Can Gwadar port compete with the port at Jebel Ali?

“No way out” (May 9th), an article about Iran and the American blockade, asserted that Iran’s commerce with China is being re-routed by land. It reported that Pakistan has opened six new border crossings (presumably with Iran). And it also mentioned that “traders are speaking” of the Pakistani port of Gwadar becoming an alternative to the United Arab Emirates’ vast port at Jebel Ali.

I would ask you to look at a map and stop quoting anonymous traders. There are two double-lane roads connecting Iran and Pakistan. They can open all the crossings they want but those are the roads available. Gwadar handled 8,300 TEUs (the standard shipping measure) in 2025, which means it can’t compete with the port of Karachi, let alone Jebel Ali , which handled 16.5m TEUs in 2025. Gwadar can service only two or three vessels at a time.

The idea that Gwadar will ever replace Karachi, let alone Jebel Ali, in our lifetime does not bear scrutiny. Nor does the notion that Chinese-Iranian commerce at any meaningful level can traverse through some of the most desolate deserts and highest peaks on the planet for thousands and thousands of miles. That includes going through Balochistan, which Pakistan does not keep secure by its own admission. And you throw in moving petroleum by train from Iran to China? At what magnitude? As I say, please look at a map.

David Hale
Former American undersecretary of state
Washington, DC

It is true that antisemitism caricatures Jews as “catch-all avatars for disorienting change” (“High time to speak up”, May 9th). Antisemitism is a mirror, not a window. Look into it and you’ll learn nothing about Jewish people and much about the anxieties and prejudices of the antisemite. And, like so many other prejudices, it does not depend on the presence of Jews, nor, as your leader notes, does it end with them.

All the more reason for non-Jews like me to say plainly and as often as necessary that a society cannot be free or flourish when our Jewish neighbours live in fear, and to stand up for their innate human dignity.

You are sceptical of “speech bans”, such as prohibitions on some of the slogans chanted at pro-Palestinian marches. This is not a matter of philosophy; the world needs practical answers. Reasonable, proportional limits on hate speech set by democratically elected governments are possible and widespread in free societies. No law has ever abolished hatred, but law shapes behaviour and signals what a society will and will not tolerate. Without such limits the loudest and most hateful voices set the terms, and that is no freedom worth the name.

The promise of epigenetic medicine (“Exercise and the epigenome”, May 2nd) is nowhere more desperately needed than in paediatric oncology. Adult cancers are overwhelmingly diseases of genetic wear and tear, the result of a lifetime of accumulated mutations to the DNA sequence itself. Paediatric cancers, by contrast, are remarkably quiet on the genetic front. Instead, they are frequently profound epigenetic crises, developmental software bugs where the wrong epigenetic tags leave embryonic growth signals permanently “switched on”.

By applying the blunt instruments of adult oncology, therapies that are designed to indiscriminately eradicate mutated cells, to paediatric patients we are in effect trying to fix a software glitch by smashing the hard drive with a hammer. This misunderstanding of the disease’s architecture helps explain why survival rates for several brutal childhood cancers have stalled, and why those who do survive are left with the lifelong collateral damage of highly toxic treatments.

It is time we stopped trying to beat children’s tumours into submission, and started learning how to reason with them instead.

You rightly warn against crude genetic determinism, but risk an overcorrection. Epigenetics shapes how genes are expressed; it does not diminish inherited differences. Estimates that traits such as cognitive ability (about 50%) or autism (over 80%) are heritable are not “just because” claims. They already reflect the interaction of genes and environment, including epigenetic mechanisms. Imperfect though they are, they remain among the best guides to human variation.

There is a moral asymmetry. Overplaying genetics can excuse unfair generalisations; downplaying it can moralise outcomes. If success is credited only to effort, those who struggle risk being too readily dismissed as lacking resolve rather than facing different constraints.

Nicolas Gheeraert
Assistant professor of physics
Krea University
Sri City, India

Jan Morris’s reflections on Wales and Welsh independence (Bagehot, April 18th) gain depth when set beside her own life. Raised as James Morris within the English establishment (Lancing College, Christ Church Oxford and the officer corps) she found, after her gender transition, a sense of ease and belonging in rural Wales that had eluded her in England.

Her remark that kindness is the most important thing, more important than love, captured the civic temperament she believed Wales embodied. That distinctive social character, which she chronicled in “The Matter of Wales”, published in 1984, remains one of the country’s strengths. It also bolsters the case for a constitutional settlement that reflects Welsh confidence rather than arrangements inherited from Westminster.

In my experience, the variable that most academic studies of family businesses (“Into thin heir”, April 11th) struggle to explain is “structural coupling”, or the degree to which the founding individual’s values, time horizon for the firm and implicit assumptions have become embedded in its decision-making. This shapes what the firm considers possible, legitimate and necessary, often long after the circumstances that formed those values have changed.

When the founders’ long-term orientation and instincts align with what the business genuinely needs, structural coupling is a durable competitive asset. When they diverge, for instance when the founders’ personal horizon shortens as retirement approaches, or when their risk tolerance no longer matches the company’s strategic requirements, this same coupling becomes a constraint. The business continues to behave according to values that are no longer adequate.

This is why succession is not primarily an ownership or governance problem, as you framed it. It is a structural one. The question is not only who takes the chair, but whether the decisions embedded through decades of founders’ influence can be made conscious, examined and where necessary revised. Otherwise the next generation inherits not only the business but its invisible architecture.

Jean Bettingen
Partner
Bettingen, Dahl & Partners
Luxembourg City

The statue in Cambodia honouring a mine-detecting rat is not the only tribute in the world to a life-saving rodent (“Putting the rat in commemoration”, April 11th). In Novosibirsk, Russia, stands the Monument to the Laboratory Mouse. The lab mouse has helped save and improve more lives than we will ever know. What I find particularly inspiring about this little creature is that it has done this without any fanfare or much acknowledgment. I keep a 3D-printed replica of the monument on my desk.

Sid Efromovich
Chief executive
Regeneration Group
Millburn, New Jersey

Anduril and Palantir, two of the AI defence companies mentioned in your report on how America is changing the way it wages war, have taken their names from J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” (“Shooting to prominence”, April 25th). Other firms somewhat related to defence or critical minerals, such as Durin, Mithril, Valinor and Valar, are also named after elements of Tolkien’s fantasy universe.

One would think that the Pentagon’s speechwriters would feel inspired to channel more Tolkien. One line from “The Two Towers” comes to mind. “I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.”