The Rest of the World Report | May 12, 2026 — Evening Edition
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THE WEEK THAT STARTS TOMORROW
Donald Trump boards Air Force One tonight for Beijing. He will be the first American president to set foot on Chinese soil in nearly nine years. The last time was November 2017 — his first term, his first visit — when he was received at the Great Hall of the People with an extravagance of pageantry that Chinese officials later called a “state visit plus.” This time, the Washington Post reports, the welcome will be “decidedly different.” Xi Jinping arrives at this summit “holding no illusions about making lasting deals” and focused instead on projecting Beijing as an alternative to American volatility. The world’s two largest economies are meeting not at a moment of opportunity but at a moment of mutual need and mutual suspicion, and the distance between those two things is the whole story.
To understand what is actually at stake in Beijing this week, and in New Delhi simultaneously, American readers need to understand how the United States and China arrived here. That history is not long, but Americans are not well-served by how it is usually told.
The bargain Nixon made
It started with a ping-pong match. In April 1971, China’s table tennis team invited American players to China, a small gesture that opened a channel for something much larger. Henry Kissinger made a secret trip to Beijing in July of that year, laying the groundwork. And in February 1972, President Richard Nixon, one of America’s most ferocious anti-communists, flew to Beijing and shook Mao Zedong’s hand.
Nixon called it “the week that changed the world.” He was not wrong. The Shanghai Communiqué, signed on February 27, 1972, established the framework for everything that followed. The United States acknowledged — not recognized, acknowledged — the Chinese position that Taiwan was part of China. The US agreed it did not challenge that position and intended to withdraw remaining troops from Taiwan. In return, China did not need to do very much at all. It simply opened the door.
Nixon’s calculation was strategic and Cold War-specific: use China as a counterweight to the Soviet Union. It worked. The triangular diplomacy Nixon and Kissinger engineered isolated Moscow, helped end the Vietnam War faster than it might otherwise have ended, and repositioned American power in Asia without firing a shot. It was, by almost any measure, a masterpiece of realpolitik.
But it came with a price that would not be fully apparent for decades. The United States had, in the Shanghai Communiqué, planted the seed of the Taiwan question it is now trying to navigate with Xi Jinping in 2026. Every subsequent administration has managed that seed, some more carefully than others, but none has resolved it. Nixon set the terms. Every president since has lived inside them.
The engagement bet
After Nixon’s opening, the relationship deepened slowly through the 1970s. In 1979, President Carter completed normalization, establishing full diplomatic relations with Beijing, which required breaking formal ties with Taipei. The Taiwan Relations Act, passed the same year, attempted to thread the needle: the US would maintain unofficial relations with Taiwan, support its self-defense, and regard any coercive unification attempt as a threat to peace. It was a careful ambiguity, and it has held, imperfectly and tensely, for 47 years.
What followed over the next two decades was the bet that would define American foreign policy toward China for a generation: the bet that engagement works. The theory was straightforward. Bring China into the global economy, the World Trade Organization, the international institutional framework, and China will liberalize. Economic integration produces political liberalization. A wealthier, more connected China will become a more responsible stakeholder in the international order.
In May 2000, Congress granted China Permanent Normal Trade Relations status. In December 2001, China entered the WTO. American corporations poured investment into Chinese manufacturing. Chinese goods poured into American markets. By the mid-2000s, the two economies were so intertwined that historians began using the term “Chimerica” — a single economic entity with an American consumption engine and a Chinese production engine. US-China bilateral trade grew from $5 million in 1972 to over $600 billion by the mid-2010s.
The bet did not pay off as expected. China liberalized its economy selectively and on its own terms. It did not liberalize politically. Xi Jinping, who assumed power in 2012, moved decisively in the opposite direction, concentrating authority, cracking down on dissent, arresting lawyers and journalists, imposing security laws in Hong Kong, building what the UN would later describe as a system of mass detention for Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. The “responsible stakeholder” theory of engagement was not wrong about what economic integration could produce. It was wrong about whether that production would flow toward the values its American architects assumed were universal.
The reckoning
The disillusionment began under Obama and accelerated under Trump’s first term. In 2020, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stood at the Nixon Presidential Library and delivered a speech declaring the era of engagement over. “The old paradigm of blind engagement with China simply won’t do,” he said. “We must not continue it and we must not return to it.” It was a significant moment: the formal repudiation, at Nixon’s own library, of the theory Nixon had set in motion 48 years earlier.
