China shifts towards GCC as Iran’s isolation deepens

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad garnered moral backing during his mid-January voyage around five of Latin America’s ‘anti-imperialist’ states, but he seems to have come away with little material support to counter Iran’s growing crisis of international isolation – underlined on 23 January, when European Union foreign ministers agreed on the much-anticipated embargo on Iranian oil imports (effective from 1 July).