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When Empires Stop Building: The Iran War and the End of American Soft Power | Bruno Maçães
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- [00:01]
Demetri Kofinas
What's up everybody? My name is Demetri Kofinas and you're listening to Hidden Forces, a podcast that inspires investors, entrepreneurs and everyday citizens to challenge consensus narratives and learn how to think critically about the systems of power shaping our world. My guest on this episode of Hidden Forces is Bruno Massais, a geopolitical strategist and the former Minister of European affairs for Portugal, whose latest book, titled World Builders, explores the intersection of technology and geopolitical politics. This is a special abbreviated episode, one of several I'm publishing in quick succession to capture the views of different guests on the rapidly unfolding U.S. and Israeli military campaign against Iran. In the conversation that follows, Bruno and I discuss the ongoing bombing campaign initiated by the United States and Israel against the Islamic Republic following the breakdown of negotiations over the country's nuclear program, including a conversation about why it happened, Secretary of State Marco Rubio's comments about the role Israel played in precipitating America's involvement, and the degree to which Trump's own instincts and political calculus shaped the decision to assassinate the country's leader and initiate what may prove to be the most destructive American led war the region has seen since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. We also discuss what Washington and Tel Aviv's strategic visions may be for what comes after the fractures within Trump's own political base, and how early battlefield developments are already complicating the administration's attempts to establish a coherent narrative. Lastly, we discuss where this conflict fits within Bruno's framework of world building and American decline, how the United States appears to be abandoning soft power in favor of unbridled military force, and how this plays out in capitals around the world, especially in Beijing. If you want access to the transcripts and intelligence reports for this and other episodes, which include summary sections with key takeaways, you can access those by subscribing to our super nerd tier at HiddenForces IO subscribe, where you can also join in on the conversation by becoming a member of the Hidden Forces genius community, which includes Q and A calls with guests, discounted access to third party research and analysis and and in person events like our intimate dinners and weekend retreats. And if you still have questions, feel free to send an email to infoodenforces IO and I or someone from our team will get right back to you. And with that, please enjoy this extremely timely and important conversation with my guest Bruno Masais. Bruno Masai welcome to Hidden Forces.
- [02:48]
Bruno Maçães
Great to be here.
- [02:49]
Demetri Kofinas
I'm brushing up on my Portuguese. Bruno, in case you haven't noticed.
- [02:53]
Bruno Maçães
That's much better than last time. Good job.
- [02:56]
Demetri Kofinas
So you are my second guest. I decided that I was going to bring on a few previous guests and some new ones this week to explore what's going on in Iran in real time. And I already cautioned you that this is not my modus operandi. It's not where I feel comfortable. Where I feel comfortable is I pre book prepare, list out a bunch of questions, but just given how significant this moment feels, and it does feel significant, it feels different. You know, I just finished recording an episode last week with Odd Arne Westad, who wrote a book called the Coming Storm, and he compares the present time to 1914 and of course, after the assassination of the Archduke. There's a famous anecdote of the Kaiser having been off on vacation somewhere and not being in too much of a rush to get back to Berlin because he assumed that this would be just yet another Balkan crisis like the previous ones and this one. Similarly, I think maybe people were hoping, thinking, praying when the bombing began that this would be just like the previous bombing campaigns against Iran. But it does not feel that way. It feels different. And I'm curious to get your perspective on what you think of what has been unfolding in the last few days. And I should mention we're recording this on Wednesday, March 4th.
- [04:10]
Bruno Maçães
Yeah, it feels different. I've been arguing it was coming for a long time. If there are any of my clients that ask me about this, listening, they will know. But obviously some of my texts as well talked about that. I think it was inevitable in large measure, because that's what Israel wanted. And I think Israel has the leverage to pull the United States into this. But I think Trump himself was attracted by the idea, so he was coming. It was more or less inevitable. It's different. It doesn't mean that now things have entirely spiraled out of control. I think Trump himself still has the ability to pull back if he so wishes. Perhaps not for long, but he could do that this week, tomorrow, this weekend. I think that's still possible, but maybe he's not that interested.
- [04:53]
Demetri Kofinas
Do you think that if Netanyahu hadn't been lobbying for this, or if there weren't people who had donated money to Trump's campaign, like Mariam Adelson, who are enthusiastically pro Israel, that Trump would not have embarked on this path?
