Odd Lots - Lots More with Gregory Brew

Episode Date: October 20, 2023

So far, the war between Israel and Hamas has had only a mild impact on world markets. Oil prices are higher than they were prior to the terrorist attack on October 7, but the link between the war and the broader oil market is ambiguous. So what are the risks, if the conflict widens or remains prolonged? On this episode of the podcast, we speak with Gregory Brew, analyst at the Eurasia Group, to get a better understanding of what we've seen so far, and the the things we should be watching for. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Join Bloomberg in New York or via live stream on May 19th for building an AI future-ready business. This event will examine how organizations are moving beyond experimentation to scale agentic AI across the enterprise. By joining us, you'll hear from successful executives who are at the forefront of designing human plus agent-operating models that are secure and outcome-driven. This event is proudly sponsored by Kindrell. Register at Bloomberg Live.com slash FutureReady. I like to remain, you know, calm and collected during times of crisis. That seems to be a very rare trait, a very rare trait for anyone. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, it's tough when things are happening so quickly. Yes. And when something like this happens that really nobody saw coming was the thing. I mean, we were having meetings. I was having meetings the week before the Hamas attack on Israel, where the question of sort of Middle East tensions or Middle East crisis would come up. And the general feeling was like, no, things look pretty quiet. We've got Saudi Iran normalization.

You know, oil seems to be flowing, although there's always the U.S. OPEC problems. You have Saudis and Israelis kind of slowly moving towards normalization. Things seems pretty quiet. And then bam, something huge happens that nobody really anticipated. I did a deadlift. One, two, three. Hedgmy. Okay, go.

What two? GEMONI. Barges. This is an after-school special, except. I've decided I'm going to base my entire personality going forward on campaigning for a strategic pork reserve in the U.S. Where's the best with ink posten? These are the important questions. Is it robots taking over the world?

No, I think that like in a couple of years, the AI will do a really good job of making the oddlots podcast. And people will say, I don't really need to listen to Joe and Tracy anymore. We do have the perfect guest. Well, in the meantime, this is lots more. A weekly chat about whatever is on our mind. This is one of those episodes where I feel like we need to get the recording date right at the top, which is October 18th, because things are moving so quickly. And we are going to be discussing the Israel-Hamas conflict. And there's just new headlines every hour, it feels like.

So we are here in the studio with Gregory Brew. He is an analyst at the Eurasia Group. We've had them on the podcast before. We talked about Guyana last time. We did, yeah. That was a happier story, I feel. Yes, the country with the fastest growing oil. But the current crisis that we're seeing, the war that's going on, this is right in your wheelhouse

because it's geopolitical and your background other than studying oil, which is what we talked to you about last time in the history of oil. You have an expert on the history of Iran as well. So talk. Yeah. No, yeah. It unfortunately happens to combine the two things that I've done the most work on. And whenever that happens, it generally doesn't tend to both.

very well because it means there's, you know, crises, there's disruptions, there's tensions. And yeah, I mean, the crisis right now does seem to be contained to Israel and the violence in Gaza, but everyone is concerned about how this could spill over into oil. You saw a very surprising reaction this morning from Iran's foreign minister making a wild claim about an oil embargo on Israel, suddenly sending oil prices up, surprisingly. So I think there's a lot of, I think there's jumpiness. I think there's concerns, broadly speaking, that. that this crisis could eventually spill over and start affecting oil.

Wait, you said it was kind of a wild threat. Why? And also, how crazy is it that we're talking about an oil embargo, like exactly 50 years after the Arab oil embargo that, like, contributed to 1970s inflation? I find that mind-blowing, like almost to the day. Right. Yeah. I mean, history does seem to be rhyming, right?

I mean, the attack, the Hamas attack happened exactly 50 years and one day after the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War in 1973. So obvious parallels. And I think, so yeah, turning things back a bit, you know, Iran's foreign minister, who is currently in Saudi Arabia, of all places, made kind of a wild claim in front of press. He said Iran was going to call on all Muslim countries, including countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE and Kuwait, to embargo oil shipments to Israel, very clearly trying to

replicate what happened in 1973, or at least a version of it. And the reason why it strikes me and I think a lot of other analysts who watch Iran and oil closely, why it strikes me as kind of a wild claim is that, first of all, Iran doesn't sell any oil to Israel. Iran and Israel are antagonists. They're competitors, you know. And honestly, not many other Middle East countries sell oil to Israel either, or at least what oil that they do sell, it's a fairly small amount. And there really isn't any appetite, I think, within OPEC or the broader Middle East for another 1973. Certainly not for another embargo. So I saw those comments.

