Grier's Notes: March 8, 2026
Greens rise in UK, Danish election, Why money is falling from the sky in Bolivia, The life and death of Ali Khamenei
News from around the world
Today, Mojtaba Khamenei has been chosen as Iran’s new Supreme Leader, just over a week after his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed by Israeli and US forces as they launched a major campaign against the Ayatollah’s regime. While the campaign has successfully eliminated many leading members of the government, the surviving Iranian has continued to reject President Trump’s demand that they surrender power.
A longtime Labour stronghold chose the UK Green Party candidate, giving the party its first by-election victory. The result was further evidence of continued transformation of the British political picture, with both the Greens and second-place finisher Reform UK rising while the ruling Labour party fell to third. While the two parties have a very different set of policies, they both benefit from being outsiders at a time when the public is highly disillusioned with the establishment.
The public’s view of the government is unlikely to be boosted by the news this week that three men associated with the Labour Party including the husband of an MP, were arrested by British police on charges of spying for China. This is just the latest series of arrests as British authorities have sought to counter broad influence campaigns being run in the UK on behalf of Beijing.
Relations between Hungary and Ukraine have become very rocky as the two nations feud over a broken pipeline. Hungary’s PM Orban has threatened to send troops into Ukraine to force the pipeline back online, with Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy responding by appearing to suggest he might send Ukrainian forces to assassinate Orban, leading EU officials to call for everyone to bring down the temperature.
French President Emanual Macron unveiled his plans to expand France’s nuclear weapon stockpile in order to allow France to deploy the weapons across the continent. Rather than depend on the US as has historically been the case, Macon’s vision would see a more independent European nuclear deterrent reflecting the growing desire in Europe to partially decouple itself from the US military.
Spanish opposition politicians are calling for former king Juan Carlos to return from his self-imposed exile. The ex-monarch then left the country after turning his throne over to his son in 2014, following a series of controversies, but continues to have some supporters within Spain who point to his central role in restoring democracy after he succeeded Francisco Franco as Spain’s leader in 1975.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has called early elections for March 24. While Denmark was not scheduled to vote until October, Frederiksen is riding a popularity boost courtesy of Donald Trump’s demand that Denmark turn over Greenland have revived the approval ratings of the left-wing Danish leader. Frederiksen has sought to win voters on the left by promising to impose a “wealth tax” on the fortunes of the most affluent Danes. This tax has fractured members of her current coalition, which was a cross-partisan combination of parties of both the right and left, as she bets she can form a government with just the left-wing block.
The Italian government is calling on the EU to suspend its carbon pricing scheme to allow the program to be reformulated. With energy prices spiking, Italy argues that the carbon price is unfairly punishing European manufacturing.
In further fallout from the war in Iran, Lebanon has formally banned the military wing of Hezbollah after it joined Iranian attempts on Israel, making Lebanon once again an unwilling participant in a war with Israel.
Clashes between Pakistan and Afghanistan have intensified following a declaration by Pakistan that the two nations are at war. While Pakistan has not launched a full-scale invasion, it has repeatedly hit Afghanistan with air strikes and clashed along the border with hundreds of casualties reported.
The Chinese government has set an economic growth target of under 5%. This is the lowest target since 1991 and is an acknowledgment that China’s years of high growth may be slowing down, a development which could have major implications for the future.
The Chinese government is planning to reverse a long-standing policy of allowing minority language instruction in schools with a new law that will make Mandarin the only legally acceptable language of education. The measure is being promoted as part of President Xi’s efforts to encourage national unity.
A massive Chinese influence campaign was revealed by OpenAI, which discovered a Chinese law enforcement official using ChatGPT as he sought to plan various schemes to discredit or suppress Chinese dissidents living abroad.
Voters in Nepal went to the polls for the first time since youth protests forced the resignation of the previous government. The results saw the traditionally dominant parties take sharp losses as RSP, led by former rapper Balendra Shah on track to finish far ahead of the other parties. Shah’s challenge will be turning his outsider populist promises into concrete results, which may prove more challenging than attacking the government from the outside.
New Zealand has classified prediction markets as gambling and ordered operators of those markets to stop operating in the country. While prediction markets have gained traction in several places, they still face resistance from some regulators who see them as an end run around established gambling rules.
The Australian state of Victoria is proposing to give employees the right to work remotely two days a week. Under the proposed policy, all companies will be required to allow working from home twice a week or be able to demonstrate to authorities why an employee must be on-site every day.