Trump’s first term imposed tariffs, restricted technology exports, pressured allies to exclude Chinese telecommunications equipment, and began the process of economic decoupling that his second term has continued. The bilateral relationship that had been characterized by deep interdependence was reorganizing itself around competition. China’s Belt and Road Initiative, its global infrastructure investment program now spanning more than 140 countries, was being read in Washington not as development but as strategic positioning. China’s military modernization, its artificial island construction in the South China Sea, its increasingly assertive posture in the Taiwan Strait, were being read as preparation rather than deterrence.
The Iran war changed the geometry. On February 28 of this year, a date that will carry historical weight for a long time, the United States and Israel struck Iran. The Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 45-50 percent of China’s crude oil imports transit, was closed. China’s economy, which depends on that oil, was directly damaged by an American military decision that Beijing had no role in making and no power to prevent. CSIS, analyzing the summit, notes that China watches the Iran war “with unease,” not as a supporter of Iran’s position, but as a country that has watched a conflict it didn’t start disrupt its most critical energy supply corridor. Beijing is not anti-American in this conflict. It is pro-stability. Those are different things, and the distinction matters for what Xi wants out of Trump this week.
What Beijing wants
The CSIS pre-summit analysis is direct: “During Trump’s trip to China, the United States will focus on the economy and Iran, while China will seek stability and progress on Taiwan.” The economy and Iran are American priorities. Taiwan is China’s.
The Taiwan ask has been documented in unusual detail ahead of this summit. Xi wants Trump to change the official US formulation on Taiwanese independence from “does not support” to “opposes.” That is a single word change. It is not a small thing. “Does not support” is a statement of American preference. “Opposes” is a statement of American commitment. It puts the United States on record against Taiwanese self-determination in a way that decades of careful American diplomacy have avoided. Wang Yi told Secretary Rubio on April 30 that Taiwan is “the biggest point of risk” in the bilateral relationship, urging Washington to “keep its promise and make the right choices.”
The Taiwan question has been managed by every American president since Nixon planted it in the Shanghai Communiqué in 1972. Carter broke formal relations with Taipei in 1979 but passed the Taiwan Relations Act to preserve unofficial ties and a commitment to the island’s self-defense. Reagan issued the Six Assurances in 1982, including a commitment never to consult Beijing on arms sales to Taiwan. Bush, Clinton, Obama, and Trump’s first term all held the line, sometimes more firmly and sometimes less, on the basic architecture Nixon established: strategic ambiguity, not strategic clarity. Tomorrow, for the first time since any of those commitments were made, an American president will sit across from a Chinese leader and discuss a specific arms sale to Taiwan before it is delivered. Trump confirmed it himself on Monday. Whether that discussion produces a concession, a delay, or a reaffirmation of the existing commitment is the most consequential single question coming out of Beijing this week, and it will almost certainly not appear in any joint communiqué.
The South China Sea sits in the background of the summit but is never far from the surface. China’s construction of military facilities across disputed reefs and islands — including the confirmed deployment of a 352-metre floating barrier at Scarborough Shoal, confirmed by Reuters satellite imagery, and an airbase under construction on Antelope Reef in the Paracel Islands — is typically framed in American coverage as straightforward regional aggression. The picture is more complicated than that framing allows, and American readers deserve to understand both sides of it. China’s island-building is partly what it looks like from Manila or Hanoi: a larger power asserting dominance over smaller neighbors’ legitimate maritime claims, in defiance of a 2016 international arbitration ruling that China refuses to recognize. It is also, simultaneously, a response to a strategic reality Chinese planners call the Malacca Dilemma: roughly 80 percent of China’s oil imports pass through the Strait of Malacca, a chokepoint the US Navy could close in a conflict. The United States operates major military installations in Japan, South Korea, Guam, the Philippines, Diego Garcia, and Singapore — a chain of bases that encircles China’s maritime approaches and that, from Beijing’s perspective, is not a defensive architecture but an encirclement. China’s forward positioning in the South China Sea is, in significant part, a hedge against being strangled at sea. That does not make the floating barrier at Scarborough Shoal legal or the displacement of Filipino fishermen acceptable. It does make China’s behavior comprehensible as strategy rather than inexplicable as aggression — and comprehensible is what American readers need if they are going to understand what is actually being negotiated in Beijing this week.
