The Duran Podcast - Trump Goes to Beijing. Neocon Push for Iran Ground Invasion

Episode Date: May 13, 2026

Trump Goes to Beijing. Neocon Push for Iran Ground Invasion

All right, Alexander, we have the meeting between U.S. President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing, a two-day summit between the two leaders. Is this another type of reset? Are we looking at a contentious two days between the two leaders? Iran will be top of the agenda, I imagine, with regards to geopolitics or foreign politics. Iran, the blockade of China, trying to prevent oil and energy to reach China. Of course, we have all kinds of trade and tariff issues that they're going to discuss maybe rare earth, maybe Russia, Ukraine, perhaps. What do you think is going to be discussed?

Well, this is interesting because... Taiwan, sorry. Taiwan definitely is going to be discussed. Well, this is an interesting summit meeting because, of course, it's come after a very difficult year in U.S.-China relations. We've had the various trade wars of last year, which you remember did not go fully well for the U.S. And Trump, of course, has now the problem of the Supreme Court decision, which basically

declared his tariffs unconstitutional. So he's trying to put the tariffs back together again using other legal devices. but there's been more legal challenges about those. And again, he's lost another case about them. So in terms of tariff policy, his position doesn't look strong. He's also went, he basically wanted to go to China from about the middle of last year. And he's been pushing the Chinese hard for a meeting. and apparently he basically invited himself at the end of last year.

And it's only now that the Chinese have even confirmed a date. So there was trade policy which he wanted to discuss. There were also geopolitical issues that he wanted to discuss. I mean, he spoke quite openly about trying to get China on side to put pressure on Russia to get the Russians to agree to a ceasefire in Ukraine. He's now, I think, finding himself going into this meeting and he doesn't have the cards on the table, the strong cards that he thought he did when he pushed for this meeting in the first place.

The Chinese have basically won the trade wars. They were able to withstand the trade shock. They showed that they have very strong cards to play with rare earths. They forced the US to back down repeatedly in the trade wars of last year. And as I said, this was that Supreme Court decision, which went against Trump and subsequent court decisions as well. So the Chinese feel themselves in a very strong position here. And the war in Iran with Iran, I think that may have been also partly intended to give Trump stronger cards with China when he launched it.

The original plan was that he would attack Iran on the 28th of February. He expected and was told by Netanyahu and others that the government of Iran would collapse over the next couple of days. Then he would go and meet Xi Jinping in China. At the end of March, he found that Iran was more resilient and stronger than he expected. He had to call off the trip to Beijing. Now he has to go. I mean, he's not really left himself any, leave any space to pull back. Iran is still there. China continues to back it. So, both on trade and on Iran and on the oil trade, he's looking

in a much weaker position than I think he anticipated. And this changes the dynamic, because instead of him going to Beijing and dictating terms on trade, on energy, policy on all of these things, in other words, forcing the Chinese into a deal in which he had leverage over the Chinese. What he finds himself in is he's going to China and it's the Chinese who have leverage over him. They have leverage over him with rare earths, on trade and over Iran as well, because China ultimately is Iran's most important. and biggest backer, if he's going to find a way out of this crisis with Iran, he may need China's help, so he's got to therefore negotiate with the Iranians, or the Chinese, sorry,

much more carefully than I think he originally intended. Is he looking for a way out of this conflict with Iran, or is he looking for a way to gain more leverage on China and to blockade China? Well, I think this is the thing, because Trump never likes to give other people leverage over himself. He's constantly looking to gain leverage over others. So he's in a very difficult position. As I said, he finds himself going to China in a position where they have leverage over him. So he's trying to reverse this.

