Geopolitical Rumor Roundup 4/24/25

Do public statements by Trump count as “rumors”? Sure, I don’t see why not, so let’s start there.

Yesterday Trump was saying that he “thinks” he has a deal with Russia, and Zelensky has something like a day (“24 hours” is a notoriously elastic time period in TrumpSpeak) to accept it. Of course Zelensky didn’t accept the supposed deal—whether he rejected it on his own or at the demand of his rumored British masters is a matter for speculation. Let’s look at what Russia gets from this rumored deal. Ignore Vietor’s views, however, based on past Trump 2.0 chatter I suspect these terms are probably accurate:

Tommy Vietor @TVietor08

According to @axios, Trump has told Zelensky that he has until the end of the day to accept this offer or else the US will walk away from talks. It's hard for me to see how the US walking away from the peace talks is worse for Ukraine than this.

11:38 AM · Apr 23, 2025

Notice that what we have here is essentially a “frozen conflict” or “ceasefire in place,” albeit with a greatly weakened proxy Ukraine and economic sweeteners for Russia. Oh, also a territorial concession—Crimea “de jure” part of Russia. What does this really mean?

First of all, there is no actual peace treaty, since the Russian occupation of the Donbas and “Novorossiya” oblasts is only “de facto”. More on that in a moment but note, in particular, that the “de facto” recognition of Russian occupation extends only to what Russia currently holds—that’s the “ceasefire in place” part. Secondly, lifting of sanctions and “enhanced economic cooperation” with the US looks, to me, suspiciously like two things: 1) saving US investments in Ukraine by Blackrock and others, and 2) opening up Russia to US investment penetration. I believe the Russians will be very leery of that second, economic, part of the “deal”, but that may be the most important part for Trump. If Trump could swing that part, I believe domestic big money objections to a deal would go away.

As for the first part, it’s a non-starter for the Russians, and that means that NO deal of any sort happens without more bigger concessions. Will sanctions relief sweeten the rest enough to get a deal? Putin has already publicly pooh-poohed that notion. For Putin the lawyer, everything must be de jure and guaranteed in writing.

Via Larry Johnson this morning, Putin’s spokesman Peskov rejected the idea of a ceasefire in place—a key for the Russians—out of hand:

Ukraine must withdraw its troops from the territories of Donbas and Novorossiya, which have become part of the Russian Federation. There will be no “reset”, rollback or surrender of new regions. This is not even a subject for bargaining – it is a closed topic.

Now, this is simply a restatement of Russia’s long held position: Those four oblasts voted to become part of Russia. Nothing can change that. There will be no peace talks until Ukraine pulls out of the those territories. Ukraine surrenders, then peace talks can begin. That’s the minimum. As Putin himself has also stated, peace talks will need to take account of new realities. To clarify, I take Peskov’s statement to refer to the four oblasts that became part of the Russian Federation by vote. I continue to believe that Russia will consider occupying and incorporating other territories, to include Kharkov, Odessa and regions up to the Dnieper—or even beyond—as part of the new realities. This has been a major war for Russia and, having defeated NATO and its Ukraine proxy, Russia won’t be in a mood to settle for crumbs. Which is exactly why, far from letting up, Russia appears—by most accounts—to be gearing up:

-- GEROMAN -- time will tell - -- @GeromanAT

and I am not happy with you bombing Yemen to cover up the slaughter in Gaza

7:58 AM · Apr 24, 2025

Does that sound to you like Trump has a deal with Putin? Me neither. Russia appears to have big plans that will unfold in the near future, and they’re not about to give those plans up. This is existential for Russia, and they’re not going to endanger their nation for the sake of a deal they believe they can do without.

How about the Iran deal? The latest word is that the mid-week “experts” meeting has been canceled. There’s no reason given that I’ve seen—perhaps Iran needs to consult further with Russia and China. However, as for the actual shape of the proposed deal, readers may have seen this rumored proposal—which shows how much Trump gave away by listening to the Jewish Nationalist back in 2018, when he walked away from JCPOA. These rumors confirm, if nothing else, how much higher Russia’s status is since the beginning of America’s war on Russia began:

Will Schryver

@imetatronink

Russia A Party to US/Iran Talks?

There are rumors swirling that Russia is now intimately involved in the US/Iran talks.

A proposal is allegedly on the table for Russia to receive Iran's enriched uranium as guarantor of a nuclear weapons non-proliferation agreement.

The enriched uranium can be returned to Iran in the event the US violates the terms of the agreement.

If Russia IS involved in such discussions, it signifies a MUCH stronger "partnership" with Iran than is commonly believed.