The leverage structure at this summit is asymmetric. CBC News put it plainly: expectations for the summit are “largely tempered,” with China holding key leverage and Xi carrying no illusions about making lasting deals. Xi arrives more confident, CSIS’s Scott Kennedy noted, than at any previous Trump-China summit. China’s economy has weathered the tariff wars better than Washington expected. Beijing has Iran’s economic dependence. Beijing has Trump’s need for a Hormuz deliverable before midterms. And Beijing has the patient, systemic negotiating style of a government that has been thinking in decades while its American counterpart thinks in news cycles. Some Trump aides are now more seriously considering a resumption of major combat operations in Iran, according to CNN, a sign that domestic pressure for a result is rising as the costs accumulate. That pressure is Xi’s leverage. Not his problem.
While Trump lands in Beijing: BRICS meets in New Delhi
On the same two days, May 14 and 15, that Trump sits with Xi in Beijing, Iran’s Foreign Minister Araghchi will be in New Delhi for the BRICS Foreign Ministers’ Meeting. Russia’s Sergei Lavrov will be there. The Saudi and Egyptian foreign ministers, who are facilitating backchannel Iran negotiations, will be there. Indian External Affairs Minister Jaishankar will chair it.
Most Americans have never heard of BRICS. That is worth fixing.
BRICS began as a Goldman Sachs marketing term. In 2001, economist Jim O’Neill published a research paper arguing that Brazil, Russia, India, and China, the “BRICs,” were poised to challenge the dominant G7 economies. Russia was the first to take the concept seriously as a political vehicle. Putin hosted the first BRIC leaders’ summit in 2009, in the aftermath of the global financial crisis that had originated in the United States. South Africa joined in 2010, giving the bloc its current acronym.
The stated purpose of BRICS is to reform the global governance system established after World War II: the IMF, the World Bank, and the UN Security Council, to give developing nations more voice. The Carnegie Endowment described the driving motivation plainly: “A common thread across disparate interests and motivations is the need to respond to and manage the consequences of American dominance. Some countries are seeking in BRICS a safe harbor from US diplomatic coercion and economic statecraft, an escape from pressure to democratize, and a means to mitigate the impact of sanctions and tariffs.”
In 2023, BRICS invited six new members: Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates — though Argentina ultimately declined under President Milei. By 2025, the bloc had grown to eleven full members with thirteen partner countries, including Turkey, Nigeria, Indonesia, and Vietnam. It now represents more than a quarter of global GDP measured by purchasing power parity and the majority of the world’s population.
Here is the detail that matters for this week: both Iran and the UAE are BRICS members. They are on opposite sides of the current war. BRICS failed to issue a joint statement on the Iran war, deadlocked by the direct involvement of two members as combatants. That deadlock is itself a data point about what BRICS is and is not. It is not a unified bloc. It is a forum, and its members pursue their own national interests within it. But it is the forum where Iran’s FM Araghchi will be on May 14-15, in the same building as the Russian, Saudi, and Egyptian foreign ministers, working the multilateral guarantorship architecture for any eventual agreement. Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA in 2018 taught Iran one lesson above all others: a bilateral deal with Washington is only as durable as the next American election. A deal embedded in BRICS, with Chinese and Russian co-signatures at the UN Security Council level, survives administrations. That is what Araghchi is in New Delhi to build.
India chairs BRICS this year under the theme “Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability.” Prime Minister Modi has positioned India as the indispensable mediator, close enough to Washington to be trusted and close enough to Tehran and Moscow to be useful. India has been in continuous contact with Araghchi since February 28, reviewing the situation in West Asia. India also has a $1.5 billion strategic investment in Iran’s Chabahar Port, a non-Chinese alternative access route to Central Asia that New Delhi has been building for a decade and does not want to sacrifice to Washington’s sanctions architecture. India is not choosing sides. It is expanding its options. That is what BRICS, at its most functional, enables.
The two meetings on May 14-15 are not separate stories happening to overlap on the calendar. They are two tracks of the same negotiation. Beijing is where the transactional power sits: Trump, Xi, the deal. New Delhi is where the multilateral architecture gets built, the framework that determines whether any deal that emerges from Beijing actually holds. American media will cover one. Readers of this publication will understand both.
