Helen Walters: On June 21, 2025, the US bombed three nuclear sites in Iran, joining a war with Israel and plunging the world into uncertainty. Today is Sunday, June 22. I am Helen Walters, I'm head of media and curation at TED, and I'm joined by geopolitical expert and GZERO founder, Ian Bremmer, to make sense of the noise.
Ian, we also asked our community to share some of their questions for you. So let's get right to it. Tell us what you're hearing. And let's start with one very important question. Why did America decide to bomb Iran?
Ian Bremmer: The idea that the Iranians would have a nuclear weapons capacity has been anathema to the Americans and the Israelis for a very long time. There are lots of ways to deal with that. You can deal with it diplomatically. You can deal with it through economic sanctions, you can deal with it militarily. The Trump administration pulled out of the former Iranian nuclear deal, the JCPOA, and after that, the Iranians started ramping up both their levels of uranium enrichment in country as well as the stockpiling of that enriched uranium, highly enriched uranium, to the extent that they were getting closer to breakout nuclear capabilities. The intelligence communities of the United States and Israel disagree on how close they were to nukes. The Americans certainly are not convinced, and were not convinced, that there was any evidence that Iran was covertly working to break out a nuclear weapons capability, but they were not in compliance with the inspectors that were coming in, and they clearly were secreting some of their program.
Having said all of that, the Israelis decided to start this war. And they were the ones that were attacking lots of military sites, as well as directly looking to target and assassinate military leaders, including one security leader that was leading, had been leading, the US-Iran negotiations on nuclear program from the Iranian side, and also some of their nuclear capabilities. But this critical, and everyone's been talking about it now for a week straight, 100 meters under rock and concrete, under a mountain in Fordo, the Israelis did not have either the delivery mechanism, the B-2 bombers, the pilots trained to use those planes, the access to that technology, nor did they have the bunker-buster bombs that would allow them to destroy it. So they really wanted the Americans to take that step. They were pushing really hard. Trump, for the last week, has been trying, continuing to try one last effort at negotiation with the Iranians before he gave the order to attack. But it was very clear that the Iranian government was not prepared to accept a voluntary dismantlement, with inspections, of their entire nuclear program. That that was too critical for their own legitimacy as a regime. And so if that was the only outcome that Trump would find acceptable, and when he announced publicly that they had to surrender, that is what he meant. And that is what was being said to the Iranians by his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, At that point, there was really nothing stopping Trump if he wanted to follow through on that self-imposed threat to attack Iran. That's the back story. That's what got Trump to make the decision to attack these three sites, including the critical site at Fordo.
And as you know, Helen, at least as of right now, the Trump administration has said that's all those attacks are going to be. This is not a regime-change effort. And the US would like, once again, to compel the Iranians to come to the negotiating table. In fact, while the US has clearly engaged in acts of war against the Iranians, blowing up their bases, their nuclear capabilities, is certainly an act of war, but the Americans do not agree that they are at war with the Iranians. There's not an ongoing state of war with Iranians. The Israelis, of course, feel very differently about that. And the gap between those two positions is not going away anytime soon.
HW: Wait, you just said the Israelis have a different opinion. Do you mean the Israelis or do you mean the Iranians?
IB: I mean the Israelis. The Israelis are in a state of war with Iran, and they want the United States to be in an ongoing state of war with Iran. They, of course, most importantly, wanted the Americans to get involved in the war, but they don't want American involvement to be one and done. They want to continue to be working in lockstep with the US. That has not yet been achieved, though clearly the alignment between Trump and the Israeli prime minister has become far greater on this issue over the past days.
HW: So I'm really curious about that. Why do you think that Trump is tying himself so closely to Israel's Prime Minister, Bibi Netanyahu? So I was reading a recent report that said 60 percent of Israelis think that Netanyahu should resign. There's also the former Israeli PM, Ehud Barak, who recently described Netanyahu, and I quote, as "someone who lost his strategic and moral compass, dragging the nation into war, motivated by personal political interests against our security and common future." The war in Gaza remains a humanitarian catastrophe. So what is Trump thinking and doing?
