Trump’s Iran Strategy Is Collapsing — China Changes the Game | Silk and Steel

**Carl Zha** (0:02)
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Silk and Steel Podcast. I'm your host, Carl Zha. Today, I welcome back Dr. Warwick Powell from Australia, a very astute observer of the international geopolitics, especially when it comes to China.
And there's a lot for us to talk about, Dr. Warwick. First of all, welcome back to my show.

**Dr. Warwick Powell** (0:30)
Yeah, it's good to be with you. There's always a lot to talk about. And I think this is our first chat since she got back from China. So I'll ask you some questions myself later about your observations, actually.

**Carl Zha** (0:44)
Sure, sure. I actually had a firsthand experience with the Chinese medical system. We can talk about that, too.

**Dr. Warwick Powell** (0:53)
I saw that.
No, absolutely. I'd be fascinated to hear some of your firsthand accounts on this from this last trip. And I'm sure that your viewers would actually like to. Well, I'm sure they've heard some of the stuff already, but maybe we can cover off on some other dimensions of all of that. So cool. All right. What are we going to talk about? What's been happening in the last fortnight?

**Carl Zha** (1:16)
Well, let's start from the big picture stuff.
Trump just announced that he's doing an economic D-Day on Iran. He's going to bring the most excruciating pain on the Iranian economy that the world has ever seen.
This obviously is because whatever they have been doing is not working because the whole reason they said they started the illegal war against Iran with Israel is because they said that their whole maximum pressure, economic sanction on Iran wasn't working. And now it turns out their military option wasn't working either. So they're going back to the maximum pressure economically again. But this particular time, the level of sanction that they're claiming, they're going to place secondary sanctions against nations that continue to do business with Iran. And of course, a lot of that would have target China being the largest trading nations with Iran. Now the question on everyone's mind is, okay, is Trump serious? Are they going to follow through? What does this mean? And this is why I want to pick your brain a little bit on this topic. Is this just another empty gesture, just another Trump administration's bluffing? What are they trying to hope? What are they hoping to achieve here?

**Dr. Warwick Powell** (2:50)
Look, I'm a little bit surprised that they're doing this because I was under the impression that Iran in every respect had been decimated at least 38 times over, over the course of the last 12 months.
So I'm a little bit surprised that we're now entering into the D-day.
The world's never seen so big, bigger than been isolation of Iran's sanctions. Seriously speaking though, I mean, we know that during the course of the last quarter of last year, the United States actually worked over time to create significant economic hardships on Iran. On top of the 40 plus years of sanctions that have been ratcheted up progressively over that period of time as well. And the aim was always to generate social unrest in the hopes that that would lead to the overthrow of the government. It failed last year, which then laid the groundwork for the interventions and the attacks, the beginning of this phase of the war at the end of February this year, which of course have not succeeded in achieving the assorted aims. And the aims, of course, have been changed from time to time, depending on the circumstance. But whether it was a change of the government slash regime change, whether it was ending the nuclear program or what have you, the objectives clearly haven't been achieved. So we're back to square one again. And the United States, in many ways, I think, is demonstrating that it is lacking the capacity to bully its way around the world in the way that perhaps it believes it can, but more importantly, in the way that perhaps it once could and is struggling to today. So the US political elite are struggling to adapt to new circumstances, clearly not coping well with the unfolding situation vis-a-vis Iran. They're not getting their way. And that's obviously a problem politically, domestically, but also reputationally globally. The move to these new sanctions does require them to try to coerce other countries to come and join in as well. Now, of course, the Europeans will more than likely fall into line as they always do, but the Europeans don't really play that important role in the Iranian external account. The most significant external account relationship that Iran's economic system has is with the People's Republic of China. And unless the People's Republic of China were willing to go along with Trump's isolation of Iran, so as to notionally avoid Trump's secondary sanctions, then I think it's fair to say that the American strategy or the American playbook will be dead on arrival. You're not going to be able to coerce Iran if China doesn't play ball. Add to that Russia, which I doubt will play ball as well. And the American game plan has some very serious problems. It's essentially a big leaky ship. You know, smaller relationships with Iran might fall into line for a little while. But unless you've got Russia and China on board with this particular game plan, I think Iran will be able to see these sanctions out. It's not like it's the first time that the country has had to deal with significant economic pressures and coercion from external forces, particularly the United States.