And also, it needs to be said, Iranian officials, including the foreign minister, the Supreme Leader Ali Khomeini, they've been talking a lot of tough talk over the last couple of days about how this crisis could escalate, about how Iran might have to get involved. So this kind of fits within that broader sort of rhetorical campaign that Iran's been running of the last couple of days that they haven't really followed through with in terms of direct action. So I saw the comments and I thought like, well, Iran's talking tough. there's not going to be an embargo. But markets seemed to react, right? Brent shot up from

9150 to 9250. It's come back down since then. But clearly there's there's weariness and jumpiness out there about how this crisis could start affecting the broader market. To reiterate for people listening, we're recording this on the 18th. And so, you know, who knows what will happen in this war, this crisis by the time people are listening to it. But this is why, you know, the oil perspective is obviously one that we're particularly interested. Rang is still below where it was, like at the end of September. I mean, yeah, it's been a pickup in oil prices. I mean, first of all, could it be that the concern is not so much embargo, but that the more the rhetoric gets tightened up and perhaps something word, you know, sort of broadening out of the war itself. I know there was a lot of talk about the Biden administration not having been particularly rigorous about sanctions enforcement.

Do you fill us in what's going on with that? Yeah, totally. So I think, you know, as soon as the attack happened and this crisis started growing and started taking on the proportions that it has, the immediate thought was, how was Iran involved? How will the U.S. and Israel respond? Right. Iran backs Hamas. Has for years. It's a major supporter of Hamas. It supplies it with weapons and funding and training. There still isn't any clear answer as to whether Iran was involved in the attack. And Iran has, as I mentioned, it's been talking tough, but it really hasn't been taking a direct role. But the bigger concern is, yes, will the U.S. and Israel decide to retaliate against Iran for its support for Hamas? And one of the major vectors that has been speculated on or discussed is this question of will the U.S. tighten restrictions on Iran's oil exports. It's been a big story this year, right? The recovery of Iran as a major oil exporter, exports were, you know, around 700,000 barrels a day last year. They're now in the range of 1.5, 1.6 million barrels a day today. Yeah. I mean, and Iran is still technically under

sanction, right? So there's been a lot of discussion of, has the U.S. eased off sanctions? Is this part of a bigger deal between the U.S. and Iran? And now that this crisis is broken out, will the U.S. respond by tightening sanctions? And to me, it's a lot more complicated than just, you know, President Biden having a big button on his desk, sanctions, no sanctions, and then pushing it, and suddenly Iran oil exports fall. Like, the range of action that the U.S. could take to cut off the flow of oil. It's not quite as simple as just adding new sanctions to Iran. Iran is already under heavy, heavy sanctions. It's also a question of, you know, if the U.S. tries to do that, how will that affect the broader market? How will that affect prices? It'll certainly send prices up.

And also, how will it affect the one country who is taking almost all of Iran's oil, China, right? We talk about have sanctions been lowered or reduced? Not really. What's been happening is that China and small Chinese refiners have been willing to take more and more. And more Iranian oil at low prices, right? Iran is putting a big discount on its crude. And they're taking this oil through somewhat shady means there's ship-to-ship transfers. The oil is being disguised in Chinese customs data. China still technically doesn't take any Iranian oil. It all gets redirected through other venues. So there's a lot of shadiness to this oil trade, which makes imposing sanctions by the U.S. a lot harder. But if you're cutting off the supply of oil to China,

which is what, you know, tougher sanctions enforcement would do, the Chinese are bound to respond, right? They're not going to like that. And I think the Biden administration is wary of provoking China. And anything you do to disrupt Iran's oil exports is going to have an impact on the broader market, and it's going to send oil prices up. And that's also something that the Biden administration doesn't really want to do.

