Part 7: The Iran War, Trump surrenders
TAT readers,
I will be blunt, we’ve surrendered to Iran. All that will change as so-called “negotiations” go forward in Pakistan, are the details of some potentially final agreement. The bottom-line though is that the US gains are minimal and Iran, supported by Russia and China still holds leverage over the US and the world, via controlling the Straits of Hormuz. In the first six parts of this series, we’ve dug deeply into many of the complex layers of issues surrounding the current war. Today, I will offer some of the notable developments but apply more focus towards how the war has shaped the previously discussed, “new world order,” heralded by Putin immediately after Trump’s election win, in November of 2024.
Although there’s a great deal to unpack in this essay, I will also rely on the links to the previous six essays, to offer deeper insights to those who may not have seen them when first published. As with most geo-political or strategic events, there are countless layers to consider, and the Iran War is one such event… on steroids. The war lies at the intersection of global commerce, energy markets, former Cold War tension, posturing by the world’s largest powers and economies, millennium-old religious tensions and even a prominent battlefield between global liberty and authoritarianism. This my friends is just the short-list.
Onward
Links to the previous parts of this series
Overview
At the end of February, the US joined Israel in a weeks long assault on Iran. While that Israel had due cause, we still have no idea why the US participated in an active role. There was no imminent threat, no ballistic missile threat, no sanctions threats nor any other compelling reasons at the time. As I discussed in Part II, there’s strong case to be made that this dangerous and lawless administration, was pursuing both oil and the power of having a dominant presence over the Strait of Hormuz, which impacts every nation on earth in one fashion or another.
The primary successes for both Israel and the US, have been in the diminishment of Iran’s military infrastructure, which has the potential, though yet unsubstantiated, to mitigate the endless list of atrocities perpetrated by Iran globally. Still though, Iran has clearly demonstrated that they are militarily resilient and even dangerous, as the ramifications of their assaults across the Gulf at the Arab Gulf oil states clearly shows. The damage to oil infrastructure, military bases, commerce and access to 20% of the world’s oil, has wreaked havoc on global markets, undermined critical international commerce and imposed even deeper inflation onto many of our fellow US citizens and global citizens. All of these citizens are now held hostage to greed, power, criminal intentions and a complete lack of caring for any of us, except the elite wealth classes.
As we stand right now, we are told that there’s a ceasefire, while that no one has apparently seen any documentation of such. There is apparently little to no serious coordination going on with Israel, other than a last minute call from the White House for Israel to also implement a ceasefire against aggressive, terrorist Hezbollah fighters in Southern Lebanon, who were raining terror down on Israel for the past few weeks. I know this first-hand because I regularly speak with one of my daughters, living in Israel’s north. She has been in and out of bomb shelters regularly, ever since the war began. Still, most western media dishonestly blames Israel for fighting against terrorists like Hamas and Hezbollah, who’ve attacked the Jewish state incessantly for decades. I may have a professional disagreement or two with a couple of Israel’s tactics and their far-right extremist governing coalition, but I do not besmirch her rights to self-defense.
Now, let’s get into some of the primary points regarding the new geo-political alignment of the world’s major powers. Spoiler alert, all have either outright autocracies or have deeply flawed democracies. Yes, the US is one of these. The others are in hierarchical order of power, China, the US, Russia and India. As you can see, at this point in time, the US is largely a stand-alone nation and mostly devoid of allies. China has Russia and to a limited degree, India as well. Iran is important to all three. In many other ways, the US is now an ally of Putin and is even now cooperating more with China, in some quiet but disturbing ways.
The “new world order,” Putin-style
What we must come to terms with is that the old world order, largely defined as East vs. West or democracy vs. the communism of the Cold War is dead, never to be resurrected. After the Soviet Union imploded, the world was in flux for a couple of decades, with major powers looking at what a new alignment would look like. After WW II, the world existed on what is called, “The Rules-Based, International Order” or RBIO. Circa 2014, Russia’s invasion of Crimea set the stage for what would become a new Russian philosophy regarding sovereignty, global power and basically, who would rule the world. What we are seeing now is the logical progression of Putin’s favorite sovereignty concepts. The players are the US, Russia, China and to some extent, maybe India.
"The concept of a multipolar oligarchy leads to the Russian concept that true sovereignty is possessed by only a few great powers; the sovereignty of states it views as dependent on great powers is limited. The territory of true sovereigns and those states under Russian protection is sacrosanct and can be defended by force; for the others, it is impermissible to regain territory that is “in dispute” by force. As an example of the former, consider the lengths to which Russia has gone to protect Syria’s use of armed force against its own population, whereas the sovereignty of former Soviet states such as Azerbaijan, Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine must be negotiated." - Russia at the United Nations: Law, Sovereignty, and Legitimacy - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace - Philip Remler - January 22, 2020
This Putinesque view of sovereignty, is what we are watching materialize, right before our very eyes. The war with Iran plays an important role for Russia, China, India and Iran. The war also has shown the limits of US power. From the beginning of military powered flight, there has been an argument by air forces that they don’t require ground or maritime forces to win a war. The proof of this concept’s failure is written all over Iran, in the devastation without subjugation of the Iranian Terrorist regime. We learned the same lessons in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, etc. Still, the absurdity of believing you can accomplish regime change in a heavily defended, ideologically supercharged regime, is sheer madness. US and Israeli intelligence had already concluded before beginning the bombing, that regime change wasn’t in the cards.
