STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Ian Bremmer is also listening with us. He is president of the Eurasia Group, a global political risk consultancy, and he joins us from - are you in New York, Ian?
IAN BREMMER: I am absolutely in New York, Steve.
INSKEEP: Got it, got it. Glad you're back with us. The president - I would say, watching this speech - ended in a fairly conventional way, talked about global cooperation for the good of humanity, actually got some applause from the diplomats...
BREMMER: Yeah.
INSKEEP: ...In the room. But how does that match with his recent actions?
BREMMER: Well, it doesn't match with starting a big war in Iran. Certainly, that's something that not only the American people didn't vote Trump in for, but also the rest of the world is very unhappy with. And they're paying for it, right? I mean, the inflation is a lot greater. The food cost spikes, the energy price spikes - a lot greater for most of the countries attending Trump's speech, especially in the Global South, and that's hurting them politically even though they had nothing to do with starting the war or continuing it.
There's also the big point that he made on Venezuela where he said, not only did he arrest the outlaw dictator Nicolás Maduro, but he promoted his oil deal and said, to the victor belongs the spoils. It would be hard to come up with a more antithetical statement to the United Nations charter that the Americans, of course, actually drafted back in San Francisco, World War II, on the ashes of that, than what Trump had to say. So I mean, clearly, his unilateralism, his transactionalism and his short-termism, while understood by the 193 member states of the United Nations, are not appreciated by them. And those aren't applause lines, Steve.
INSKEEP: What do you make of the President's statements on Iran? And Franco Ordoñez just a moment ago referred to them essentially musing over what to do. Maybe I should let them rebuild. Maybe I should drive them into hell. What does that tell you about the president's strategy and his understanding of the situation that he faces in that region?
BREMMER: Well, you could call the strategy mixed. You could say he doesn't know what to do. He doesn't want this war to be continuing. He thought it was going to be over briefly. President Trump had a huge win at the beginning of the year when he was able to not only remove Nicolás Maduro from power, but actually install essentially a regime that was much more aligned with the U.S. and hostile with countries like Cuba and China.
On the back of that, he decided to engage in a war in Iran that he thought would be over within days. He thought the Iranians were going to capitulate. They were ready to surrender. There was nothing left of them. You are seven months into this. It is still going on. It's very unpopular in the U.S. There are big costs for Americans, for those around the world.
So the fact that he's still musing about, I don't know if I'm going to negotiate, maybe I'll meet with the Iranian president - though he's not the guy that actually makes the decisions on the ground - or maybe I'll annihilate them - we've heard him talk about those choices literally on dozens of occasions over the course of the last seven months. And yet here we are.
Steve, the most remarkable thing about where the United States is on Iran has not been all the threats and the rhetoric. It's been the comparative constraint. It's the unwillingness to use ground troops, to take the oil, to attack Kharg Island - all of the things that potentially would be wildly escalatory against the much less powerful Iran but would also lead to major consequences for the global economy and for America's allies in the Gulf. And that's why Trump has been so restrained. So he's frustrated. He's impatient, but he doesn't have great options.
INSKEEP: There was this narrative that the president was desperate to get a deal before the midterm elections so that he could have a better economic picture to show to voters. Now he says in this speech, quote, "I believe we'll make a deal after the election." What is the logic, if any, to thinking that after the election, you'd have a better chance at making a deal with Iran?
BREMMER: There's not much logic to it. The logic is, I know that I can't get a deal done in the next several weeks. So why don't I focus on Greenland, where I can actually sign something that takes away what had been an unpopular policy, gets me in agreement with Europeans? And let's not focus as much on Iran for the coming weeks because diesel is at record levels, gas prices are high, and people are angry about it. So say, look, this is something that I'm going to resolve after the midterms. There's - it's not as if suddenly the Iranians are going to be complacent on the strait after Americans turn out at the poll.
INSKEEP: You mentioned Greenland. I'll just remind people if they missed it, the United States now has an agreement with Denmark that affirms U.S. military presence there, which already existed, and the U.S. says they're going to stop trying to take over Greenland. Can I ask about one other thing, Ian?
BREMMER: Sure.
INSKEEP: There's this meeting later in the week. Franco mentioned this, too. President Xi, President Trump - not at the United Nations, here in Washington. How are you thinking about the meeting and that stakes - the stakes?
BREMMER: I think the stakes, of course, are very high, except that both leaders are very incented to have the meeting go well, and it can work because unlike the U.S.-Iran war, where both sides are actually in conflict over outcomes that are mutually exclusive, here, the United States, President Trump has a short-term view on what he wants from the Chinese. He wants them to buy soybeans from farmers in red states. He wants to get TikTok in the hands of himself and his friends for political purposes. Xi Jinping is thinking long-term about influence over Taiwan, the South China Sea. And those two things are not mutually exclusive. You can get a short-term deal on that.
INSKEEP: Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, thanks so much.
BREMMER: My pleasure, Steve. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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