IB: Now, I know Ehud Barak well. I have for a long time. Asking him about Netanyahu, and he is a committed opposition leader, would be like asking Nancy Pelosi about Trump or vice versa. I mean, this is an incredibly divided country, politically. And so I wouldn't take that as, you know, sort of, outside, objective reporting. They hate each other. They want each other out. Now there has been a lot of talk over the last few weeks that implied that Trump was somehow breaking from Israel. And that's never been true. It's never been true.
When Trump was president the first time around, he's the one that did the Abraham Accords, and it was Obama and and John Kerry back when he was Secretary of State, that were saying you could never do a deal like that unless you resolve the Palestinian issue first. That proved not to be the case. It was Trump that actually recognized the Golan Heights occupied by Israel, former Syrian territory, as part of Israel, against most of the international community. It was Trump that was willing to move the US embassy to Jerusalem, after many repeated presidents had said that they were going to and they didn't, they didn't follow through. Trump followed through. So Trump's bona fides as Israel's strongest, most aligned, most in-lockstep leader in the world, has never been under question as president.
Now more recently, Trump wanted a ceasefire between Israel and Gaza. And he got, you know, during the interim, after he won, but when Biden was still president, but Witkoff was actually directly involved in negotiations, which, unusual, but did manage to get four-week ceasefire agreed, this phase-one ceasefire on Gaza. But it didn't stick. And Trump has been able to get an individual American hostage out from Gaza, with help from the Qataris, and got that done separate from Israel.
So Trump has been capable of showing that he can engage in diplomacy in the Middle East and war in the Middle East when he announced the attacks on the Houthis and did it threatening them about attacking American shipping, but not about attacking Israel, that made a lot of people think, well, maybe he's somehow growing apart from the Israelis. I never bought that. Let's keep in mind that after Liberation Day, April 2, the first foreign leader that was invited to meet with Trump in the Oval Office was Prime Minister Netanyahu. And while that meeting was not their warmest and friendliest, at no point did Trump threaten the Israelis. At no point did he say, "I'm thinking about cutting back on your military aid." In fact, he said, "We give you billions and billions of dollars in military support, uniquely. No one else receives as much, and we know how much you appreciate that." At no point did the US threaten to scale back any of their intelligence support, which was so critical. Real time, the Israelis get more intelligence in the region, but the Americans have most of the processing capabilities. So they actually work incredibly close, very integrated, in trying to understand exactly what's going on with Iran and its proxies around the region. At no point did that tail off.
So Trump was providing that support every day, in a way that was essential for Israel. And when the Israelis started attacking, Trump and the Israeli prime minister had several phone calls, direct phone calls, and they were contentious because Trump was still trying to negotiate with Iran at that point. And Netanyahu wanted Trump to stop. But the fact that they have spirited, difficult conversations, at no point, made Trump consider pulling back from his 100-percent support for Israel's position and military capabilities. And so I don't think that there was a sudden gap that grew between these two men that was then bridged. I think that they were strategically aligned all the way through.
HW: So you refer to the fact that much of the rhetoric around this, from the Americans at least, is that this is not about regime change. JD Vance has said that, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also said that this is not about having an open-ended war. It is not about regime change. So never mind the rhetoric. Does this attack bring about regime change in Iran? And what does Iran look like going forward?
IB: It certainly doesn't in the near term. There's no way to bring about regime change by bombing military leaders and their capabilities. Iran is a country of some 90 million people. And the way you bring about regime change is for them to rise up, or ground troops engaged in a war that no one is calling for, no one wants, and that Trump would strongly resist. So there’s certainly a lot of Iranians that are very, very strongly opposed to the brutal and repressive theocracy that supreme leader Khamenei, and the Iranian defense force’s control. But their ability to continue to repress the Iranian people is high. This is not Assad's Syria, with a weak and unprofessional and badly paid military. These are very strong military domestic capabilities, and militias, with secret service and surveillance that really matters over their people, and a long record of responding brutally to uprisings and brooking no dissent. And indeed, at least in the near term, the response of the Iranian people to the Israeli and then the American strikes, including against their nuclear capabilities, I suspect is a rally around the flag, will be more nationalism against Israel and the United States. Now that may not last for long. And certainly that's one of the principal reasons why, when push came to shove, as it has over the last week, the Iranians were unprepared, even knowing that it was highly likely the Americans were going to blow up their nuclear capabilities, or at least try. They were unwilling to say, "OK, we capitulate. We will actually dismantle these." Much better for their regime stability and for the national support that they get from their people, to resist that, to show themselves as strong and make the Americans do it. And in the last 24 hours, what we have seen is Iranian state media talking about these as being weak attacks that only did peripheral damage to Iran's nuclear capabilities, that the Americans didn't do that much. There's no reason to believe that. The important point is that this is what they want the Iranian people to believe, to keep the regime strong. This is consistent in that regard.