- [05:06]
Bruno Maçães
I'm not so focused on the question of the lobby. I think it's even simpler than that. I think it's politically impossible in the United States for the US to allow Israel to fight an existential war against Iran on its own, it's simply impossible.
- [05:22]
Demetri Kofinas
Well, this is exactly what Rubio said. I mean, he got a lot of criticism for the comments afterwards, and he tried to walk them back. But the essence of the comments were that the administration knew that there was going to be an Israeli attack on Iran and that it would precipitate a retaliatory attack against American forces in the region. If we didn't preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, that we would suffer higher casualties. And so we had to get ahead of that by just attacking them ourselves, which doesn't really make a whole lot of sense on the face of it either.
- [05:53]
Bruno Maçães
I don't think that's the best account of how this works, but it points in the right direction. But I don't think Iran would have attacked the US if it was a purely Israeli attack against Iran. They've communicated that clearly in the past, and they've done that in the past when it was only Israel a year ago October. Now, what I think happens is that every president knows that after the first day, the US Would necessarily have to join when the missiles started raining on Tel Aviv, with the pressure from all kinds of places in Congress, from his own party, even from the Democrats and so on. So if you know you're going to be pulled in later under a lot of criticism, you might as well do it from the beginning. I think it's as simple as that. And so that helped make up Trump's mind. Now, if Israel was not interested in this, there was still a very old enmity with Iran. There was still the sense, which I think is attractive to Trump as far as I can read him, that getting rid of these old sort of nemesis of the U.S. cuba, Venezuela and Iran they've been talking about since I was born. And being the president that finally was able to get rid of these threats, I don't think it's going to happen. But anyway, he might be tempted by that idea, but I also think he would be afraid of the consequences. He would be afraid of people in the Republican Party, in the MAGA movement that don't like this at all. He would be afraid because I think he's actually quite perceptive about how these things can quickly get out of control. And they might. Some of them already have. We'll talk about that. So I think without Israel, it would be sort of a toss up. I'm not sure how it would have gone, but, you know, Israel just made it clear that nothing else would be acceptable, and that no American president could allow himself to do that, not even Obama. No, it's simply not possible. It's impossible under current circumstances in the US for that to happen.
- [07:42]
Demetri Kofinas
Do you believe that there is some form of assurance that the Iranians could have possibly given the Trump administration during these latest negotiations over Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile programs that would have prevented this from happening, that would have not led the United States and Israel down this road?
- [07:59]
Bruno Maçães
Yeah, yeah, theoretically, yes. It's the kind of assurances and concessions that no sovereign country would be able to do. But, yes, if they would perhaps replace the leadership or commit to that, get rid of the ballistic missile program, allow the US to go in and check everything. But, you know, besides this being essentially a surrender and a surrender of sovereignty, it would also put Iran in the position where they would be attacked in the future without having any defenses. They would become Syria, where Israel can enter bomb as it wishes, get out again, mow the lawn, as the expression goes. So, yes, theoretically, yes. But it was never anything that could be practically accepted, not just by a fanatical leadership, but I would say by any leadership of any country. I don't think the US ever made a genuine effort to put anything on the table that could be plausibly accepted.
- [08:52]
Demetri Kofinas
Is your view that this was driven largely or entirely by concerns over nuclear breakout?
- [08:59]
Bruno Maçães
No, I don't think so. I think from the point of view of Israel, Iran is a powerful country, that the doctrine in Israel increasingly seems to be, or perhaps has been already for a long time, that you don't allow any power to be present in your region, that essentially you want a landscape where you can maneuver more or less freely without having any serious rival. And from the point of view of the U.S. i emphasize cultural, historical factors. The fact that Iran has affirmed itself as the preeminent adversary of the United States over decades after the Cold War, that's a choice they made. And maybe it was mistaken and maybe it was imprudent, I'm even inclined to say that's the case. They could have pursued many of their goals without turning the US into this ideological enemy. And from the US the same thing, as you know very well for decades now, Islamic radicalism of different kinds, Sunni or Shia, has been presented as I remember having discussions even in Silicon Valley. People really buy this idea that it's, on the one hand, America's main enemy, ideological, political enemy. On the other hand. There was, I don't know if it still seemed this way, but there was the idea that it's like the last enemy before the end of history, that this is the last enemy the US has to get rid of. Things became now more complicated with China and so on, but it used to be a line 20 years ago. So culturally, emotionally, ideologically, this is how things have been developing for decades.