The evidence to date indicates that Russia will become the primary sovereign for Europe, Syria and likely will retain Iran due to their intrinsic value in supplying Putin’s military. Still, Putin’s reach is severely limited now that his military has become a laughing stock in Ukraine. Just when some progress was being made on undermining the Russian economy via sanctions, along comes the Iran war. Now Putin is projected to make up to $10B more per month in oil revenue, meaning Russia’s current financial crisis appears to be survivable and downright profitable. But Putin still has Trump as his “ace-in-the-hole.” Whenever things have been tough for Putin’s foreign policy, somehow Trump’s administration seems to come to the rescue.
"But just as the economic downturn appeared set to force Putin to make difficult choices – perhaps having to concede ground in Ukraine peace talks – the US-Israeli war on Iran gifted Putin a huge win. In the near term, this will serve as a get out of jail card for Putin. Higher oil and energy prices, and the US decision to ease sanctions on Russian oil, will bolster budget and balance of payments inflows to Russia." - The Iran war has been an economic gift for Putin - Chatham House - Timothy Ash - April 10th, 2026
The fact that the Trump administration plays the occasional tough guy on Russia, close watchers will see both leaders with fixed gazes on some future target. I believe this target to be a world divided into the sovereign oligarchies of only a handful of fully sovereign nations. Each will manage several nations with lesser sovereignty rights and always subject to military intervention by primary sovereigns. The way things have been realigning, it appears Russia will be the primary sovereign oligarch from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic, including all of Europe. The US gets the western hemisphere and China, all of Asia with potentially India occupying a unique role above secondary sovereign nations, but not equal to the big three.
We’ve seen ample evidence of this new world order from the Trump administration with their attack and administrative takeover of Venezuela, the blockade of Cuba, incessant threats against Greenland and this is merely the short list. There are examples from the Arctic to the tip of Argentina’s and Chile’s Patagonian region. Russia is still attempting but losing steam in Ukraine while China has made her typical, quieter moves on the strategic chessboard. If anyone is a “big” winner in the Iran war, it is China.
China now is allowed special dispensation to navigate the Strait of Hormuz, in order to acquire the fossil fuels she needs for her manufacturing sector. Depending on which source you read, Iran provides between 13-15% of China’s energy resources. Add to this that Xi has been banking deeply discounted Russian oil by storing it in his oil reserves. Deeply discounted Russian oil is available to Xi due to China coming to Putin’s rescue when he was desperately in need in Ukraine and at home. It doesn’t end there either.
"Meantime, China and Russia are sitting on the sidelines. Why? China is dependent on Iran, which supplies 13 percent of China’s oil imports at discounted prices. Since 2021, Iran has been locked into a 25-year cooperation agreement with Beijing, securing $400 billion of oil at below-market prices in exchange for Chinese investment and security cooperation. Russia, for its part, has relied on Iran as its most important Middle Eastern partner since Western sanctions on Russia began in 2014. Both countries had been propping up Tehran financially, militarily, and diplomatically for years." - How Russia and China are winning the war in Iran - PETERSON INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS - Elina Ribakova - March 30, 2026
The claimed US and Iranian ceasefire talks are now being held in Pakistan. Pakistan is very much in debt to China due to being the host nation for the crown jewel of Xi’s China Dream Strategy, built along the spine of his BRI or Belt and Road Initiative. That jewel is called CPEC, China Pakistan Economic Corridor. This is a series of infrastructure investments from China running the length of Pakistan and terminating at the port of Gwadar, roughly 20 miles from the border with Iran. CPEC’s importance to Xi is significant despite a rough go of developing CPEC due to Pakistan’s myriad of protests, inefficient bureaucracy and ongoing terrorist resistance in Baluchistan.
On the other side of the Iranian and Pakistani border, India has also built a port at Chabahar, designed to foment trade and to provide critical access to middle eastern oil from the Persian Gulf, especially Iran. With China footing the bill for massive CPEC investment in Pakistan, she now enjoys significant leverage over her. Pakistan has long had a deep relationship with middle eastern Muslim states and Xi is banking on that influence to deliver an Iran war peace plan favorable to China. Meanwhile, the US enters the negotiations with no cards, no strategy and being led and supported by greedy and ideologically compromised imbeciles like J.D. Vance, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff.
