GEAB 141

Briefly annotated, here are some important dates to keep in mind as we look ahead to 2020.

31st January: EU – Official exit of the UK

The beginning of some clarification, but negotiation is still needed to establish the nature of future EU-UK relations. This is an important step, but not the end of the process. It will continue to take up a lot of our media attention for a while yet.

21 February: Iran – Legislative elections

This is where we will see the effect of the American-Iranian row on Iranian public opinion targeted by the differentiation strategy – “elected government vs revolutionary guards” – led by the United States and Israel. Depending on whether or not the vote weakens the conservatives, we may or not move away from a scenario of war against Iran. The downing of the Ukrainian plane and the death of 176 passengers (all of Iranian origin, even if some had other nationalities) provoked a second wave of demonstrations, this time anti-regime ones.

2 March: Israel – Legislative elections (3rd phase of early elections in less than a year)

We anticipated the difficulties of Netanyahu, the role of Benny Gantz, the temptation to replace the current Prime Minister as the head of Likud. All this has taken place and Netanyahu is holding firm – the Likud primaries last December having given him a very large victory (71% of the votes). Therefore, the duel will be between him and Gantz once again. We anticipate that ongoing tension with Iran will create the conditions for a Gantz-Netanyahu coalition following the next election.