- [10:27]
Demetri Kofinas
So what is the strategy here, do you think?
- [10:30]
Bruno Maçães
Strategy, unfortunately, seems to be just a strategy of destruction. I think Israel would prefer this is on the record by many current and former officials. I think tankers in Israel that a divided, fragmented, weak Iran, potentially even Iran, that would follow the Syrian model of an ongoing civil war of frozen conflict of some kind, a very weak Iran. From the point of view of the US I don't think there's the same kind of conviction that this is the best scenario, although they might accept it in Washington, but certainly get rid of the regime, assassinate Khamenei and be able to say that the regime has been defeated after 37 years. I think that's the purpose. Nothing else present to the American electorate a spectacular victory of some kind. But that's absolutely this time around, as opposed to 2003 and the Iraq war, there's no plan, there's no vision. There's not even any desire for what Iran should become after the regime.
- [11:29]
Demetri Kofinas
So when Bush invaded Iraq in 2003, if I remember correctly, a majority. It was a small majority, but a majority of the American people at that time supported the war. Of course, they supported it because of a false construct that the media was complicit in creating. And then eventually, over time, the war became unpopular. In this case, it seems, I don't have poll numbers here, but it just seems to me that a minority of Trump's base, forget the broader electorate, but a minority of Trump's base seems to support this war. And he was already heading into it with fractures within his own base caused by the Jeffrey Epstein story, which also, it's worth asking, do you think that has any role to play here?
- [12:16]
Bruno Maçães
I personally don't.
- [12:17]
Demetri Kofinas
Okay. So to me, there are a few red flags here to throw out. And one of them is that unlike Bush, who, again, for whom and all previous presidents, Lyndon Johnson, any president from a Democratic country who goes to war has to consider that he or she has a small window in which to show progress and articulate a clear theory of victory that seems achievable and that will eventually result in a resolution of the conflict so that people can go about their daily lives before losing political support. In this case, it doesn't seem that the president had political support. To begin with, and he's heading into midterm elections, and so I don't quite understand how exactly he's going to be able to get to the high ground that he needs to get to in order to credibly signal to the Iranians that he has the latitude to maneuver domestically. So how big of a deal are the domestic political dynamics in this country for being able to sustain any kind of viable war effort, do you think?
- [13:19]
Bruno Maçães
I see this as a symptom of deep decline in American political culture, institutions, structures, the American regime as a whole. So that is reflected in the way the leadership decides things, without knowledge, without reflection, without planning and so on, and extremely emotional, without any appeal to principles, ideas. But I think it's also reflected in the electorate and the public. That also is not particularly structured, also doesn't quite know what he wants, also is not particularly informed. I'm going to insist on these points a lot in our conversation, I'm afraid, because I think it's actually the most important thing here. And so I say, you know, the Trump administration don't know what they're doing, but I'm afraid the elector also doesn't quite know what is happening, doesn't quite know what he wants, is very vulnerable to all kinds of propaganda, social media, emotion, television emotion and narrative and so on. So I don't think it will be that clear that we have a kind of disordered administration and confused administration that will be subject to scrutiny by the electorate. I think it's worse than that. We have a confused administration that is not going to be subject to scrutiny because the electorate is also confused. And what comes out of this, I'm not sure the electoral is particularly vulnerable. Things seem to be going well. An assassination of an old enemy, that looks fantastic. So I think for a moment, people might even inside the party and the MAGA movement be quite happy. Now, if things start to go wrong, it could be different, but the process is not going to be structured. It's not going to be irrational. Inflation is going to be important. Deaths of American servicemen is going to be important, and a few other things will be important. We were already talking a lot about potential significant setbacks on the battlefield. There's a lot of fog of war. But, for example, today there seems to be kind of confirmation that a really expensive and sophisticated radar system was destroyed by Iran worth more than a billion dollars. We saw Consulate Dubai yesterday on fire. That's the second thing that I think is important about in this narrative of decline, because I interpret what is happening in terms of a process of decline, of American decline. And first, we see that in the way the war is conducted. But even on the battlefield, it might turn into debt, it might turn into a surprise how America is in fact, more vulnerable than we thought after the extraordinary successes of the last three decades, in fact, because even Iraq was not, and even Afghanistan were not at the feet of this kind. Right. They were a political defeat, but they were not exactly a military defeat in the sense that doubts were created about how advanced American military technology is. That was not the case in Afghanistan. It's a different kind of problem. But now if you see that US doesn't have the ability to stop some of these Iranian attacks because Iran maybe had access to sophisticated equipment that could have come from elsewhere, it's another thing for us to discuss. So I think that will also significantly affect American public opinion. If you start to see these things now, I'm afraid. And you'll know better. I do. I'm afraid that some of these things, the transparency that would be necessary is also not there. American media is not what it used to be 20 years ago. So I'm not sure how much access the American public is going to have to what is really happening Today. Peter Exec said that if journalists reporting certain facts are trying to make the
