Emerging World (Dis)Order
Washington and Tehran both want a deal, but not the same one. For the White House, the priority is reducing tensions in the Gulf, securing freedom of navigation through Hormuz, and preserving space for a longer diplomatic process on the nuclear issue. Iran, by contrast, appears to be seeking an arrangement that demonstrates the limits of American coercion while preserving the strategic assets and sources of leverage it regards as untouchable.
Tehran’s military planners appear convinced that calculated escalation can improve their bargaining position, despite the substantial imbalance in firepower between them and their adversaries. They calculate that Iran can raise economic and political costs for Washington without provoking a response severe enough to threaten regime stability. From that perspective, military pressure is not a substitute for diplomacy but a tool for shaping its outcome. The emerging debate in Tehran is less about whether to confront the United States than about how far that confrontation can be pushed without losing control of events.
For the Gulf states, the primary concern is no longer the nuclear question, but the prospect of recurring disruptions to trade, shipping, and energy markets. Their preference is for an arrangement that lowers the probability of renewed fighting, even if it leaves the larger strategic disputes unresolved. Stability, rather than resolution, has become the priority.
Israel remains the least convinced that the current trajectory serves its interests. Many Israeli officials appear to view the diplomatic process as interrupting a period in which Iran and its regional partners were under sustained pressure. The expectation inside Israeli security circles is that the present lull will prove temporary, and any agreement reached now is more likely to defer confrontation than prevent it.
For now, Washington appears willing to tolerate a degree of controlled instability as long as the diplomatic track remains alive, and the Iranians appear to agree on that issue—but little else. That dynamic may be enough to prevent a large-scale war in the short-term, but the longer this trajectory persists, the higher the probability of an exchange neither side truly wants to start.
Weekly Wildcard
Cheng Li-wun, leader of Taiwan’s Kuomintang (KMT) opposition party, arrived in the United States this week just months after becoming the first KMT chair in a decade to meet Xi Jinping in Beijing. More than a diplomatic courtesy call, the visit represents an attempt to persuade Washington that the assumptions underpinning its Taiwan strategy deserve reexamination. Cheng is emerging as the most prominent advocate of a competing vision for cross-strait stability—one that places greater emphasis on engagement with Beijing and questions whether military deterrence alone can indefinitely preserve peace.
The KMT is no longer simply arguing for dialogue—it is presenting itself as a credible governing alternative with a fundamentally different theory of risk management. Where Taiwan’s current leadership views military preparedness as the indispensable foundation of stability, Cheng argues that political, economic, and societal channels of communication must play a larger role in reducing the chances of conflict. Her contention is that an exclusively security-driven approach risks locking Taipei and Beijing into an escalatory cycle from which neither side can easily exit.
Cheng’s visit goes beyond the usual debate over arms sales and defense spending. It introduces a question Washington has largely avoided confronting—whether Taiwan itself remains strategically united on how to manage the challenge posed by China. For years, American policymakers could assume broad consensus in Taipei around strengthening deterrence while treating engagement with Beijing as a secondary consideration. The KMT is challenging that premise, arguing that deterrence without a viable political track may ultimately prove unsustainable.
A KMT victory in the 2028 elections would not necessarily signal a dramatic realignment toward Beijing, but it could produce a government more willing to build a diplomatic relationship with mainland China. For Washington, the emerging question is whether the next major debate over Taiwan’s future will take place across the Strait—or within Taiwan itself.