I also believe it will be impossible for the US to reach an agreement with Iran where Russia serves as its guarantor. The Russia and Iran hawks in the US and Europe would go absolutely batshit berserk over such a proposition.

Regarding the Russia/Iran berserkers, again, I believe that if Trump can open up investment opportunities in Iran the objections on the domestic front could evaporate.

Now, I’ve been listening to Nima and Alex Krainer this morning. I want to put all of the above in an even broader context based on what they had to say. You’ll recall that we recently noted the very cordial trip—first ever—by the Saudi defense minister to Teheran. He met not only with his counterpart but also with the Supreme Leader—so this was a big deal. Nima reports that the Saudi-Iranian discussions had to do with Saudi concerns with what’s going on in Syria and Lebanon (the Levant).

That opens up a very big topic. The big players currently in the Levant are NATO (US/UK/FR), Turkey (NATO, but with separate historic interests), and Israel. Of course there are tensions among these three parties, but the threat that these developments present to the Saudis and Iranians should be clear enough. It also brings Iraq into the equation. Iran and what we call Turkey have been rivals in the Levant, Mesopotamia, and northern Arab areas since the days of the Hittite empire—thousands of years. The Arabs, including the Arabian Peninsula along both the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf as well as the broader Syraq/Levant region were dominated by the Turks for centuries.

Neither Iran nor KSA will welcome any combination of the three players gaining a strong hold over the Levant. And, in that regard, I heard a well connected Iranian source maintaining just yesterday that among Iran’s partners the Iraqi militias (with the tacit approval of the Iraqi government) are as important as the Houthis. Something is up, and it won’t make anything easier for Trump and his Grand Vision—Abe Accords 2.0.

Lastly, I want to recommend Krainer’s latest substack. It plays into both this post and yesterday’s. The basic idea is that Krainer maintains that, while the first months of Trump 2.0 and all the Trump deal making negotiations may look—and may be—chaotic, Trump and his team are actually strongly committed to a coherent plan. As I’ve hinted above, that plan may involve leveraging “peace deals” to gain investment opportunities for the US. Those investment opportunities may rest on the recognition of the new multi-polar world order—which Rubio acknowledged even in his confirmation hearings, but it will strengthen the US far more than the continued waste involved in forever wars. This is what Trump may be trying to finesse, under the cover of the wild rhetoric, threats, actual warfare. MAGA. Here’s Krainer:

Is there a MAGA master plan or are they making it up as they go along?

… one question that's on many people's minds is whether the new administration is just careening from one crisis to the next, making things up as they go along, or whether there's actually a MAGA master plan that they're attempting to advance.

…

I find it very hard to reconcile what I'm observing with the idea that the administration is just making things up and responding to crises and scandals of their own making. Although we aren't privy to any well-formulated MAGA plan, certain statements from the administration officials like Scott Bessent, Steve Miran, Marco Rubio and Trump himself, strongly suggest that there is a plan, or at least there is a mission and a strong commitment to that mission.

Embracing the multipolar future

Recall, on 15 January, during his confirmation hearings, Marco Rubio stated that the post-World War II global order was more than obsolete and that it was being used "as a weapon against us." He also explicitly embraced multipolar integrations as the future of global development. We should assume that Rubio didn't come up with that himself - he was stating the administration policy position. If the administration sees the future role of the United States as a major power in a multipolar world, that suggests a clear policy goal.

To get to that place Trump needs to resolve pointless conflicts—Russia, Iran, China. As we’re seeing, he’s in a big hurry—but he’s finding out that none of this is easy. Inventing a new world order and America’s place in it isn’t something you can do at home, and getting foreigners—who have built up decades of distrust towards the Anglo-Zionist empire—to fall in line is just as tricky. The tariff’s were supposed to dragoon much of the world into the MAGA scheme, but many of the most important parts of the world, economically speaking, aren’t playing along. That includes China, of course, but recall that we pointed out very early on that Japan and South Korea announced that they would coordinate their tariff response with China. That’s a very big deal, and recent developments with Japan may explain Trump’s further back pedal on tariffs:

Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand

If even Japan categorically refuses to do any trade deal with the US that's detrimental to their relationship with China, Bessent's "grand encirclement" plan to isolate China is completely dead in the water.

Quote

Joe Weisenthal @TheStalwart

Japan will not take part in any trade bloc that seeks to isolate China, given the importance of China as a trading partner. https://bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-24/japan-to-resist-trump-efforts-to-form-trade-bloc-against-china…

9:48 AM · Apr 24, 2025

So the question seems to be, can Trump do the nuance thing? The patience thing? Old dog, new tricks? If this is the real MAGA idea, it seems to be conceptually sound. The difficulty is in the implementation.