- [16:53]
Demetri Kofinas
President look bad, he also recently made some comments about raining death and destruction all day on Iran, something to that effect. Part of the problem also, it's worth just repeating it always and forever for people to hear it over and over again, which is that the modern information environment is so chaotic and there are so many different windows that we all have open from which we get information. It's less verifiable. We haven't even tried to verify it ourselves. I just see fragments in my head as I'm sort of careening into this interview. So I actually have a few questions that tie into your previous book, God Mode. Actually, your book's not called God Mode, but as we establish, it should have been called God Mode. And that's what I was going to ask you, but since you brought up the U.S. i'm just curious, what is the mood in Europe right now? You're based out of Portugal, so Europe is not a monolith. But to the extent that you've been exposed to broader sources of news across the continent, based on what you're reading, et cetera, what is the view there?
- [17:52]
Bruno Maçães
It is kind of a monolith, actually, with the possible exception of Spain. I mean, it's just a sense of enormous dependency on the Us. I even compare it, maybe exaggerating a little bit, to what might have been the political situation in India in the 18th century, as the East India Company started to arrive and the Brits started to arrive. There were still independent political states in India, but they were starting to fall under British power. And many times it started as military power. And often, if you read that history, it's the Brits that offered protection to some of these princely states in India. And then obviously, if you're being protected by someone else, you're also dependent. Now, some people have a kind of false consciousness, and they try to pretend to themselves that this is not happening or that it's a good thing. Others are starting to get angry. Others feel a bit humiliated. But I would say, and this may be surprising to some of your audience, I'd say this is really what is happening in Europe. It's nothing else. Our relation with us is now becoming very contested, very contested. It was never contested. That no longer feels like a partnership. Now it feels like a relation of dependence, of subservience. We are starting to be a lot more like Latin America than Europe of the last 70 years. And that might create a lot of anti Americanism down the road, as it did in Latin America, but for the time being, people are trying to negotiate that. They're trying to think about it. They're trying to perhaps weather the storm, thinking that we can go back to the previous model after Trump. Some people believe that. Others are trying, you know, to appeal to Trump, to convince him that we are friends and partners still. This is what is happening in Europe right now, more important than whatever else is happening. And others want to develop a truly autonomous, independent, genuinely independent Europe. That's more what I'm interested in. But I don't. You know, there's some voices in Europe that agree with me. We talk a lot, but not many. Not many. I would say, among intellectuals, a handful for the time being, but could grow. We have a WhatsApp group and so on to discuss some of these things, but we're not the majority by any means.
- [20:03]
Demetri Kofinas
So your previous book, the one that you published most recently, is titled World Builders. It doesn't feel like we're building much these days. Now, I want to concede that I've been exposed to some very compelling arguments by people that are much smarter than I am, and I buy into much of the arguments that they propose, which essentially fall along the lines that Trump is trying to reset America's relations to the rest of the world and is doing that in many cases, and I think doing it successfully in certain instances. So I don't want to suggest that it's our job to build this world or to build it in the way that we did when we were a unipolar power. I think we should very much be operating with an understanding of our constraints and our limitations. And I will also acknowledge that in previous instances, I have worried that we've embarked on a path towards disaster, bitten off more than we can chew, and Trump has proven me wrong in every instance. So I say this to communicate my humility and openness to a variety of interpretations here. Having said that, it seems that this is different because of the sheer scale of the challenge. We're talking about a country of 90 plus million people who we seek apparently to bomb into compliance and convince the more moderate elements of their leadership, or what remains of their leadership, to strike a deal with us on better terms than what we were able to get before we bomb the shit out of their country to channel George Carlin. So I'm curious, where does this conflict or strategy fit within your world building framework and within the construct of imperial decline and US China competition that you've written and spoken about so profusely?