So you have operational constraints on how sanctions would even work. You have provoking the Chinese. You have potentially provoking the Iranians. And everything that you do is going to increase the price of oil, something that this administration has really been trying to avoid. So I think it's in the conversation, right? Tougher sanctions on Iranian oil exports. I still think the risk is fairly limited. And I think if the U.S. were to consider doing it, it would be deterred by some of these more negative knock on effects.

Yeah. What kind of response could you expect from OPEC here? Because it feels like there's been a lot of, I mean, there's always internal drama at OPEC. but it feels like there's been even more recently with regards to, you know, output and slack extra capacity and things like that. But it's such a disparate group, like in any case. Do you get a sense of like what they might do here? Yeah, I mean, that's a really, it's an interesting question because, of course, OPEC's been pursuing, you know, supply management, market management. They've been maintaining their cuts. The Saudis have been adding additional voluntary cuts to try to push prices upward. And, you know, curiously enough, this has been happening while Iran has been increasing its exports.

And it's also been happening while Saudi and Iran pursue normalization. So there's, you know, there seems to be some cross purposes here. There does seem to be a certain paradox in how the Saudis particularly are approaching managing this market. But in terms of what OPEC might do if the U.S. suddenly crack down on Iran in a way that would really reduce the flow, right? in a way that would create a change in the physical market to fundamentals. I don't know if OPEC or the Saudis would respond immediately because, as I said, anything that the U.S. would do would send prices higher. And that's exactly what the Saudis want, right?

They want a higher price floor. They want to rise prices maybe into the 90s, maybe close to 100. So initially, I don't think they would do a whole lot. Right. It feels like in the market, there's still an assumption that, like, well, OPEC could ramp up capacity if it needed to. but to your point, Greg Lee, I don't see why they would want to in that scenario. Yeah.

Yeah. Prior to the attack by Hamas, as you mentioned, one of the big stories had been the sort of loosening in some sense of the physical market for Iranian oil. The other, I think it was a headline the day before the attack. I think it was from the Wall Street Journal about Saudi talking about maybe lifting its production as part of an Israel normalization. Yeah, yeah. You had a very strong condemnation from the kingdom of Saudi Arabia towards Israel about the bombing at the hospital, which of course, people don't really know what happened. But obviously the public stance from Saudi and other Gulf countries is pretty strong. What is Saudi's position here? How does it affect where it was going with its talks on Israel and so forth? Yeah. I mean, you have to remember, even though we've seen a lot over the last year or so on Saudi Israel normalization, and even with the, you know, the so-called Abraham. Ham Accords that came together at the end of the Trump administration, right, Israel normalizing

with a number of Arab states. You have to remember that formal relations between Israel and the rest of the Middle East, or specifically the Arab world, is still a very touchy, complicated issue. There's still a great deal of history, of sentiment that Arab leaders specifically, particularly in conservative Arab states like Saudi Arabia, they have to be sort of wary of managing. And I think the Saudi approach to this crisis has been. trying to thread that needle, right? You've seen Saudi condemnations of Israeli actions in Gaza. You've seen the Saudis. I mean, MBS, Mohammed bin Salman, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. He took a phone call with President Raeisi of Iran last week, the first time they ever spoke, right? And he did that

in the context of this crisis. So Saudi Arabia has been trying to sort of maintain a middle line of not appearing too friendly with Israel, while also, I think, largely staying on the sidelines of the crisis. Now, what does that mean for this Israeli-Saudi normalization? You mentioned the piece that came out right before the crisis. It kind of got buried. This news that Saudi Arabia was opening up a little bit to this idea that it would try to lower oil prices as part of this grand bargain with the U.S. and Israel. That news came out. It was greeted with a certain amount of skepticism because this, you know, generally speaking, that wouldn't really align up with how the Saudis have been trying to manage markets. But it did suggest that there was progress on this.