At the moment, of the three major powers, the US, Russia and China, it is Xi that is in the catbird seat. He has reach, leverage and has managed to keep a lower profile throughout the past few weeks. So far, Xi and Putin have escaped from major public scrutiny, despite their assistance to Iran, to include targeting information of US military targets. As I am writing this, I notice a news update that shares that China will now be providing Iran with new, advanced air defense systems in a few weeks. These are notably more dangerous systems for our air crews to deal with. Apparently Iran has allies while the current US administration enjoys insulting ours. Just recently, Trump is back to discussing leaving NATO, declaring that they are doing nothing to help with the war that Trump started.
So as we enter negotiations led by Vance, let’s take a moment to add another datapoint to Trump and the GOP leadership’s cooperation with Putin. This week, Vance was in Hungary, campaigning for Viktor Orban’ the Hungarian extreme right-wing Prime Minister and acolyte of Putin. Orban’ is the darling of the MAGA GOP and has been involved with CPAC for years, often as a keynote speaker. It was Republican leadership that has worked with Orban’, often with GOP congressional reps to end aid for Ukraine.
We’ve covered a great deal in this essay and so it’s time to wrap this up with a coherent narrative of where we are regarding Iran and the Trump administration’s cooperation with Russia. With China now being the senior partner in the Russia/ Chinese relationship, cooperation with Putin is tantamount to cooperating with China. This can be seen in other ways as well, considering the administration’s recent announcement that it would sell some of our most sophisticated computer chips to China, something unthinkable to all other modern administrations. Add to this that the administration is now also working on deals with China regarding the rare earth minerals, critical to technology development.
Summary
There is no reason to believe that the US won or is winning anything related to the White House’s war on Iran. As noted earlier, the best that can be said is that we have diminished Iran’s military network and infrastructure enough to keep them from being a regional powerhouse for a couple of years. On the other hand, Iran has come through the war to date, as a resilient regime with quiet but powerful counterweights to US power. This only enhances those adversaries. Working with Putin and tangentially Xi, while both are responsible for advancing Iran’s ability to not only survive the war but raise the odds against our troops by providing targeting information to Iran.
China is the biggest winner and Xi also has significant leverage over Pakistan, where negotiations are being held. Without NATO and other allies, we are alone in the world. This degrades our national security acutely. With China now in a power position and US munitions prepositioned in Pacific Command taken for use in Iran, Xi now has his best chance in decades to recover Taiwan. The US would be severely limited by lack of critical munitions and a reluctance of former allies to go to war alongside of us in the Pacific. The US is no longer trustworthy as a reliable ally. Russia’s potential threat to the US is also limited because she has had her military decimated. Still, Russia and China make for a powerful set of adversaries.
"The US-Iran war has called this entire model into question. Politically, the war has raised new doubts about America’s commitment to European security and to Ukraine. Europeans’ unwillingness to participate in the US and Israeli military campaign has increased the Trump administration’s resentment towards NATO. If Trump acts on his pledge to ‘remember’ Europe’s ‘betrayal’, he could request a faster withdrawal of US personnel from key NATO posts, or reassess the US force posture in Europe." - Assessing the damage: What the Iran war really means for Europe’s defence - European Union Institute for Security Studies - Luigi Scazzieri, Giuseppe Spatafora - April 9, 2026
As the new world order comes more into focus, we are faced with a harrowing vision of our world being carved up into pieces controlled by a handful of powerful authoritarian nations. Still, the leaders of these nations are all hungry for power and global domination in the long run. In fact, Xi’s China Dream strategy, calls for China to become the regional hegemon by 2025 and achieve global hegemony by 2049. If the old adage, “there’s no honor among thieves” holds true, it would be hard to imagine that the three power-hungry authoritarians in question, could cooperate as co-world leaders for long.
So the US is faced with two weighty issues; removing this administration and Republican-led enablers in congress from office and rebuilding the extensive damage done to our national security community. This is especially critical in the intelligence community where longtime professionals and experts are already warning us of the structural damage done. Americans have always loved great comebacks in our books, songs and movies. Rooting for the underdog and making a comeback is in our DNA and can be seen in countless examples throughout our history. We not only can do this, but now have no choice, if we are to survive as a constitutional republic.
There are innumerable challenges ahead for us and I do have faith that we will restore our republic, but only if we are reacquaint ourselves with who we are as Americans. Recovering that true American Spirit means also to reject fake patriotism and raise our collective voices against the fake-patriotism of today’s GOP. At the moment, the GOP’s fake-patriotism is just as loud as it is repugnant. Our voices must drown-out their conspiracy theories, lies and false narratives. Like most of you, I was raised to be polite and not discuss politics in public. Those were different times though and the GOP threat cannot be allowed to go a step further.
Trump, his colleagues and enablers just spent a billion dollars of our tax dollars a day on a war where he’s now waving a white flag. What was it for? What did we achieve and what did we lose in the process? These are only two of the endless list of questions that we all have. We will have no answers until we “throw the bums out.” We also must rid our republic from these shameless usurpers before it is us, not Trump waving the white flag.
My very best for your weekend,
Paul