And I'm sure you're going to ask this, but let me just kind of preempt it, Helen, is that, whatever the Iranian response is going to be, the state media and the Iranian leaders will present it to the Iranian population as far greater in scope and severity than what they actually do, for the same exact reason.
HW: So thank you for preempting my very next question, which is indeed about the potential response from Iran. So the Iranian parliament today approved a measure to close the Strait of Hormuz, which doesn't mean that that will happen immediately, but they have approved it. The Strait of Hormuz, of course, being the critical oil route between Iran and Oman, which, if that does happen, would have serious implications for the global economy. So why would the Iranians not do that? Do you think they'll do that? What do you think will be the next moves from Iran?
IB: So first point, Iran is not a democracy. Iranian parliament is very conservative, is mostly powerless and is rubber stamp. The Iranian parliament talking about approving closing the Straits of Hormuz is sort of similar to Dmitry Medvedev, the once-president and prime minister of Russia, saying today that other countries might consider giving the Iranians nuclear weapons. Has nothing to do with what Putin would or would not do or the state of his negotiations. It's rhetorical flourish. I don't think that the Iranians would consider closing the Straits of Hormuz for a lot of reasons. First of all, because at least for now, as of right now, their own energy export capabilities are undamaged, and they would be destroyed by the West, by the US, by Israel, if they were to disrupt the Straits of Hormuz. The US right now has more naval and air power in the Persian Gulf than at any point since the Iraq War. And that is meant in significant part to be able to clear the Straits of Hormuz and also to combat threats, if the Iranians were to disrupt it. And so they could, if they wanted to go all in, probably stop all traffic from going through for a matter of weeks, but not for months. And so this is an incredibly suicidal move for the Iranian regime that won't get them all that much. Separately, they could engage in attacks against Gulf state energy infrastructure. You may remember under Trump in the first term, there was some of that, including a drone attack that was quite spectacular, though didn't do much damage, it was more to show their capabilities against Abqaiq, which is the largest refinery in the region. Indeed, at the time, in the world. And they haven't done anything like that. And again, I don't expect they would, for the same reasons because it would elicit that kind of response.
Now Trump has gotten his intelligence briefings pretty consistently over the last week. And the major concerns from those briefings is that the American servicemen and women, some 40,000 in the region within the reach of Iran's ballistic missiles and threats from their proxies, they're very vulnerable, and the Americans cannot defend them adequately, can't defend them the way the Israelis, with Iron Dome, can defend their own people and their own military assets. So, I mean, Trump has not gotten, you know, confident responses of, well, what if Iran orders strikes on these military assets? The response is, Americans are going to die. And I think it is actually quite likely that there will be some attacks on American military assets in the region. I think it's more likely that it will come from Shia militias in Iraq. In other words, not from Iran directly, who are very capable, they’re well trained, and they’re certainly willing. Could also come from the Houthis in Yemen that would attack the US base in Djibouti, which is just a very short distance, just across the Red Sea channel. I think that's the most likely thing that the Iranians would do.
And second most likely would be harassing shipping through the Straits, but without actually closing it down. That's what I think the state of play is right now. And I say that in large part out of watching what the Iranian regime has been saying since they've been attacked. The foreign minister, some of the parliamentarians, and some of the spokespeople have been, of course, fire and brimstone, the great Satan, horrible Israel. But in terms of what they're threatening and what they're going to do, because these red lines have been crossed, they've been careful there.