- [21:55]
Bruno Maçães
Right. Like every author, I'd say it fits very well. World building is difficult. It's what the US did after World War II. Now, the question I think you're asking is, is it happening again? Because in my book, world building is happening. All the building and rebuilding, the construction is permanent and it may be coming from different places. Now, is the U.S. sort of rebuilding in American world, or is the U.S. in fact forgetting about world building? Because to be a world builder, you have to operate on a higher level, building culture, building institutions, building frameworks, building worldwide technologies, and so on. It's not just about acting freely. It seems to me that the US now is sort of enjoying its own power that came from its efforts in the past, but it's no longer building an American world now. I think you're right to say that we should keep an open mind and some of these things might work or not. That's what I spend most of my time thinking about and analyzing. I don't see much success, to be honest. I see the success that happens in the very short term, but world building is in the medium, long term, even something like Venezuela, what exactly is the success? It's episodic. You kidnap a guy. If the US was able, for example, to really use Venezuela's natural resources, and perhaps this could be an advantage you would have over China. But there's two problems with this. First, I don't think that's going to happen because I no longer believe that the US has the organizational capacity to do something like that. It doesn't have the organizational capacity to do much simpler things like build high speed railway in California. So I don't think it has the capacity to bring the Venezuelan energy industry back to life. It's. And second, even if he was able to do this, this is the energy sources of the past, it's not the energy source of the future. I think Elon Musk on this is extremely good. It's one of the few things where I think he's fantastic that, you know, if you only compare the kind of energy that can come from fossil fuels to the unlimited energy that can come from the sun, I know we now have the technology to exploit those resources. So first, the US Is not going to be able to do that. And second, if it was, even if it was successful, China is doing something potentially much more important to really harness these sources of energy. And then if we turn to Iran, even less here I think I have a very easy case that what the US Is doing is extremely destructive from the point of view of American power. But maybe that's what we should turn to.
- [24:16]
Demetri Kofinas
One more question here. Again, and I'm not just signaling here, I genuinely say this with humility because I have been reticent in a number of instances when I've seen Trump reprice risk. I mean, I think I was actually having this conversation with someone recently and I said that I don't know to what degree it is that Trump is more of a risk taker. I mean, certainly he is more of a risk taker, but I also think that there were certain legacy positions that he inherited and views and trepidations that the national security state and the foreign policy community had that he essentially repriced. And I think his view on Iran was they're not as strong as everyone thinks they are and we're going to go after them and we're going to expose the paper tiger for what it is. I tweeted out a few days ago when I was seeing people compare this to the invasion of Iraq. And I said that I don't think that that's a good comparison for many reasons, but not just because it was a land invasion. And that actually the less obvious comparison is Ukraine, the Russian invasion of Ukraine because it carried the same potential to go horribly wrong and did go horribly wrong. And because post Soviet Russia under Putin has increasingly come to rely on its military and military strength to will its way towards the reconstitution of parts of the Soviet imperium, but without all the ideological baggage of communism. And it feels like what the United States is doing is something similar, abandoning its rhetoric about liberal democracy and soft power projection and instead relying on hard power and seeing every diplomatic or political problem as a military one. Would you agree with that? Does that resonate?
- [26:02]
Bruno Maçães
Yeah, absolutely. It's not just abandoning soft power. It's bigger than soft power. I would call it structural power because, you know, soft power, I think most people define it in terms of culture, ideas, but structural power is also hard power, economic, technological, political power. But I think the US Is abandoning all of that. And it's really attracted by just sheer force. And I happen to believe as a sort of philosophical premise, that you don't build empires on the basis of sheer force. It just doesn't work. So if the US Is going down that road, it won't work. But I'll recognize very easily that the level of disaster and calamity that you have for Russia in the Ukraine war is not what we're talking about in the case of this war. I mean, if you want to have an equivalent, the equivalent would be for the US to just put a couple hundred tanks, just would slowly start marching on Tehran. And the conviction would be that Iranians would applaud and come out on the street with flowers. This is what Putin did. His lack of knowledge of Ukraine and what Ukraine was, the complete collapse of his information system. The flattery around him, which is. Trump has a lot of flattery around him, but not at that level. So, no, we're not talking about that. But the fact that we're not talking about that level of incompetence doesn't mean that this is not incompetence in a different way. That will take longer to manifest itself and perhaps won't be as spectacular, but you will have a huge impact because also the US Is starting from the point of view of almost infallibility. And so every setback will have a higher cost. And I think we're already starting to see a number of setbacks.
