Trump's Grand Strategy: Iran, China & The New World Order | Kamran Bokhari

Bokhari traces the Trump administration's approach to a National Security Strategy published in December that calls for retrenchment from the Eastern Hemisphere — Europe, the Middle East, and Asia — while focusing on the Western Hemisphere and the Western Pacific. The United States, he argues, is an oceanic power that cannot sustain indefinite land conflicts across Eurasia. Instead, Washington is pursuing «burden sharing and burden shifting» with allies like Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia in the Middle East, and European and Asian partners elsewhere.

Before the U.S. can pull back, however, it must resolve what Bokhari calls «loose ends» — ongoing conflicts that threaten regional stability and U.S. interests. The Ukraine war, the Gaza conflict (now under ceasefire), and Iran's nuclear ambitions and proxy networks all require closure. Only then can America delegate security responsibilities to capable regional powers. Bokhari emphasizes this is not isolationism: the U.S. will remain engaged, but selectively, and with allies doing the heavy lifting on the ground.

The Iran operation fits squarely into this logic. Israel has fought Iranian proxies for decades; the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack catalyzed a broader Israeli campaign that weakened Hezbollah, Hamas, and other Iranian clients. By destroying Iran's nuclear facilities and decapitating leadership, the U.S. aims to eliminate asymmetric threats and force Tehran to negotiate from a position of weakness, clearing the board for a new Middle Eastern security architecture anchored by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Israel.

China purchased roughly $30 billion of Iranian oil annually at steep discounts, representing about 15% of its total imports. Iran was a captive supplier, unable to access global markets due to sanctions, making it a valuable economic asset for Beijing. Yet when the U.S. and Israel struck Iran, China abstained at the UN Security Council and offered no material support. Bokhari attributes this to China's own imperatives: a faltering economy, housing market collapse, and stagnating growth rates. Beijing needs a trade deal with Washington and cannot afford to antagonize the U.S. over Iran when its own economic stability is at stake.

Bokhari also notes historical patterns: Russia and China have long used Iran as leverage to extract concessions from the U.S., but neither has treated Iran as a strategic partner requiring unconditional support. Russia delayed delivery of the S-300 air defense system for nearly a decade, and when it finally arrived in 2016, the technology was obsolete. China announced a $400 billion infrastructure deal with Iran in 2021, but after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan disrupted regional security, the deal stalled. Both powers are opportunistic, not ideological allies of Tehran.

The U.S. strategy toward China is not zero-sum. Washington will compete where necessary — denying China footholds in Venezuela, Iran, and Cuba — but cooperate where mutual stability matters. A collapsed Chinese economy or a nuclear-armed, unstable Iran serves no one's interest. The goal is to manage China's rise without triggering Cold War-style confrontation, while ensuring technological advances (AI, quantum, space) do not translate into unchecked military threats.

Skeptics point to decades of failed negotiations with Iran: the regime stalls, buys time, and uses diplomacy to build leverage elsewhere. Bokhari acknowledges this history but argues that Iran's constraints have never been this acute. The economy is collapsing; the Iranian rial hit an all-time low of 1.45 million to the dollar, triggering mass protests in December. The regime's regional influence has been gutted by Israeli operations in 2024–2025. Its nuclear and missile programs have been set back by U.S. strikes. And internally, power is shifting from the aging theocracy to the Revolutionary Guards and regular armed forces, creating factional competition.

Bokhari contends that under these pressures, Iran will have to compromise — not capitulate, but find a face-saving formula that preserves the regime while meeting U.S. demands: no nuclear weapons, no ballistic missiles threatening allies, and an end to proxy warfare. He draws a parallel to China in the 1970s: Beijing did not formally renounce communism when it opened to the West, but it fundamentally changed behavior. Iran may follow a similar path, slowly evolving its posture without declaring ideological surrender.

The challenge is that kinetic pressure cannot be finely calibrated. War is messy, full of unintended consequences, and the administration cannot guarantee that strikes will empower pragmatists over hardliners. But Bokhari is convinced that the goal is not regime change — which failed catastrophically in Iraq and Afghanistan — but rather negotiating with a weakened, internally divided regime that finally has more to lose by resisting than by dealing.