Trump's Iran, China & US actions have set 3 new stages | Fareed's Take roundup

Here's my take.Why is the most powerful country on the planet unable to get its way with a much smaller, weaker country that has been ravaged by economic sanctions and military strikes?At one level, the simplest way to understand America's problem in the Iran war is to use game theory.Donald Trump decided to play a game of chicken with Iran.Think of two drivers racing straight at each other.In these situations, if the stakes for one side are existential and for the other much lower, the side with those bigger stakes usually prevails.

For the Iranian regime, if they lose, there's a good chance they end up toppled and slaughtered.For Trump, it would be a bad weekend at Mar -a -Lago.It's easy to see why the Iranians would be more willing to lock their steering wheel in that game of chicken.But there's a broader reason why America has found it so difficult to handle Iran, one that is not just about Trump and this latest ill -conceived war.Ever since the Islamic regime took power in Iran, America has been of two minds about it.On the one hand, the U .

S.has had certain issues it wanted resolved, from the return of the hostages to nuclear limits.On the other hand, it wants to topple the regime, not just negotiate with it.There is a tension in these two attitudes.that has run through American foreign policy for almost half a century.Does Washington want to change certain policies of Iran, or does it want to change Iran?

If Washington negotiates with Tehran, inevitably there is give and take.There are concessions on both sides.There is some relaxation of hostilities.Above all, in engaging with it, the United States government is conferring a certain degree of legitimacy on the Islamic Republic.treating it as a serious negotiating partner, accepting that it represents Iran on the world stage.But that acceptance sits uneasily with some American elites, who feel that the Islamic Republic is illegitimate, should not exist, and Washington's only policy toward it should be to overthrow it.

And yet there are things Washington wants that only Iran can deliver.That is why even Ronald Reagan found himself secretly negotiating with the Iranian mullahs while publicly denouncing them.We can see the tension almost daily in Donald Trump's policy toward Iran.One social media post threatens to destroy Iranian civilization and bring an end to 47 years of evil.Another one that same day speaks of the progress being made in negotiations with Iran.Trump enters negotiations and seems optimistic about a deal with Iran, and in between rounds starts a war with Tehran and urges Iranians to overthrow their government.

Less than a week later, he's back to promising that if they agree to his demands, Iran will have a very bright future.America had a similarly contradictory attitude toward the Soviet Union.After the communists took control of Russia in 1917, Washington broke relations with it and even tried in some small ways to overthrow it.It took Franklin Delano Roosevelt about 15 years later to recognize its existence and exchange ambassadors with Moscow.The tension reemerged after World War II.In the 1970s, Henry Kissinger's policy of negotiation with the Soviet Union was pilloried on the right because it was seen as bolstering the standing of an evil empire.

Kissinger's response was always that America stood in ideological opposition to the Soviet Union, but that it also had certain national interests, like the control of nuclear weapons.which could not be handled without agreements with Moscow.Kissinger's equivalent in the Iran debate was Barack Obama.Obama's was the one administration to make a choice.It determined that while America might prefer another regime in Iran, it had to deal with this one to tackle the greatest danger to America's national interest, which, as with the Soviet case, involved nuclear weapons.The Iran nuclear deal was an effort to take the one most dangerous element of Iran's foreign policy and neutralize it.

And it succeeded at that.But for many on the right, the price was that it, in some sense, legitimized the regime.So Trump pulled the U .S.out of the deal, which then led to the discrediting of then -Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and the return of the hardliners in Tehran who ramped up Iran's enrichment program, which has brought Donald Trump right back to the same dilemma.Does he make a deal or take a stand?

At this point, it's clear that Trump wants a deal.But in making it, he might end up giving the Islamic Republic what it has been seeking for 47 years.unqualified acceptance, even from the most hardline elements of the United States.For Tehran, that is a prize worth many concessions.

Regular viewers know that I have not been a fan of Donald Trump's foreign policy in his second term.From threatening to seize Greenland and annex Canada, unilaterally raising tariffs sky high, to the fiasco of the Iran war, Trump has been reckless, chaotic, and deeply destabilizing.But he might well turn out to have the right instincts and perhaps even the right policy in one crucial arena, the U .S.-China relationship.In Trump's recent interactions with Xi Jinping, we saw a version of him

rarely on display.He was respectful, almost deferential, eager to emphasize their personal rapport.Xi, by contrast, remained formal, disciplined, and never especially warm.The asymmetry was revealing.Donald Trump is obsessed with power.More than ideology or values, of course, he thinks in terms of leverage and dominance.

