the border village of Gornal, attempting to blunt what could become a new Russian incursion into Ukraine’s Sumy oblast if the Ukrainian line collapses entirely.
BULGARIA
The Bulgarian government survived a no-confidence vote on Thursday that was brought by the Russia-friendly Vazrazhdane party over the government’s support for Ukraine. The vote was not particularly close, 150-54 in favor of the government, so the effort seems to have been more a publicity stunt than anything else.
HUNGARY
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited International Criminal Court member Hungary on Thursday, and not only did Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán not have him arrested, he announced Hungary’s withdrawal from the court. I’m sure it will be missed. Orbán, a paragon of impartial justice himself, complained that the ICC’s investigation of Israeli officials including Netanyahu reduced it to the status of a “political body.” The Hungarian parliament should vote to confirm the withdrawal next month, after which it will take one year for Hungary to complete its departure. Orbán can simply continue to ignore his obligations as an ICC member until then. Netanyahu’s freedom of travel should remain unimpeded as it’s unlikely any ICC member state would actually try to arrest him.
AMERICAS
UNITED STATES
Finally, there is of course no shortage of commentary and analysis about Donald Trump’s massive “Liberation Day” tariff scheme. As I have said before I am certainly no economist, so you can find more insightful takes on this story in any number of places including The Financial Times, Responsible Statecraft, Foreign Affairs, The Diplomat, Al Jazeera, The New York Times, Chartbook, the Center for Economic and Policy Research, and so on. The stock markets seemed appreciative, at least. I will leave you with some thoughts from Jacobin’s Dominik Leusder, who is not so appreciative:
While the methodology seems to be bogus, the economic consequences of the measures, set to come into effect on April 5 and 9 for the baseline and reciprocal tariffs, respectively, are very real. By all accounts, they portend a massive stagflationary shock, that is an inflationary surge in concert with a blow to economic activity, both via higher import prices and their effect on consumption and production within the United States. The Federal Reserve’s eventual response would only add to this picture.
Trump claimed that the new tariffs will “ultimately bring down prices for consumers.” But the operative word here is “ultimately.” By any account, the immediate burden will be borne by American households, already struggling with high debt and rising living costs. The market for consumer goods, due to its exposure to the process of global trade integration, had long provided a deflationary reprieve to consumers who faced steep inflation in services like education and health care, and in non-tradable goods like housing and restaurant food.
If the Trump administration makes good on its “liberation,” this is set to end. By way of an example: the cumulative tariffs’ burden on China is set to be 54 percent (consisting, as mentioned above, of the 20 percent already levied and the new “reciprocal” 34 percent rate). This would mark up the average iPhone by up to $220, assuming import price of $500 for Apple.
Sounds like fun times ahead!