New Zealand’s brain drain challenge has gained attention with news that the latest New Zealander leaving is Jacinda Arden. The former PM has announced her family is relocating to Australia, joining a trend that started during her government of an increasing number of New Zealanders moving abroad to pursue opportunities elsewhere.
Bolivia’s economy has been thrown into chaos following a plane crash that saw millions of banknotes literally drop from the sky. As seen from a movie, thousands of people fought each other to collect the cash. This turned out to be not the best use of time, as the government quickly announced it had cancelled the lost money as it sought to avoid literal helicopter drop inflation. This produced another level of chaos as many merchants are now simply refusing to take cash at all, rather than go through the hassle of running serial numbers through an app to determine if it’s still legal tender.
Peru’s interim President José María Balcázar named famed economist Hernando de Soto as his choice for Prime Minister only abruptly change his mind and appoint Finance Minister Denisse Miralles instead. De Soto learned of the change of plans when he saw Miralles taking the oath of office. The abrupt change dashed hopes that Balcázar was going to look beyond his hard-left beliefs in constructing a government.
Early counting in Colombia’s legislative elections today shows a close race between the main right and left blocs, which would likely lead to a deeply divided legislature where a small number of minor parties have disproportionate sway.
Mexican drug lord “El Mencho” was buried in a golden casket as part of an elaborate funeral emphasizing the wealth of the drug lord that Mexico and other Latin American countries have recently gone to war with. These drug gangs have vast arsenals of weapons and equipment (including their own submarines), making them a formidable opponent.
In news that could bode poorly for many performers at sporting events, the Dominican Republic has arrested a woman on charges that she disrespected the nation’s national anthem with an unconventional rendition that went viral on social media.
Cuba suffered another collapse of its electrical grid as the nation deals with a major fuel shortage and warnings from President Trump that Cuba is next on his list of interventions.
The life and death of Ali Khamenei
For the last 40 years, Ali Hosseini Khamenei has been a leading face of the Iranian Revolution. He played a leading role in building and sustaining the regime’s unrelenting commitment to being a revolutionary force. And in the end, it was that commitment which led to his death.
As a young religious scholar, he was taught by Ruhollah Khomeini and joined Khomeini in opposing Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The Shah’s practice of what is best described as a sort of authoritarian liberalism, which used authoritarian means to try to institute liberal reforms, generated a variety of opponents who came together to force the Shah from power in 1979.
However, it was Khomeini with his vision of Iran as a pure Islamic state that would bring revolution to the world, who quickly was able to consolidate power and remake Iran as a theocratic state in which ultimate power was held by the religious council, which he led as Supreme Leader.
Khamenei was a key player as this new regime was built, rising to the role of President in 1981. When Khomeini died in 1989, he was chosen as the second Supreme Leader. While lacking the high scholarly credentials that were required on paper for the role, Khamenei won the job as a reliable defender of the Revolution.
And he did indeed spend the next three decades resisting any efforts to move away from Khomeini’s vision. This was greatly to Iran’s misfortune as he poured enormous resources into the military and security apparatus to protect the revolution, even as so much of the rest of the country stagnated.
And it meant that Iran was inherently a destabilizing force in the world. Khamenei built up the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and its network of proxy groups, which helped fuel conflict around the Middle East and enable acts of terror around the world. And he relentlessly pursued the dream of making Iran a nuclear power with the dream of giving the regime the ultimate tool in its pursuit of revolution.
Central to this vision was unrelenting hostility towards Israel and the United States. Khamenei made opposition to those states a central organizing principle that allowed him to maintain the support of his ideological forces even as the public grew increasingly disenchanted with his government.
In recent weeks these threads came together as his forces killed thousands of Iranians who had taken to the streets while attempts to negotiate a deal on the nuclear program with the US faltered over Khamenei’s fundamental unwillingness to make only tactical concessions while determinedly preserving a path to gain the bomb for Iran with which it could strike its enemies especially Israel. This lead the US and Israel to determine that peace was not possible with Khamenei in charge.
The challenge is that it remains highly uncertain whether peace is possible without him. It seems unlikely that his son and successful Mojtaba will be willing to accept the path that his father so steadfastly rejected, raising the spectre that at the end of this military campaign, Khamenei’s revolution will remain in place, but one can at least dream that the next chapter of Iran will be more hopeful for the Iranian people.
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Quote of the day
“Every statesman must attempt to reconcile what is considered just with what is considered possible. What is considered just depends on the domestic structure of his state; what is possible depends on its resources, geographic position and determination, and on the resources, determination and domestic structure of other states.”-Henry Kissinger