🌍 TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: Outside the United States, the BRICS dimension of this week is receiving coverage proportional to its actual significance. Indian, Gulf, Iranian, and Russian media are all tracking the New Delhi meeting as a parallel channel to Beijing. The CBC’s analysis, published this morning, captured the international read precisely: Xi arrives at this summit more confident than at any previous Trump-China meeting, holding leverage on multiple fronts, with no illusion that lasting deals will be struck and every intention of projecting Beijing as the stable, predictable alternative to American volatility. That framing, China as the responsible actor and the US as the unpredictable one, is not Chinese propaganda. It is how much of the world, including US allies, is reading American foreign policy in 2026. The summit will not resolve it. It will define it.
🇺🇸 WHAT AMERICAN READERS NEED TO KNOW: The meeting that starts tomorrow in Beijing is the product of 54 years of choices: Nixon’s opening, Carter’s normalization, Clinton’s WTO bet, Obama’s pivot, Trump’s tariff war, and the Iran war that handed Xi the leverage he carries into the Great Hall of the People this week. The Taiwan question is not a new complication. It is the original unresolved question, planted in the Shanghai Communiqué in 1972, managed but never answered by every administration since. Trump will discuss it with Xi tomorrow. What he agrees to, and what he trades to get something on Iran, will not be in any public communiqué. The results will show up in Taiwan’s security, in the South China Sea, and in the terms of any Iran deal that emerges. While that meeting proceeds, the other half of the world’s diplomatic architecture will be in New Delhi. American readers deserve to know it exists.
Sources: US State Department / Office of the Historian (primary — Shanghai Communiqué text, Nixon visit, confirmed this session); Columbia University Asia for Educators (academic — engagement policy history, WTO accession, confirmed this session); CFR Timeline (non-partisan — Pompeo Nixon library speech, key milestones, confirmed this session); CFR Backgrounder (non-partisan — BRICS origin, Goldman Sachs O’Neill, first summit, confirmed this session); Carnegie Endowment (non-partisan — BRICS member motivations, American dominance framing, confirmed this session); CSIS (non-partisan think tank — summit agenda, China confidence assessment, confirmed this session); CBC News (Canada, public broadcaster — Xi leverage analysis, summit expectations, confirmed this session); Washington Post (US, centre-left — Xi confidence framing, welcome ceremony context, confirmed this session); CBS News (US — arms sale discussion, Reagan commitments, confirmed this session); CNBC (markets and business — Wang Yi “biggest point of risk” quote, confirmed this session); Reuters / Global Banking and Finance (wire — Scarborough Shoal barrier, satellite imagery, confirmed this session); India TV News / ANI (India — Araghchi New Delhi confirmed, Jaishankar contacts, Chabahar context, confirmed this session); CNN live blog (US — Trump aides resumption of operations reporting, confirmed this session)
IRON DOME IN ABU DHABI
The US Ambassador to Israel confirmed something Tuesday that has been circulating in intelligence circles for weeks and is now on the record: Israel deployed Iron Dome air defense batteries and IDF personnel to operate them to the United Arab Emirates during the Iran war. Reuters broke the confirmation at 4:39 a.m. EST, citing Ambassador Mike Huckabee’s remarks at a Tel Aviv University conference. AP followed within hours. Al Jazeera, NBC, and the Jerusalem Post confirmed the same.
It is the first time Israel has ever deployed Iron Dome — the air defense system funded by billions of US government dollars and designed to protect Israeli cities from rocket and missile fire — outside its own territory. Previously, Israel refused to transfer Iron Dome batteries to Ukraine to counter Russian missiles. It sent them to the UAE.
The decision was made following a direct conversation between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, according to JNS, citing Israeli officials. Iran has struck the UAE more than any other country during this war, more than 550 missiles and over 2,200 drone strikes, according to the UAE Defense Ministry. The deployment of Israeli air defense, with Israeli soldiers operating it, means that throughout this conflict, Israeli military personnel have been defending Emirati airspace against Iranian attack. The UAE did not announce this. Israel did not announce this. An American ambassador mentioned it on stage at a conference while praising the Abraham Accords.
Huckabee was explicit about what the deployment represents. “They were the first Abraham Accord member,” he said of the UAE. “But look at the benefits that they have had as a result: Israel just sent them Iron Dome batteries and personnel to help operate them. How come? Because there’s an extraordinary relationship between the UAE and Israel based on the Abraham Accords.” He then turned to the broader Gulf and issued a direct challenge: “The Gulf states now understood they will have to make a choice — is it more likely they will be attacked by Iran or Israel? They see that Israel helped us and Iran attacked us. Israel is not trying to take over your land, and is not sending missiles to you.” Huckabee told the Gulf states to pick a side.