deal. Now, where is the deal now, given the crisis is happening? The crisis is escalating. I would say that it's on ice, but it's not necessarily dead. I think MBS, the Saudi government, has to take the line that it's taken for political concerns, for domestic concerns, it's concerned about regional stability. But in private, I would imagine that there is still quite a lot of interest from MBS in this deal. Because remember, what were the terms of the deal being discussed? would get a security guarantee from the United States. It would get U.S. support for a civilian nuclear program. Israel and Saudi Arabia would form a sort of a united security front to contain Iran. These are all things that Saudi Arabia, MBS, is interested in getting. I think he's still

interested in getting them now. He just maybe isn't willing to talk about them publicly, given the crisis that's happening. So I think the deal, yeah, the deal is on ice, but it's not dead. It will take some time to revive it, though. I mean, like, this crisis could go on for weeks. It could go on for months. The worst things get in Gaza, the harder it will be for governments like Saudi Arabia to look friendly with Israel. And that all works against a deal in the short term. But I wouldn't say that it's dead. I mean, MBS is going to be in charge in Saudi Arabia for a long time. He can afford to wait for this crisis to subside or potentially even blow over and revisit a deal with Israel at some point in the future. But I don't think we're going to see much talk about it anytime soon.

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I love these kinds of questions because it reminds me of, you know, being a historian, which is my training before I came to Eurasia group. I was at Yale. I was mostly working on my next book. So I wasn't able to go to Iran. That's right. I'm an American national. And at the time that I was doing my research, this was 2017 or so. It was dangerous, I think, for researchers who were Americans to go to Iran. You ran the risk of physical harm. You ran the risk of arrest. There have been Americans who have gone to Iran to do historical research who have been arrested and have remained in prison for years. I mean, what we just saw, the recent prisoner exchange between the United States and Iran, some of those individuals, none of them were historians, but some of them had been held in prison for nearly 10 years. no reason. So it wasn't possible for me to go to Iran to do research. But that being said,

I was doing research on the 50s and 60s, you know, the Cold War. And there's actually quite a lot of information of documentary evidence in Farsi, in Persian, that's available in the U.S., in Europe. A lot of it is in the form of memoirs or interviews. But there are sort of collections of documents that you can find that have been published. So I, you know, writing the book that I wrote, which was mostly about oil, the Cold War, U.S.-Iranian relations, I tried to use as many of those sources as I could, right? I really, really strove to incorporate an Iranian perspective as much as I could, because I thought that perspective was important. Even if I wasn't able to go to Iran and do research there, I still felt that, you know, I couldn't write just another book about the U.S. and oil.

I had to incorporate to the Iranian side. What is your forthcoming book about it? Well, it's very much in progress, Joe, but what I'm going to try to do, so my last book was about the U.S. and Iran, specifically in the Cold War. I co-wrote another book about the 1953 coup in Iran, which also celebrated an anniversary this year. But my next book is going to be about oil and the U.S. more broadly in the 20th century. What I'd really like to do is examine how oil has helped, sort of form the foundation for American power in the 20th century, and how the oil industry, companies like ExxonMobil, but also smaller companies that are operating in Texas and other places, how they served as

tools of U.S. foreign policy and formed a part of the U.S. conception of national security. So oil national security in the 20th century is kind of the broad focus. But it's still, you know, in the early stages. So I'll let you know when I make more progress. All right. We'll have you back on for that. Seems topical, though. Yeah. I hope so. Speaking of going back to the market reaction, there's like a couple interesting things. I mean, in a way, I've been surprised that, you know, you expressed surprise oil popped on these headlines, which you didn't think had much teeth to them. In general, though, I've been surprised. Tracy at like most markets for the last, you know, about 10 days, they're quieter than I might

have expected overall across oil, across rates, across stocks, which are more or less flat or actually slightly up over the last two weeks. It's not what I would have guessed given the intensity of the headlines and the just uncertainty for all this is going. Now, I know what you mean. Although I do think today, hold on, I'm just looking at this. It looks like today is like kind of the first day where we've seen a significant pop in gold, which is like a classic war reaction asset flight to safe haven kind of thing. True. So that's interesting to see.