He insults European allies because he understands how dependent they remain on American military protection and access to U .S.markets.Trump senses weakness and exploits it.But with China, he has come to understand something that much of Washington still struggles to accept emotionally.Beijing has enormous strength of its own, economic, technological, industrial, even military, and can wield it effectively.

So Trump has evolved from belligerence toward a more complicated mix of rivalry and cooperation.That may be what this relationship requires.Contrast Trump's visit with the first meeting of Biden officials with their Chinese counterparts in Anchorage in 2021.The Americans launched into a televised public scolding of China over human rights cyber attacks in the international order.China's diplomats responded angrily, in kind.It was less a serious diplomatic exchange than a cable news shouting match.

Many centrist Democrats live in fear of being portrayed as soft on China.So they often overcompensate rhetorically, adopting maximalist language and escalating symbolic confrontations.After showing skepticism toward Trump's China tariffs during the campaign, Joe Biden kept nearly all of them in place.Biden never visited China as president, nor did he invite.Xi Jinping to Washington.The Biden team endorsed the claim, leveled by the first Trump administration, that China's actions in Xinjiang constituted genocide, a term that evokes industrial -scale extermination campaigns like the Holocaust or Rwanda.

China's prison and re -education camps in Xinjiang are brutal and horrific, and dozens of scholars have called its actions against the Uyghurs a genocide.But as The Economist noted, it is not what most people think of when conjuring up the word genocide.Trump's superpower is that he cannot be attacked from the right.He came to power after the 2016 election, railing against Beijing, blaming it for lost manufacturing jobs, trade imbalances, and America's industrial decline.In a sense, the analogy is not Nixon going to China, but rather Ronald Reagan, the uber -hawk to the right of Nixon, going to the Soviet Union.Trump may be capable of a similar pivot precisely because his base will follow wherever he leads.

One need only look at how quickly many MAGA figures reverse themselves on intervention in Iran once Trump signals support for military action.Why would a more cooperative approach toward China make sense?Because the truth is that China is not the Soviet Union.The Soviet economy was smaller than Italy's by the end of the Cold War, by one UN measure.China, by contrast, is the world's second -largest economy, the leading trading partner for more than 120 countries, and a technological powerhouse in fields ranging from electric vehicles and batteries to drones, advanced manufacturing, and even artificial intelligence.It produces more manufacturing output than the United States, Japan, and Germany put together.

Trying to launch a full -scale Cold War against such a country would not resemble the struggle against Moscow when the world was already divided.It would mean tearing apart the global economy itself.American consumers would face higher prices and supply shocks.U .S.companies would lose access to one of the world's largest markets.

Universities would lose many top students.The danger would not simply be economic pain.It would be the creation of two hostile technological and geopolitical blocks spiraling toward increasing confrontation.Of course, the U .S.and China are rivals.

That is unavoidable in a bipolar world.They will compete economically, militarily, and strategically for decades to come.But rivalry need not mean total rupture.In the weeks before he died, Henry Kissinger noted to me that leaders of both countries should keep in mind how, in 1914, nationalist competition, pursued with no concerns about its consequences, led to a world war that upended the entire global order.In an age of AI, cyberwarfare, and nuclear weapons, maintaining channels of dialogue and cooperation is more important than ever.The two countries should compete fiercely while still trading, talking, and collaborating where possible on nuclear stability, AI safety, pandemics, and financial crises.

During the Cold War, Washington and Moscow maintained arms control talks even at moments of intense hostility.because both sides understood that unmanaged rivalry could end in catastrophe.That remains true today.And if Donald Trump, for reasons rooted less in philosophy than instinct, has come to recognize this basic reality, then on this issue at least, his pragmatism makes sense.