Now one final point here, Helen. I'm talking about all of these things implying, assuming, that Iran is going to continue to act in a unified and restrained way with a functional command- and-control structure from their military. And there are no guarantees that will still be true. Iran has had over 30 military leaders assassinated by Israel. There are new, less experienced, more junior leaders now that have just replaced them. The supreme leader is 85 years old. He is hiding in a bunker. They are not using the internet. So communication is much more challenging than it was. What happens if a small number of Iranian military leaders go rogue and decide to order an assassination of a high-level US military official in the region and succeed? Something they certainly have tried and have espionage capabilities towards over the past years. What happens if a small group is willing to take a much more irrational stance on an attack of a Gulf energy capability? I mean, those things are possible in the fog of war with a more desperate or less consolidated Iran leadership capability. And the more the war escalates, and it's escalated very significantly over the past several days, the more we might see Iranian outcomes that are not the result of the same policy-making process that we have experienced over the past weeks and months.
HW: So if it's true that, as you say, or as they say, that the Trump administration is not interested in pursuing all-out war here, if, as you describe, these attacks, say, an attack happens on an American military base, say that there are significant American casualties, how far ahead are they thinking to plan for that type of thing? And how are they planning to either avert that or to actually make sure that this does not escalate into full-on conflagration and all-out war?
IB: Well, of course, they're on highest levels of alert, and they've sent additional military capabilities, not just so they can attack Iran, but also to defend these troops and these bases more effectively. So it's not going to be trivial. But we're relying here less on American defenses than we are on continued deterrence against the Iranians, that they won't want to kill lots of Americans because they understand that that could lead to a decapitation strike against the supreme leader. You will remember, Helen, that Trump himself tweeted, that the Americans know where the supreme leader is, and he's safe for now, but that the US could kill him. And Trump used the term "kill him," right, if that were not the case.
Now Trump has had experience attacking the Iranians before. At the end of his first term, he ordered the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, who at the time was in charge of Iran's defense forces and a military hero for the Iranian people. Very popular. And the Iranian response was to go after US bases. But symbolic attacks, they were not trying to kill lots of Americans, and the US basically ignored it. And that was the end of that. That was a win for Trump. And Trump clearly believes that he's going to get away with that again. Now he might be wrong, and I might be wrong. My assessment right now is that the Iranians aren't going to try to kill a lot of American servicemen and women. That they will engage in smaller strategic attacks. And they will engage in harassing of ships, but that both of those things will be done specifically not to elicit further escalation from the Americans. If I am wrong, or if Iran's command- and-control has so eroded that it doesn't matter what they're ordering, that rogue actors do a lot more, then we're in an escalatory cycle, and the Americans are going to start hitting them again and again and again. And that, of course, makes it far more likely that we get regional conflagration, oil prices over 120, global recession, you name it, right?
Then there's the Israeli question, because, you know, we've been talking about this as if, OK, the Americans just did these three runs, bombing and missiles against these three major nuclear facilities, and now they're done. Yeah, but the Israelis are still at war. And the Israelis are still attacking all sorts of Iranian targets, including leadership. And the Israeli defense minister, as recently as yesterday, made statements that implied that the Israelis were not prepared to allow supreme leader Khamenei to continue to run the country, to continue to exist. So it's conceivable that the Israelis are trying to bring about regime change, even though it's not in their capability to do it themselves, but they certainly are trying to escalate the war and bring the Americans into a greater degree than we have presently experienced. And the fact that Israel can continue to do that, and the Americans are neither disposed to stop them, nor are likely to be disposed to stop them, also makes the likelihood of further escalation higher than it would be if this was just about the Americans. Most of the places in the world where you and I would talk about this kind of American action, it would be the US that is driving the escalation and the other country, asymmetrically less powerful, responding or not, right? That is not where we are right now. The Israelis are actually in the driver's seat on the war, and they're trying, and succeeding to a degree, to bring the Americans in. But they haven't succeeded completely. And that gap is one that the Israeli prime minister would like to diminish over the coming weeks and months. To the extent that he is successful, the war is likely to escalate.
HW: So interesting. What do you think are some of the tactics that Israel is using to try to draw the US further into this with them?