- [27:38]
Demetri Kofinas
Give me your most realistic scenario for how this works out, and then give me your optimistic, best case scenario.
- [27:45]
Bruno Maçães
Well, optimistic would be taco, right? I don't have to explain this to your audience.
- [27:49]
Demetri Kofinas
Trump chickens out. Isn't that what taco is?
- [27:52]
Bruno Maçães
Yeah, I don't think the term is good. It's not chickening out. It's just that he likes to operate at the level of narrative, but not at the level of sort of hard reality. So he creates, he goes, he kidnaps Maduro, but he doesn't want to create a democracy in Venezuela. So it looks like he's going into Venezuela to transform into a democracy. Some people would say, no, this is not what he's doing. He's just creating a narrative, which is much easier to create a narrative, to sort of implement a script than to implement a revolutionary program. So I would try to come up with a better expression than tackle, but let's use it cuz it's the common one. Also.
- [28:31]
Demetri Kofinas
It's a more pragmatic and I much prefer the idea of something like that than trying to do a full regime, societal, cultural revolution.
- [28:39]
Bruno Maçães
Absolutely. I think this is the great merit that Trump has shown so far is that he knows it's not easy to operate in the real world and he prefers to operate at the level of narrative. Now this could happen again. In fact, I think at this point it's maybe even the safer bet because it's happened so many times, particularly with China, but also Greenland and so on. It's happened so many times that it might be the safer bet. And I know many investors are thinking that's what's going to happen. What would that mean? You know, in five days he would say, you know, I have a new leadership in Iran, I have a deal. They agree to this or that. In the meantime we've destroyed a lot of their equipment anyway and so we're stopping. I would probably give this like 60% odds actually. Now there's a question of whether he would be able to do that as opposed to other cases, because Iran might not stop, might at this point be unstoppable. He may have now taken things too far. So I would call that optimistic, even though already so many people died and it would be for nothing and no one would understand what he got out of it that he couldn't be for. Apart from a kind of immediate triumph, the less optimistic scenario, complete destruction in Iran. Complete destruction of Iranian society. Tens of thousands, potentially over time, growing to hundreds of thousands of dead. Potentially a civil war with different militias, armed groups that are being armed as we speak by both Israel and the US in western Iran, but also with consequences for the US for countries in the region. I think even if the Iranian state collapses, there will always be powerful militias around with access to some drones. And Dubai is just across the Gulf. They can close the airport, they can destroy a desalination plant, they can kill a lot of Americans. It's not Syria because of the geographic position, but also because you're going to have 600,000 Iranian military, well trained, very, very capable, sophisticated, that will certainly be available to enact some kind of revenge against American forces. So I think complete chaos and destruction in Iran would have enormous costs for the US and its partners. But I can see this happening as well.
- [30:48]
Demetri Kofinas
What are the important things that you're looking out for in the days and weeks ahead to help you come to a better determination of in what direction things are moving?
- [30:56]
Bruno Maçães
Trump's words when he suggests we may reach a deal. It would be great to have someone like Delsey Rodriguez in Venezuela. It would be great to have someone like her. He said a couple days ago about Iran. This shows his, in a way, crazy, because he doesn't understand what Iran is, but it also shows he might be looking for something like that, the new supreme leader, what kind of person he is, if he'd be able to compromise and to accept Khamenei's death or if he want. I also think it would be difficult for Iran to accept anything like this simply because. And this I don't know if Trump is aware, but he has consumed in just one year America's credibility that was gained over a century. No reasonable person, no sane person, would trust Trump's word or even America's word. You negotiating with someone could be assassinated the day after. I, in their place, would not reach a deal with us because my conviction would be that deal is not worth the paper it's written on and that I could be assassinated the next day, so I might as well fight on. This is a problem because I can't see how a deal will be reached if there aren't any basic conditions of trust and credibility.