And we see that over the last couple of hours, the war drums in Washington from Trump have been beating more loudly. So he said that the Iranian offer, which, to be clear, I don't think was a final offer, I think it should have been seen instead as an opening bid in the negotiation process. But he said the Iranian offer is totally unacceptable. He's now apparently looking again at more missile and air strikes on Iran. He's still got this blockade in place and the blockade has been intensifying and getting, more aggressive. So he's trying to find ways, not just to defeat Iran, which is looking very difficult, but also to reverse the leverage, to get the leverage over the Chinese, to try to intensify the blockade on Iran, because I think he thinks, and perhaps has been told that this is his biggest leverage over China. What he doesn't, I think, fully understand is that it does not provide him

with the leverage that he thinks it does. China has enormous oil reserves, which it is not apparently tapping into. It is still importing oil. It is able to get oil from Brazil and also heavily from Russia. It's continued to receive some oil, as we know, from Iran, that might be dwindling, but whatever, China at the moment, remarkably, has actually been exporting oil and oil products. So they are not under the kind of stress that he imagines. And my own view is, if he starts escalating the war again, he's going to play straight into their hands. They're going to get even more leverage because ultimately what the Chinese want is to get into a position where they become the crucial party in ending the conflict within the Persian Gulf.

And they're already making approaches to the Iranians and to the Saudis and to others in order to achieve them. Yeah, but the Saudis aren't going to go with China. Well, maybe not. Well, maybe not. China has already signaled its strong support for Iran. So they've done that. I mean, from a Chinese point of view, it almost really doesn't matter.

I mean, they continue to get oil. They'll get oil from Russia. There's a big deal with Russia for more oil coming along the way. And we're going to see more LNG and more oil cargoes. And the oil can be transported to China quickly. I mean, this is the thing to understand. You don't need pipelines to send the oil because there's plenty of ships and China has an enormous tank of fleet, and they don't need to go necessarily to the Baltic and black

seaports, and they can absorb all the oil that Russia produces, and the Russians are prepared to sell it. So from a Chinese point of view, they can wait this out. They can take as long, they can let this war continue as long as it needs to continue. They don't need to send Iran weapons. They can provide Iran with funding, which is difficult to trace. They can provide Iran with consumer goods and those things through the various corridors that have now been established through Pakistan. They can let the Russians provide the weapons, which the Russians are doing. The Chinese can just wait until oil prices in the United States go higher and higher.

their point of view, if Trump doesn't want to do a deal, doesn't want to end the war in Iran, it plays to China's advantage. And for the Chinese, always at the back of their minds, is the memory of what happened in the 70s. When the United States found itself in a crisis of war in Vietnam, it needed to extricate itself from it, it eventually ended up having to talk to China. It eventually ended up having to talk to China. It eventually ended up having to establish diplomatic relations with China. Nixon had to go to China. Kessinger went to China many, many times. And the Chinese are looking at this situation with Iran and are saying to themselves, it's playing to our advantage in exactly the same way. Now, going

back to whether this is going to be a contentious and difficult meeting, the Chinese diplomatic style is the opposite of the Russian. The Russians talk very politely in public and can be rather tough in private. The Chinese are the opposite. They are very tough in their public words, but they are famously polite in private meetings. But that should not be taken as any sign that they're going to give any ground, because they never do. What is the United States looking to get out of China. What is Trump looking to get at China? Why is he so eager to go there? I mean, they're blockading. They're trying to blockade China. They're trying to remove China as a competitor. Trying to possibly go to war with China. There's talk that the United States is preparing to go to

war with China. They're going after China's allies and partners in Russia, in Iran, in the general region as well. They're lining things up to make things difficult for China. So what is Trump looking for? It's a very good question. This is, this is, this is, this is goes back to the trade wars, to the attacks on Iran, to the attacks in Venezuela, to the various diplomatic initiatives with Russia, to the attempt to take out Putin probably in December, because Putin is wrongly seen in the US as the primary supporter in Russia of this de facto relationship with China. The idea was, and I think this is where it comes back to, and what Trump