IB: Well, as I said, the Israelis actually have most of the intelligence on Iran and its proxies in the region. And the prime minister of Israel presents that intelligence in a filtered way to Trump directly. Again, the US and Israel actually work together very, very closely. The Americans process the intelligence. The Israelis don't have that much capacity to do that. But that doesn't mean that Trump is getting all of that only from the Americans. So the prime minister of Israel is trying, through the intelligence that he is giving directly in his calls to Trump, to make him feel that there is greater urgency to an American attack. That if the US doesn't take the Iranians out, if they engage in negotiations, that it's going to lead to conflagration in the region. It doesn't stop with Israel, it ends up in New York, right? So that's one tactic that they use.
A second tactic is the Israelis continue to escalate. The Americans only hit three nuclear sites. The Israelis not only assassinated the heads of the Quds Force and the IRGC and other military leaders, they also attacked and killed a security official that was in charge of the US-Iranian negotiations on the nuclear program. And I mean, obviously, it's a lot harder for the Americans to have success in negotiations if the person that is your principal interlocutor is killed by Israel, right?
So, I mean, all of these things are making it harder for the Americans to contain the war. Also, the Iranians have said that they're not willing to engage in negotiations as long as the Israelis are continuing to attack them. Well that’s music to the Israeli prime minister’s ears, because he doesn't want the Iranians to engage in negotiations. He wants to continue to attack Iran. Now, I mean, is that just propaganda from Iran, or are they actually willing, indirectly at this point, to maintain lines of communication? They're certainly willing to keep talking to the Turks. They're willing to keep talking to the Europeans. So it's not like the Iranians aren't doing any negotiating right now. But certainly the expected sixth round of US-Iran talks, facilitated by Oman, were disrupted by the Israeli strikes. And that was absolutely part of the program.
HW: So what about the broader Arab world? How does this change geopolitics in the region?
IB: It's important to understand that on the war in Gaza, Israel was nearly completely isolated globally, aside from the United States. The Europeans were increasingly incensed about it, even though they didn't want to take on many costs. The Gulf states were opposed, the global South was opposed, Japan, South Korea was opposed, everyone was opposed. On Iran, that's really much less the case. The Europeans support the Israelis on Iran. The Brits do, the Canadians do. Only the Finns -- the Finns were the only EU member that came out against the Israeli’s attacks on Iran. The Japanese also condemned it. But, you know, pretty soft and perfunctory statement. China took a pretty balanced view. And the Gulf states have opposed it, but privately, they're much more comfortable with, as the German chancellor Friedrich Merz has said, someone doing their dirty work. The Gulf states don't want the Iranians to have a significant military capability. They don’t want them to have, certainly, a nuclear weapons capability. And they’ve been uncomfortable with Iran’s so-called “Axis of Resistance,” which has been deployed against them as well as the Americans and Israel. So certainly the Gulf states don’t want any threats to energy coming out of the Gulf, going through the Gulf. They're worried about that, they want the war to end, they want this to be stable, but they're not committed friends of the Iranians at all. So I would argue that as long as the Iranians do not respond in a significantly escalatory way, and the Israelis are unsuccessful in dragging the Americans further in, that the geopolitics of the Gulf aren't going to change that much.
But of course, we are completely uncertain as to whether those conditions will remain true. And the real danger here is that this war is going to escalate significantly in the coming weeks and months, even though that is not Trump's intention. It's not. It's not what he wants. And even though the Iranians would like to avoid that because this is existential for them, it's very hard to keep this war as contained as Trump and the Iranian supreme leader would like it to be. And that is going to be strongly opposed by the Gulf and could deeply undermine their own economies, could deeply undermine their ability to continue to export energy to the rest of the world.
HW: Let's talk about some of the other international players in this. I'm reading a lot of chatter about China and about their connection to Iran and what they might do next. What are you hearing, what do you think President Xi will say, and what should we expect from China on this?
IB: China gets a lot of oil from Iran. China also gets a lot of oil from Abu Dhabi, from Riyadh. And they are not a principal diplomatic player in this conflict at all. They clearly are not supporting the Israelis. And they're not supporting the United States in what they consider to be an unacceptable incursion into Iran's territorial integrity. But they're willing to do very, very little. I mean, if I look at the Chinese and their statements and I look at my friend, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, at the Security Council, I don't see a huge amount of difference between the effectiveness of that. And one of them is a guy that doesn't have an army or an economy, and the other one runs the second-largest, most powerful country in the world. And it just shows you how little China is playing here.