It does feel like today with that explosion, the deadly explosion at that hospital, it feels like things have like shifted a little bit even though there's no certainty about what exactly just happened. Yeah, we're still trying to piece together precisely what happened, right? Whether it was a rocket misfire, whether it was something caused from the Israeli side, something caused from Hamas or another group active in Gaza, I think the evidence is still kind of coming together. But there was an immediate reaction to the explosion across the Arab world. There were spontaneous protests in places like Jordan, in the West Bank, even in Iran, where the struggle in

Palestine or the issue of the Palestinian people has followed quite closely. And you saw, as Joe mentioned, quite quick condemnations of the Israeli action from governments across the region. And to some extent, That's for a domestic audience. The public protests and then the leadership feels it has to take aside. Totally. A lot of it is out of concern for how the public, the so-called Arab Street is how it's referred to. How the public will respond to violence in Gaza. Perceived attacks by Israel against Palestinians tend to have ripple effects

across the public opinion across the entire Arab world. So you saw that quite quickly, and then you saw Arab guns. governments issuing condemnations, I think maybe to get ahead of public opinion, even before the evidence could confirm exactly what had happened at the hospital. And that has caused a shift. I mean, you saw President Biden was supposed to go to Jordan to meet with various Arab leaders. That meeting apparently is now off the table. So he is flying to Israel to just meet with the Israeli government, which is not going to look good, I think, for the president, broadly speaking, as he tries to contain this crisis.

So we have a question from our discord. It is from material. materials Dan, which is, you know, a good name for it. A good odd lot listener name. Hi, Materials, Dan. And he's asking about materials. So he's asking, how does the conflict affect relative demand for different products like petrol, kerosene, distillates? Huh, that's a good question. We're going to make you do this in real time.

One that I would expect for materials, Dan. Thanks, Dan. Right now, yeah, like, the market is kind of taking it in stride, the product market, I think. I think people are still, I think it's still important to look at the picture that was coming together in fundamentals and sentiment before the crisis broke out. There's been some signs that Chinese demand in the fall was a little stronger than some had thought. That's maybe encouraging a more bullish outlook for 2024 as far as products are concerned. The crisis hasn't really spilled out into markets quite yet.

Yeah. Right? There hasn't been actual physical disruptions. There's been some movement in Brent, I think caused by positions shifting. Although those came, you know, after the calamitous $11 plunge that Brent took right before the crisis happened. So, you know, you saw sentiment shifting there. The crisis hasn't really affected physical flows quite yet. It has caused, I think, a slight spike in some price indices.

But I think the factors to still focus on are the fundamentals and the supply picture, the supply demand picture moving into 2024, where I still think there's a lot of uncertainty there, right? Could the U.S. slip into a minor recession? Could demand fall off in the EU? will China keep having the problems it's been having? This is pushing back against a little bit of the bullishness that OPEC, I think, was putting out for the end of this year about where prices were going to be. Joe, you know one physical disruption that has happened. It's actually not in oil, but our old friend, Evergreen, declared force majeure on a container ship in Israel,

which I guess isn't really surprising. It's funny how, like, whenever there seems to be a physical disruption of any sort, like you will find. evergreen and their fleet of interestingly named ships. This one was called the Evercozy affected in one way or another. Oh, man. I think about that weekly. The Suez. It's your Roman Empire. Yeah, it's my Roman Empire. But I think about Roman Empire daily, as I think we all do. I never got into that. There's still time, Jim. I'm looking at the ever cozy. It was built in 2021. Oh, that's interesting. So this is a relatively newer ship that was built It was built in 2021, built at the peak of the shipping boom.

And now global freight prices, this is interesting, despite the strength of the U.S. consumer generally, you would think that particularly still strong, very strong goods demand. I think you would expect like freight and trucking prices to be more robust than they have been. But they really have it. I think I saw global container freight rates fell to a five-year low. Yeah. We're going to have to do another freight episode, I think. Definitely.

Because a lot of people were predicting that it would be bad, but it has indeed turned out to be quite bad. A lot of, we have to do an episode at a time when a prediction turned out to be true. It sounds like what you're saying. Medium term for this crisis, this war, what are you looking for? What are going to be the sort of tells in terms of how long this could go on so forth? Yeah. I mean, it's in an interesting phase right now because it's coming up on two weeks, a week and a half or so since the attack. Israel has been bombarding Gaza and has been planning an offensive but still hasn't gone in.