The confirmation lands four days after the Wall Street Journal and AFP reported that the UAE was also covertly striking Iran, attacking an oil refinery on Lavan Island in early April, triggering a large fire that knocked the facility offline for months. Taken together, the picture that has emerged this week is one in which the UAE was simultaneously absorbing Iranian attacks, defending itself with Israeli technology and Israeli soldiers, and conducting its own covert offensive strikes on Iranian infrastructure, while presenting itself publicly as a victim of Iranian aggression and a neutral host of US military facilities. That is not a contradiction in Emirati strategic logic. It is a rational response to an existential threat from a powerful neighbor. But it is a substantially more complex picture than “UAE is a US-allied country being attacked by Iran.”
The Huckabee confirmation adds a further layer to the Iron Dome’s political history. The system was developed with significant US government funding. The United States has contributed approximately $2.8 billion to Iron Dome development and production since 2011. American taxpayers funded the system. It has now been deployed by Israel in a third country, in a war the US is fighting, to defend an ally that was covertly attacking a US adversary. The chain of decisions and relationships in that single fact is a compressed history of this war’s actual architecture.
🌍 TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: The confirmation has landed differently in different parts of the world. Al Jazeera’s framing focused on the Abraham Accords as the vehicle for Israeli military presence in Gulf states, noting that Iran had “repeatedly suggested over the years that Israel maintained a military and intelligence presence in the Emirates,” a claim now validated by a US government official. The Gulf press is noting the deployment as confirmation of a defense axis between Israel and the UAE that extends beyond shared intelligence and diplomatic normalization. In Arab capitals not party to the Abraham Accords, the sight of Israeli soldiers operating on Gulf soil will be read with considerable unease. The question of what the Abraham Accords actually mean, beyond diplomatic recognition, is being answered this week in operational terms.
🇺🇸 WHAT AMERICAN READERS NEED TO KNOW: American taxpayers funded Iron Dome. Israeli soldiers are operating it in the UAE. The UAE was simultaneously, covertly, striking Iran. All of this was happening while the American public was told, in general terms, that the UAE was a US-allied country being attacked by Iran. The full picture of how this war has actually been fought, by whom, from where, with what, is still coming into focus. This week’s disclosures are the most detailed account yet of the war’s actual architecture. Huckabee’s message to Gulf states to “pick a side” is worth noting for what it says about how Washington reads the region’s future: not as a collection of countries with their own interests navigating a dangerous conflict, but as a set of actors who need to choose.
Sources: Reuters via US News (wire — Huckabee confirmation, deployment details, confirmed this session); AP via NBC News (wire — Netanyahu/MBZ decision, Abraham Accords framing, confirmed this session); Al Jazeera (Qatar, state-funded/editorially independent — Huckabee quotes, UAE missile/drone toll, Iran response, confirmed this session); JNS (Jewish News Syndicate, Israel — Netanyahu/MBZ call, first official confirmation framing, 550 missiles/2,200 drones figure, confirmed this session); New Arab (UK-based, Arab editorial perspective — “pick a side” quote, broader Gulf reaction framing, confirmed this session)
CLYBURN’S SEAT HOLDS — FOR NOW
South Carolina held the line on Tuesday. The state Senate voted 29-17 against a measure that would have allowed the legislature to reconvene in a special session to redraw congressional districts, falling two votes short of the required two-thirds majority. Five Republicans broke with their party and voted with all Democrats to defeat it. The seat held by Rep. James Clyburn, the state’s only Democratic House member and the holder of its only majority-Black congressional district, survives. The window to change that closes Thursday, when the legislative session ends.
The resistance came from an unexpected source. Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey, a Republican from Edgefield, had received two direct phone calls from President Trump urging him to move forward. Trump had also posted on Truth Social Monday night, calling on South Carolina senators to “be bold and courageous” and declaring he was watching closely. Massey acknowledged the pressure and rejected it. His explanation was characteristically direct: “I got too much Southern in my blood. I’ve got too much resistance in my heritage.”