- [32:05]
Demetri Kofinas
Well, certainly. And not to diminish what you said in the significant hit that our own credibility has taken and all the obvious ways in which that makes building trust and finding compromise more difficult. But the more immediate question for me seems to revolve around incentives and whether this latest campaign of bombing is going to make it more difficult for moderates within the country to find the political capital to make a deal and provide credible assurances to the Americans that they can actually form a governing consensus that keeps the hardliners in check. In other words, the potentially more consequential issue for me arises from Iran's own politics and the power dynamics within the country and whether there's anyone left to do a deal with who can represent the various factions vying for power within Iran.
- [32:57]
Bruno Maçães
No, that's True. I'm not a big believer that there are completely different orientations inside Iran, unless it's the opposition. But inside the regime, I don't think there really is. There are ideological commitments that go back to the revolution. Those ideological commitments are almost impossible to abandon. We have them as well in Western society, in Europe, you know, in Europe, European integration, good relations between Germany and France, a certain kind of liberalism, women's rights, you know, imagine it would be to ask us to renounce those things. It's simply not, not possible. It's beyond possible.
- [33:32]
Demetri Kofinas
I mean, the Germans tried to do a deal with France in 1940.
- [33:36]
Bruno Maçães
Right. I'm talking about sort of post war ideological structures. And sometimes they're so deep that they simply cannot be abandoned. You choose destruction over abandoning these things because they're just your identity. And Iran has that. And a difficult element that's created trouble in the past. And I noticed this in my three visits, and I did talk to officials. And also outside Iran is this commitment to full sovereignty, but a kind of sovereignty that, for example, doesn't exist in Europe, where you don't compromise on any element of your sovereignty. And this is very foundational for the Islamic Republic. So I actually don't believe that the really foundational elements are religious or theological. They are more political. I disagree with the mainstream on that. And so it will be very difficult to sacrifice elements of Iranian sovereignty even to ensure survival. And that would be allowing American troops to come in and to supervise some processes, or allow Trump to play a role in picking the leadership and many other elements that would simply go against foundational elements of the regime. So I agree with you that this is also a problem. So we have those two problems, that America doesn't have a lot of credibility and that Iran doesn't have a lot of flexibility to accept certain things that we may regard as plausible. But from their point of view, they're not.
- [34:57]
Demetri Kofinas
What do you think the view is from Beijing?
- [34:59]
Bruno Maçães
I don't quite know. It's a bit of a black box. I would think that they are thinking deliberating very seriously whether they should support Iran militarily and the risks of that, whether it can be done. We talked about Ukraine. A big difference is that, you know, if this was a repetition of the Ukraine war, we'd have China heavily supporting Iran and bleeding the US And I would imagine that lots of people in Beijing are thinking this, but it has enormous risks. And by the way, I'm also curious about how the US Would react to this. They even might have the logistic capacity to do it, because geography in this case helps. Through Pakistan or even through many of the large cargo ships that make that route all the time between China and Iran, this may have happened already over the past six months. There are some news about it limited. So if we do find out that Iran has capabilities that we didn't think it had, for example, to destroy a radar or some electronic warfare capabilities, let's see what happens in coming days. If American fighters are still shot down or other things happen, then we may start thinking about that. I would imagine that if it happens, it would be sort of more low key in the sense of just keeping Iran's ability to manufacture drones and some missiles rather than highly sophisticated equipment. But America is certainly counting on Iran running out of munitions. And I think one thing that China will be thinking about is whether they want that to happen or whether they could help in some form. We won't know much about this because obviously the US Even if it knows this is happening, won't make it public. So we may only know about these factors a little down the road, maybe years down the road. It's very difficult for you and me to know what exactly is happening here.
- [36:52]
Demetri Kofinas
So I feel like there's an argument to be made that this makes the Chinese even more reticent to engage the Americans in any kind of conflict because truly they don't know what this president is capable or willing to do. Now, how much of this is. Trump is famously very much a fan of Richard Nixon. They share a lot of friends in common. Nixon employed the madman strategy. Trump may be in part doing this. I don't want to underestimate how smart Trump is. I think he's actually very smart. He might be reckless in conjunction with being smart. And I think he also has a very visceral sense of power dynamics. And so he knows he's going to be meeting with Xi Jinping. And so to what degree has this also just been influenced by a kind of visceral desire to create leverage for himself?