was trying to do last year, he wanted to go to China with all of these strong cards. He controlled Venezuela. He controlled Iran. He was doing some kind of a deal with the Russians. Or if he wasn't doing a deal with the Russians, he was taking out Putin and was creating havoc in Russia. And he said to himself, I will go to China with all of these very strong guards. I'm not looking to overthrow the government in China. Some of my people might be, but I personally am not. I want this big, attractive, massive deal with China. You leave Taiwan alone. You open up China to American finance and industry and all of these things. You get all these enormous concessions. And Trump comes back, and that's his grand deal. And he presents it that way. He says,

to the American people. What has actually happened is that none of those things that he expected have come to pass. And so instead of going to China with a strong hand, he's going to China with a weak hand. And that puts him in a very uncomfortable position, but one that he basically can't get out of him. Right. Your thoughts to wrap up the video on the Atlantic article that everyone's talking about, I know you spoke about it in your video update. Everyone's discussing the article from Kagan, Victoria Newland's husband to chief neocan.

High priests, right? High bishops, I guess you could say, of the neocon faith. And Kagan was a cheerleader for the regime change of Iran. And everyone knows Newlands' reputation. and the phone call with Payot, F the EU. It's interesting, Alexei, as many analysts are discussing, just before you close out the video, as many analysts are discussing Keikin and Newland

and the war against Iran and their support for Israel and their support for the regime change. They mentioned Newland, but you know one thing I've noticed, they never mention Newland, Ukraine, The phone call, the coup in 2014, all the analysts avoid that side of the Kagan-Newland team. Of course, because they don't want to accept that they're just, that Kagan is more than just somebody who writes commentaries and comes out and, you know, proposes things. That these people are actually, actually policymakers and executives, that they actually play an, and. active and decisive role in the making of foreign policy.

And in the case of Newland, Newland, of course, played an absolutely central role in getting Project Ukraine going. Project Ukraine is turning into a complete disaster. So because Kagan and Newland are so important, such important props of the neocon establishment, you distance Newlands from this enormous and by extension, Kegas, from this enormous disaster, which is playing out with Russia and with Ukraine. So that's why they never talk about it.

But let's talk about this Kagan article, because actually I find it a very, very worrying sign. I know a lot of people are going out and saying, oh, well, you see Kagan, he suddenly has suddenly, you know, see the truth. The truth has suddenly, you know, set him free. He realizes that this war hasn't gone well, that the US is facing a huge defeat, that this is worse than Afghanistan and worse than Vietnam, and that it changes everything.

But then when you drill through the article, he's again talking about a ground operation and about sending troops to fight Iran. And he does this in the way that Kagan always does. He's not exactly advocating it. He says this is a very difficult thing politically to do. and that it might not be, you know, an easy, possible thing to do. When Kagan writes this, you can be absolutely certain that behind the scenes, he and Newland and all of the other neocons are pressing for it.

What they are doing is they're going round and they're saying, look, we are in this crisis with Iran. The stakes now are unbelievably high if the United States loses. Well, Robert Kagan has set out what all of the implications are for American power, for the neoliberal globalist system for all of that. We can't just let Iran prevail over the United States. So if we have to massively escalate by going for an all-out ground invasion, well, that's what we must do. We can't pull back now.

We must go forward. Remember what I always say about these people. They have no reverse gear. Ray Kagan is very clever. He's a very, very clever writer. I've been reading him for years, by the way. When he appears to be reasonable, you need to be particularly careful about him. And he, of all people, absolutely has no reverse gear.

Yeah. And in the article, he's even preparing the people of the United States to incur very big losses in the ground operation. Exactly. Exactly. So that's what this is all about. And he's fine with it. He's far. Absolutely, of course he is.

When did the kids, the key, neocons ever not been? But for him, it's all or nothing now. And with these people, they, you know, when they find themselves in that situation, they will go in all in. They will, and that's the word, that's the message that has now been communicated right across the Washington establishment. That's the line that the neocons are. going to be privately taking.

All right. We will end the video there. The durand.locals.com. We are on Exxon, rumble, and telegram. Go to the Durand shop, pick up some merch, and also check us out on Substack. Take care.