HW: Fascinating. OK, so what about Russia? You referred earlier to Dmitry Medvedev talking about potentially sending nukes to Iran. You seem very confident that that will not happen. But I do wonder what Putin's take on this will be. And also if Putin might use this as an opportunity, with eyes on Iran, to exploit anything in Ukraine.
IB: So we have seen an intensification of Russian attacks on Ukraine, more drone strikes, more missile strikes, including on Kyiv. And a lot of people have gotten killed and wounded as a consequence of that. Nothing unusual in terms of the targets and the types of strikes, just more of them. And, you know, a month ago, that kind of a strike would have elicited stronger condemnation from Trump. And this time around, nothing. Because everyone's focused on Iran. So, yes, I do think that it distracts from the Russia-Ukraine war. You know, Trump, using the excuse of the Middle East, did bolt from the G7 in Canada early. And that meant that he didn’t meet with Zelenskyy, a bilateral had been planned. So I mean, the Russians are pleased about that. That's not why Trump left. You know, the media was saying he was going to go and do a Security Council, a situation-room meeting. And that meeting didn't happen that night. It happened the next late afternoon. So obviously the real reason was because Trump just didn't feel like staying at the G7, an organization he does not like or respect and doesn't really like or respect most of the leaders around the table. So that all helps Russia. But this isn't good for Russia. The Russians have very few friends around the world and very few countries that are willing to provide them direct military support. The Iranians are one of those very few countries. And the fact that they even set up drone factories inside Russia, they've also provided a lot of ammunition and artillery for the Russians, the way that North Korea has. And Iran will no longer be capable of doing that. So that is going to undermine Russia's war-fighting capability. But let’s keep in mind that Russia also has and has had a reasonable relationship with the Israeli government and with Prime Minister Netanyahu directly. They have spoken with each other and visited each other a fair amount. There are some two million-plus former Soviets living in Israel that speak Russian. And that's something Putin speaks about frequently, including over the last week. And there are also Russian scientists working at one of the Iranian nuclear sites. And Putin himself said that he had guarantees from the Israelis that they were safe and would continue their work in Iran despite the Israeli war. So I mean, clearly the takeaway here is that Russia, though they want the war to be over and they are telling the Israelis to stop, are not prepared to do anything significant for their friends, Iran, on the ground. And if you're Iran, that is yet one more reason.
I mean, I said that I believed as long as the Iranians maintained command and control of their policy and military capabilities, that they were going to under- not overreact here. And a big part of that reason is because they've watched this all play out over the last week, and they've seen that they have virtually no friends on the global stage. And those that they thought were friends, political friends, are not willing to really lift a finger for them. And that is absolutely going to restrain the Iranian leadership.
HW: OK, so we also have to talk about what's happening in the US. So obviously one side of the House and the Senate is absolutely virulently against this. There have been calls for impeachment, etc. What's more interesting to me is that the core of MAGA ideology is anti-war. Now that's not because of some kind of hippy ideals of peace, but it's really a kind of extension of that isolationist, America-first type of thinking. But I think it's fair to say that this is not that. So what I'm curious to hear from you is how do you think that Trump actually reassures his base that he hasn't betrayed them and how does he make it clear that he's not signing America up for an endless morass and mess in the Middle East?
IB: Well they’re all saying the same thing right now. They all have the talking points very consolidated, which is, you know, Trump just blew up Iran's nuclear capabilities. And if you're MAGA and you're saying you oppose that, then you were never MAGA. And I've seen some version of that exact sentence from so many MAGA influencers across the Twitterverse and Reddit and other social media. I mean, clearly that's the message. And it is certainly true that there’s a lot of: "We want to end wars," among Trump’s supporters. Because of course, Trump’s supporters are largely blue-collar men, not advanced degrees. And these are precisely the people that suffered the most on the back of American wars in Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan. And so they didn't benefit. They're not part of the military industrial complex, they're not profiting in terms of their portfolios, right? But they’re fighting the wars, and they’re getting blown up, and they're coming back with PTSD. So you know, Trump is absolutely on point in saying we're not going to send American women and men into the fight.