The concerns Massey and the four other Republican dissenters raised were partly principled and partly strategic. More than 5,000 absentee ballots had already been distributed for the June 9 primary under the current district lines; the State Election Commission testified that a map change would cost taxpayers upward of $2 million and create significant logistical chaos. More substantively, some Republican senators were not convinced the proposed map, which would divide Clyburn’s 6th District across multiple Republican-leaning districts, would deliver the result the White House wanted. The new map, they argued, could push enough Democratic voters into other districts to make currently safe Republican seats competitive. The Trump pressure was real. The math was uncertain.
The result is a narrow victory for voting rights advocates and a significant rebuke of the national redistricting pressure campaign. Democracy Docket called it “a strong rebuke of President Trump’s efforts to pressure southern states to quickly pass gerrymandered maps.” Since the Supreme Court’s Louisiana v. Callais decision on April 29, Alabama, Louisiana, and Tennessee have all moved to redraw maps. South Carolina has not — today. Governor Henry McMaster could still call a special session independently, a path that remains legally available. The national redistricting war continues in Missouri, where a federal court heard arguments Tuesday over a Kansas City-based district stretched 200 miles across 15 counties. In Louisiana, a state senator who drafted redistricting bills told lawmakers he had received death threats.
🇺🇸 WHAT AMERICAN READERS NEED TO KNOW: One Republican state senator’s resistance to direct presidential pressure held a majority-Black congressional district in place today. The margin was two votes. The governor can still act. The redistricting cascade set in motion by Louisiana v. Callais has not ended. It has stalled in South Carolina for now, while proceeding in Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Missouri. The structural consequences of that SCOTUS decision, which ROTWR reported in the Voting Rights Architecture Special Report, are being built state by state. Today’s vote was a hold, not a reversal. The war over who gets to draw the maps that determine who gets to govern is the most consequential domestic political story nobody is calling by its right name.
Sources: PBS NewsHour / AP (wire — vote result, 29-17, five Republicans, confirmed this session); Democracy Docket (voting rights specialist outlet — Callais context, rebuke framing, confirmed this session); NortheastNOW / AP (wire — Massey quote, strategic concerns, Missouri hearing, Louisiana death threats, confirmed this session); WIS / South Carolina Public Radio (local — absentee ballot figures, $2 million cost testimony, McMaster special session option, confirmed this session)
NUMBERS AT PUBLICATION
🇮🇷 Iran: 3,636+ killed (HRANA floor estimate — FROZEN since April 7; no updated HRANA report this session; Iranian Health Ministry figure as of May 5: 3,468 — methodology differs)
🇱🇧 Lebanon: 2,700+ killed and rising (Lebanese Ministry of Public Health — figure updating daily) 🇮🇱 Israel: At least 26 killed, 7,791 wounded (Al Jazeera live tracker, as of May 5); 19 military KIA since Lebanon war began (AFP, May 11)
🌍 Gulf states: At least 28 killed (Al Jazeera live tracker — figure stable, no update this session)
🇺🇸 US military: 14 KIA confirmed (GlobalSecurity.org, May 7)
🛢️ Brent crude: $107.70/barrel (OilPrice.com, Tuesday evening, editor-confirmed)
⛽ US gas: $4.50/gallon national average (Forbes/AAA, editor-confirmed)
Sourcing note: Iran casualties sourced to HRANA (US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency), a floor estimate. Iranian Health Ministry figure cited separately. Methodology differs; figures should not be treated as directly comparable.
WATCH LIST
🔴 Beijing summit, May 14-15. Trump lands in Beijing tonight. Two days of talks with Xi. Taiwan language change on the table. Arms sale on the agenda. Iran framework the stated US goal. What is traded in private will not appear in the joint communiqué. Results begin arriving Thursday morning.
🔴 BRICS New Delhi, May 14-15. Araghchi, Lavrov, Saudi FM, Egyptian FM, Jaishankar — simultaneously with Beijing. Iran’s multilateral guarantorship architecture is being built in this room. Watch for any joint language on Hormuz or a framework for an eventual Iran agreement.
🟡 South Carolina — McMaster. The Senate blocked the special session today. Governor McMaster has the legal authority to call one independently. The legislative session ends Thursday. Watch for whether McMaster acts before Thursday’s deadline.
“Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government.” — Thomas Jefferson, 1789
Thank you, Rudy, for the history lesson on US-China relations. I needed that. When I was younger, I must have been oblivious to what was going on in the world.