I think he is a more mature, more disciplined version of himself than he was in his first term.That's what Jeff Bezos said about President Trump this week.I'm puzzled by this statement from an obviously intelligent and accomplished businessman.I look at Trump's second term, and I see the ham -handed efforts to annex Greenland and Canada, massive tariff hikes on most of the world, a cruel immigration crackdown that was both lawless and ineffective, and the sudden launching of a war without U .N.sanction, congressional consultation, or any clear strategy.

If this is maturity, I would shudder to think what Trump's immature phase would look like.The opposite is actually closer to the truth.Trump's first term was disciplined, more disciplined not because he was disciplined, but because he was constrained.He often deferred, however grudgingly, to the Republican establishment and national security elites.His early legislative agenda was shaped by Speaker Paul Ryan and executed by Chief of Staff Reince Priebus.Top economic adviser Gary Cohn repeatedly talked him out of the global tariff hikes he had long wanted.

The generals whom he surrounded himself with urged caution on Iran, support for NATO, and arms for Ukraine.The lesson Trump drew from that first term, however, was not that expertise mattered.It was that experts were not loyal enough.After the January 6th attack, you see, many of his senior officials distanced themselves from him.Some denounced him.So this time, he has surrounded himself with people whose chief qualification is fealty.

The less distinguished the resume, the better.Such people owe everything to him.That process has given way to impulse procedure to instinct governmentto gut.But the starkest difference between Trump 1 .0 and Trump 2 .0 is not policy.It is enrichment.

It's scale, it's brazenness, it's open contempt for restraint.The day before Bezos made his remarks, the acting Attorney General of the United States announced that the Justice Department would grant Trump, his family, and his businesses immunity from all audits and investigations for any past tax -related misconduct, and the announcement claimed it would last forever.The week before, Trump disclosed that his stock portfolio had executed around 3 ,700 trades in the first quarter alone, a staggering number, many following a suspiciously convenient pattern, a stock bought shortly before a government action or statement that benefited it.On January 6th of this year, for example, the Trump portfolio bought half a million dollars of Nvidia stock A week later, NVIDIA received U .S.clearance to sell its H200 chips to China.

That was not all.The Commerce Department this week announced an investment in a quantum computing company in which a member of the Trump family holds interests.And don't forget the 500 million UAE investment in a Trump family crypto venture, the two billion dollar UAE investment using that company's stablecoin, the flurry of new Trump Organization real estate deals or the drone company in which the Trump family invested and that later miraculously received a Pentagon contract.One number says it all.Reuters calculates that from the first half of 2024 to the first half of 2025, the Trump organization's income rose from $51 million to $864 million.This does suggest discipline, a relentless discipline.

devoted to monetizing the presidency.But somehow I doubt that is what Jeff Bezos had in mind.The Trump Organization has maintained that Trump himself, his family, and the organization don't have any role in directing or influencing specific investments.The deeper question is why is this possible?And why has it produced so little resistance?Scholars of corruption have long assumed that in advanced democracies, graft becomes subtle and institutional.

Campaign donations, lobbying networks, consulting contracts.Trump has taken the elaborate machinery of an advanced industrial state and used it to accelerate something far cruder, old -fashioned personal grift.The public may be troubled, but his MAGA base doesn't seem to be, and that is the only constituency that could restrain him.In a hyper -polarized country, corruption is no longer judged as an objective moral failing.It is filtered through tribe.If our side does it, it's either fake news, clever politics, or totally justified revenge.

This reveals a deeper weakness in the American system.The Founding Fathers built a magnificent constitutional framework, but it rested on an assumption that they did not spell out.that public officials would retain some shared commitment to unwritten civic norms.Madison's design, ambition must be made to counteract ambition, assumed that Congress would jealously guard its powers against the executive.He did not imagine a political party that would surrender its institutional ambition to the personality cult of one man.The legal guardrails are weaker than most Americans realize.

The president is largely exempt from standard federal conflict of interest law.Many of the actions I've described would expose even the senior -most cabinet secretary to grave legal peril.For a president, the Supreme Court has decided that the only remedy for official acts is impeachment and two -thirds of the Senate voting for conviction, which in our partisan age requires a civic miracle.The mature response to these travesties is not revenge, but a restoration of the rule of law.After Trump, the urgent task for the American Republic will be to turn norms into statutes, curtail the ethical immunities of the presidency, and find legal ways to ensure that the highest public office in the world can never again become a platform for family business.