- [37:42]
Bruno Maçães
No, I don't believe that. Let's be clinical here in the media discussion. This may seem all very impressive, kidnapping Maduro, killing Khomeini, but these are two adversaries that are as unsophisticated as you could find. Venezuela basically doesn't have an army they never invested in. That, by the way, again, shows. And it's a lesson that you have to. And Iran, it's kind of stopped in time somewhere in 1975. Their Air Force is also practically non existent. Very old planes, even Their strategic culture is, again, completely out of date. They have some capacities when it comes to missiles. That's about it. The economy is a complete wreckage. So I don't think the Chinese are going to be very impressed that the US can affirm its superiority against Venezuela and Iran. This is not what the game is about. So they will be rather unimpressed by that. Honestly, what happened in 1991 was kind of earth shattering, what US did in the Gulf War, because all those capabilities were new. Many people didn't even know they existed. I've read accounts that people in Russia and China were looking at their screens in awe that this could be done. The second offset, this new precision satellite warfare and so on. But that's not. The US Is still in the second offset. By the way, we're starting to see some elements of the third offset with AI. But in fact, those elements may have been the case with Maduro. I think sort of AI platforms might have helped to find Maduro. Khmeni, I don't know. They are starting to be used. But China is really keeping up with those developments. So I think they are going to be very unimpressed. This is not going to intimidate them at all. They are just seeing the things that might go wrong again. It's four days in and I think. Tell me if you disagree, but I think more things have gone wrong than people expected and that could accelerate. I didn't expect four days ago to see American bases and American consulates on fire. I thought the US had this figure out.
- [39:51]
Demetri Kofinas
I didn't believe that they would do this. I didn't believe that they would try to take out the Supreme Leader in a decapitation strike. To me, that was a shocking sight because it's a whole different level. It's one thing if you're attacking Fordeau or you're going after Soleimani, who was leading efforts and responsible for the death of so many Americans in Iraq. But to take out a country's leader, a country of 90 million people, is a level of aggression and gall that I just. I wasn't expecting.
- [40:25]
Bruno Maçães
No, I was fully expecting. That's the thing I had no doubts about. In fact, it now seems an Axios story today. It now seems that in fact, it helped make up Trump's mind. There was the ability to kill Khamenei that said, okay, let's go. Then he was still thinking whether he should go, but when the opportunity was offered, you know, remember last time we talked about how Trump in particular. But I think a lot of American political culture is now unable to process abstract concepts of any sophistication. So for Trump, there isn't any such thing as the economy. There isn't anything like the market. There are like, companies and CEOs and nothing else. And so for him, great power politics is about two guys. Him and the guy on the other side look like in a Hollywood movie. A Hollywood movie also does not have the capacity and the bandwidth to deal with things like culture, power. It doesn't deal with abstract things. It deals with a bad guy and a good guy. And in this framework, there is only one way to express victory. In 1945, the way to express victory was to create a Japan and Germany that were pro Western and so on, but these are all abstract concepts. But now, in the current state of American culture, victory is expressed by killing the other guy. Otherwise it can't be expressed. So I think that is the least surprising element. But now Trump might be inclined to call it a victory because if the bad guy is dead, things now enter a realm that he can process, transforming Iranian society. It's not that he doesn't want to do it. It's that these things are not part of Trump's brain. And increasingly, I think of the American mind as a whole, not just Trump's brain.
- [41:59]
Demetri Kofinas
Bruno, thank you so much for coming back on the program. It's always very interesting speaking with you, hearing your perspective, the way you concluded this conversation in raising this distinction between abstract thinking and thinking about the world in terms of personalities. And this is very insightful. So for people that want to follow you, you publish in a lot of places. The New Statesman, you have a blog, you publish at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, you have a Twitter handle. What's the best way for people to follow you?
- [42:25]
Bruno Maçães
I guess the New Statesman articles. And I have a substack where some of those articles and some other articles are also there. But Google, you'll find it immediately. Just google last 24 hours or last week. That's the way I do things, and I think it's what works best.
- [42:39]
Demetri Kofinas
Oh, fantastic. Thank you so much for coming on.
- [42:40]
Bruno Maçães
Have a good one. Bye.
- [42:41]
Demetri Kofinas
Bye. If you want to listen in on the rest of today's conversation, head over to HiddenForces IO subscribe and join our premium feed. If you want to join in on the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces genius community, you can also do that through our subscriber page. Today's episode was produced by me and edited by Stylianos Nicolaou. For more episodes, you can check out our website at hiddenforces IO. You can follow me on Twitter cofinas, and you can email me at infoiddenforcesio. As always, thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.