Trump’s Iran Negotiations and China’s Strategic Advantage

I mean, the real danger here is that Iran,

I mean, you saw Trump said,

I'm no more Mr. Nice Guy.

If you're the supreme leader of Iran,

or if you're the leaders of the IRGC,

and Trump has already, with the Israelis,

killed your father and your mother,

and 150 of the leaders of your country

have been assassinated,

and then you're saying, no more Mr. Nice Guy.

Plausibly, you didn't think he was Mr. Nice Guy

even before he said that, right?

Plausibly.

So I think that, you know, the problem is

America is trying to negotiate,

having already blown up the negotiations,

with a group of leaders that may not be focused

just on how do we get to yes with the United States.

There may be a willingness to engage in retribution.

There may be some ideology

that is not about just survival as a regime.

This may be kind of the challenge

that the Israelis had with Hamas in Gaza, for example,

but I don't think the Americans are prepared

to do the damage to Iran that the Israelis were

to the people of Gaza to get to their military outcomes.

And so that limits the ability of Trump

to force the Iranians to do what he wants.

China is in a materially better position long-term

because so many countries are angry with the United States.

This war that the Americans launched in Iran

is enormously unpopular

with almost every country in the world except Israel.

And that has led many governments

to want to hedge more with other countries,

including with China.

So long-term, even though this hurts the Chinese economy,

they're not a big energy exporter.

They don't like to see these prices going up

any more than the Indonesians or the South Koreans.

But long-term, China sees themselves

as in a better strategic position.