Now I would argue that MAGA opposes the Ken Burns war but doesn't have a problem with the TikTok war. You know, I mean, quick bombs, blow up a bunch of stuff and then you're done. They didn't have a problem with him attacking and killing Soleimani. They're not going to have a problem with what we just saw yesterday. Now the question is what happens if it's not US boots on the ground? It's not Ken Burns, but it is ongoing strikes that leads to economic costs, security costs and the rest. What happens if it's not TikTok war, but it's the Israeli war that the Americans sign up for? What happens if US policy in Iran starts looking like Israel first, not America first, right? And that, I think, Trump will have a harder time navigating with MAGA. I think he will lose some people there in the same way that he was in danger of losing people if he went too hard on immigration. Shutting the border? Great. But going after people that you need to work in the United States, in hotels and restaurants and farms? A lot of people had serious problems with that. A lot of Trump voters had serious problems with that, and he backed off of it, even though Stephen Miller was pushing it.
So you know, the problem that Trump has, he's got the right baseline policies for his base: end the wars, secure the border, fair trade. But his ability to implement on that has been significantly constrained. And we've already seen that on the economy and on all of the trade deals that are supposed to get done and aren't done yet. And we're already seeing that on immigration. Very strong performance with the Mexicans on securing the border, much less so in terms of getting illegal immigrants out. And now we're seeing big questions around ending the wars. I mean, Trump so far is 0-3 on ending the wars that he's tried to end. He's tried to end Russia-Ukraine. So far, failed. Tried to end Israel-Gaza. So far, failed. Tried to end Israel-Iran. So far, failed. Has been successful at the margins on India-Pakistan, and then the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, in a fit of pique publicly on a phone call with Trump a couple of days ago, said, "I reject the idea that you did anything to help bring about a ceasefire,” which, I mean, was really a slap in the face for Trump at a time that he particularly did not want to hear that. Where he's been going all around saying, "I'm the guy that brought peace between India and Pakistan." So Trump really wants some wins here. And if he gets dragged into a longer war, I think he's got a problem. He's got some 'splaining to do, as you and I might say.
HW: Certainly as you might say, I don't think I would ever dare. OK, so the NATO summit is meeting in The Hague this week. What are you expecting to hear from that?
IB: On Ukraine, and Trump is still intending to go as of right now, and that also does imply that the US is not expecting significant additional military attacks against Iran. That could change any moment, of course. But the Ukraine conversation, I expect, is going to go pretty well. There are big announcements in store from NATO allies that they are going to announce a 5-percent defense spending target, 3.5 percent hard defense, 1.5 percent defense-related infrastructure. That is far higher than they were prepared to go under Biden. And Trump is a principal driver of that. So that's a win for Trump. The Ukrainians are continuing to get intelligence from the US and military support. But unlike under Biden, when it was aid to Ukraine, under Trump it is now seen as part of a critical-minerals deal. So the Americans are giving it in return for long-term investments that belong to the United States. They're protecting something that has direct value as opposed to the intangible value of democracy, rule of law and common values that Trump personally mostly rejects. And Ukraine is willing to accept the cease fire. Putin is not. Russia is not. So right now NATO looks successful, unlike the G7. Right now, Trump looks likely to have a much more significant and robust set of deliverables that come out of NATO. On Iran, NATO is generally much more supportive of what the US and Israel is doing militarily than they have been around Gaza. And so these are the headlines.
And so on the big issues, NATO's actually set up to be quite successful. Certainly far, far more so than just a month and a half ago, two months ago, when President Zelenskyy was in the Oval Office and Trump basically shut down the meeting saying "You don't have the cards," suspended the intelligence support. That was maybe the bottom of the NATO relations coming on the back of the Munich Security Conference and JD Vance, vice president's speech, sort of declaring that the Europeans were the principal adversaries. The NATO relationship has actually bounced quite a bit since then. And so I expect this is going to be a better summit.
HW: Ian, it is always a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you so much for your wisdom. I commented earlier before we started recording that you are always calm, not always calming. In this case, actually this was pretty calming too. So we're very grateful for your insight and happy that you could join us. We'll see you again soon.
IB: Very happy to join you, Thanks.