And I think a lot of the medium term fallout from this crisis will depend on what the Israeli offensive in Gaza looks like and what their goal is. They still haven't said what they want to do. I mean, they want to destroy Hamas. That's clear. But how do you do that without, do you have to occupy Gaza? Do you have to carve it up into separate zones? Does the IDF have to occupy parts of the territory or push the population out? there's the refugee problem, right? Where do you move hundreds of thousands of Ghazans if Egypt

won't take them if they can't be moved into Israeli territory? How do you launch a huge offensive when there's so many civilians in the line of fire? So while the IDF continues to plan this offensive, I think everyone's kind of in a holding pattern because the scale of the offensive may determine how or if other actors get involved. And there I would look specifically at what Hezbollah in Lebanon is doing. I mean, Hezbollah is a, you know, large, armed militia, it dominates large portions of Lebanon. It's very closely tied to Iran. And there's been this constant skirmishing happening between Hezbollah and the Israeli military since the attack took place, sort of kind of each side's warning the other to back off, right, in case either

side tries to take advantage of this crisis. And if things start to get really bad in Gaza, or if the Israeli offensive sort of really starts to push at what Middle East public opinion will accept, you may start to see signs that Hezbollah could escalate. There you have a U.S. threat too, right? The U.S. has moved two carrier groups into the eastern Mediterranean. President Biden and Secretary Blinken have made very clear that the U.S. is going to back Israel. They've sent very clear deterrent signs against Iran to not get involved. So there's a potential risk for the U.S. to become entangled in this, depending on how bad things get. But right now, I think everyone is kind of holding their breath to see what the outcome

of Biden's visit is, what the Israeli offensive in Gaza looks like, and also how regional public opinion continues to digest, not just the disaster at the hospital, but the continued bombings of Gaza and the outcomes there. Greg, you mentioned Hezbollah, and I just got a flashback to one of the books that I read when I was heading out to Abu Dhabi and trying to do a crash course in Middle East history, which is pretty much impossible. That's the thing I learned. But there is this great book. It had one of the most fantastic titles that I've ever seen. It was called the Media Relations Department of Hezbollah wishes you a happy birthday. unexpected encounters in the changing Middle East.

And it is funny because I think back to that book and like so much has changed even, you know, in the past 10 years since that book was published or so. But it just feels like, I mean, how many books are going to be written about this current conflict? I can't even imagine. Yeah. And it also gets to one other element that maybe doesn't get quite the attention that it deserves, which is that these groups, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran as well, they're fighting

a war on several fronts, right? they're fighting it with weapons and arms and, you know, forces on the ground. They're also fighting what they see as being a war of ideas on social media and in the press. These are political organizations. They conceive of themselves as having constituencies, right? People who will support them. And they have ideologies, right? They're selling ideas as much as they are trying to fight a war against Israel or the IDF.

So that's another thing to bear in mind, particularly when we look at things that Iran says, right? Iran is putting out rhetoric, putting out tough talk, because in many ways they're trying to talk up their own sort of propaganda, their own ideology, their own perspective of the conflict. That doesn't necessarily mean they're going to do anything, right, that they might not actually get involved. But it's important to bear in mind that these actors are engaging in this conflict on multiple levels. Some of them are on social media. Some of them are just, you know, involving ideas trying to get more support for their particular positions. Greg, other than your own book, what should I download on my Kindle this weekend if I want to be a little bit smarter about all this? Oh, boy.

Man. I mean, there's, I very often point people towards the work of Rashid Khalidi, who's a historian of the Middle East. They're old now, but the writings of Edward Saeed, who's a Palestinian intellectual of the 20th century, are always great. Oh, wait. Edward Said is like a little bit, that's a slightly controversial suggestion here. Controversial older, but I think still, you know, still still. vital to understanding where the conflict is coming from. I mean, there's so many books written more recently and articles as well. I mean, for understanding Iran's role in this, I would point people

towards the work of Afshon Ostevar. He had a great article in War in the Rocks, I think just yesterday about Hamas and Iran's relationship. I mean, the list is endless, really. There's, as you said, Tracy, you could read forever on this subject and still not fully understand how it goes. I tried. I tried for a few months and I didn't get very far. Joe, you know what I just remembered? We should have back. Remember the episode we did on Iranian stocks? The fund manager who is investing in Iranian equities? That would be a super interesting perspective to have right now. All right. Let's do it. Lots more is produced by Carmen Rodriguez and Dashel Bennett with help from Moses Anda. Our sound engineer is Blake Maples. Sage Bauman, who's our head of podcasts. Catch you next time for lots more. Thanks for listening. The news doesn't

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