Ghost of a flea

The real news is that already notorious photo: the president of Brazil, our largest ally in Latin America , and the prime minister of Turkey, for more than half a century the Muslim anchor of NATO, raising hands together with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the most virulently anti-American leader in the world.

That picture – a defiant, triumphant take-that-Uncle-Sam – is a crushing verdict on the Obama foreign policy. It demonstrates how rising powers, traditional American allies, having watched this administration in action, have decided that there's no cost in lining up with America's enemies and no profit in lining up with a U.S. president given to apologies and appeasement.

Contractors are working flat out in the United Arab Emirates to build a giant oil pipeline that will divert up to 1.8 million barrels a day of crude exports away from the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow shipping channel watched over by Iran.

Completion of the pipeline could transform the sleepy port of Fujairah on the East coast of the country where tankers will eventually dock to pick up oil instead of sailing an extra day into the Persian Gulf to the existing loading terminal.