The geopolitical summer of 2025 is anything but boring. Although international relations in the 21st century are complex, dynamic, and unpredictable, the situation has been further destabilized by Donald Trump’s presence in the White House, the Middle East boiling over following the recently concluded Iran-Israel war, the ongoing war in Ukraine, the rising influence of BRICS, and increasing divisions within NATO and the European Union. We discussed all these and other crucial geopolitical topics with Dr. Petar Popović, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Political Science in Zagreb and an expert in international relations and diplomacy.
– Were you surprised by the conflict, or rather the war, between Iran and Israel that suddenly broke out on June 13? Did the Israeli government under Benjamin Netanyahu make the right decision in attacking Iranian military and civilian targets?
The Israeli attack did not surprise me. Ever since Iran launched rockets at Israel in April of last year, the two countries have been de facto at war. The only reason the conflict did not escalate then was the open threat from the Biden administration that it would not support Netanyahu’s offensive actions. Israeli air and intelligence operations can inflict heavy damage on Iran, but a military intervention aimed at the ultimate goal—overthrowing the theocratic regime—is unfeasible without American support. Therefore, Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential elections signaled that Netanyahu might finally get the necessary military backing for an attack.
The initial plan for a joint attack, scheduled for May, was presented by Netanyahu to Trump during a phone call on April 3 and a few days later during an official visit to the U.S. However, Trump made a stunning move by initiating negotiations with Iran on a new nuclear deal and rejecting the Israeli plan. Iran agreed to the negotiations, which I believe truly shocked Netanyahu. According to some sources, Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, played a key role in the White House’s decision to abandon the Israeli plan. Negotiations between the U.S. and Iran began on April 12, and from that moment, it was only a matter of time before Israel would attack to sabotage the talks and drag the U.S. into war.
At the end of May, The New York Times published a report on Netanyahu’s intention to carry out the attack even if a deal was reached. The attack occurred on June 13, right before the sixth round of U.S.-Iran negotiations. Israel clearly took advantage of a favorable moment: a stall in the negotiations and the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) announcement that Iran was not meeting its nuclear safeguard obligations.
– How do you view Donald Trump’s decision for the U.S. to join the Israeli attacks? Was it a prudent decision considering America’s interventions in the region at the beginning of the 21st century? Many experts claim that Trump has long lost touch with reality and therefore makes irrational decisions.
Unpredictability is the main characteristic of Trump’s style of governance. However, behind these decisions lies a complex struggle for the president’s favor between two opposing factions. The first faction consists of Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, made up of nationalists and isolationists whose main goal is to shift focus, if not completely withdraw, the U.S. from Europe and the Middle East. Prominent figures in this faction include Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and the aforementioned Gabbard. Opposing them is the faction of “hawks” (conditionally referred to as neoconservatives), whose interventionist logic is based on the imperial idea of America’s special mission in the world and military supremacy. This faction is very close to Israel and is led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and now former National Security Advisor Michael Waltz.
Since the White House rejected Netanyahu’s initial plan for a joint attack on Iran in April, the hawks have launched an internal struggle to take over key positions within the bureaucracy. At that time, the administration was already shaken by a scandal involving Trump officials communicating on the Signal app. The circumstances under which Waltz “accidentally” added a journalist from The Atlantic to a Signal group where confidential information about an upcoming attack on Yemen was shared are still unclear. One thing is certain: the “Signal scandal” compromised the MAGA faction, putting Secretary of Defense Hegseth under immense pressure. After Waltz resigned, Rubio took over his position, becoming the first person since Kissinger to simultaneously serve as Secretary of State and National Security Advisor.
Then came a scandal at the Pentagon when Hegseth’s advisor, Justin Fulcher, falsely accused three officials of wiretapping, leading to their dismissal. One of them, Dan Caldwell, stated in an interview with Tucker Carlson that part of the American administration continues to push the regime change agenda in Iran. Their positions were filled with personnel loyal to the neoconservatives, including the appointment of Merav Ceren, who previously worked in Israel’s Ministry of Defense, as the Pentagon’s advisor on Iran and Israel. Neoconservative Mark Levin, who openly criticized Gabbard as incompetent, was appointed head of the Department of Homeland Security. Just before the so-called “Twelve-Day War,” Gabbard claimed that Iran did not have nuclear weapons or the capability to produce them. However, following the U.S. intervention, she changed her stance.
Therefore, Trump’s decision to join the Israeli attacks is not surprising. Although his decisions often appear irrational, I believe the key to understanding the current processes lies in following the bureaucratic infighting and power struggles within the administration itself. It is clear that the influence of the MAGA faction, especially after the fall of Elon Musk, has been significantly diminished.
– In your opinion, will there be a sustainable ceasefire between Israel and Iran, or will the coming period see a new spiral of violence that has not stopped since Hamas’s incursion into southern Israel on October 7, 2023? It seems that this date will have great significance in Middle Eastern history. Since that event, we have seen the Gaza war, ongoing mutual attacks between Iran and Israel, proxy warfare, and the fall of the Assad regime…
The so-called “Twelve-Day War” was a demonstration of U.S. and Israeli military power, but its purpose reveals strategic divergences. The U.S. joined the attacks in line with Trump’s tactic of pressuring Tehran to strengthen its negotiating position. In March, after Iran rejected the first American offer for talks, the U.S. began airstrikes on the Houthis in Yemen as a form of indirect pressure. Netanyahu is well aware of this and will certainly exploit every new opportunity for an attack. We can undoubtedly expect further conflicts in the coming months.
It is true that October 7, 2023, with the outbreak of war between Hamas and Israel, initiated a process leading toward a deep transformation of the regional order, which, ultimately, is aimed at the regime change in Iran. However, any sustainable peace will not be achieved without the active involvement of the great powers. This does not only involve Western countries but also China and Russia. I would like to remind you that since the beginning of U.S.-Russia negotiations to end the war in Ukraine, which started in February in Riyadh, Iran has been a regular topic of discussion. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has repeatedly stated that Russia is ready to mediate in U.S.-Iran negotiations. After all, Russia played a crucial role in achieving the first nuclear agreement in 2015 during the Obama administration, which Trump withdrew from in 2018.
For the past fifteen years, American strategy has been focused on reducing its presence in the Middle East and Europe so that Washington can fully reorient toward its main rival, China. However, unlike Europe and Ukraine, the Middle East is much more important to the U.S., because any broader regional conflict would automatically disrupt oil prices on the global market. America is still relatively energy independent. In an era of deglobalization, when political pressures and anti-globalist demands for reindustrialization in the U.S. are growing stronger, no administration can afford high energy prices. That is why Biden did not want to support his ally Israel in attacks on Iran last year. The current administration also does not want this, although it seems the influence of the pro-Israel faction is increasingly growing.
— Do you think NATO has a future? The alliance was given new life after Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, but its original purpose was lost long ago since both the USSR and the Warsaw Pact dissolved.
The NATO alliance, as you said, received a “new life” after 2022, but at the same time it is in a deep, if not existential, crisis. This contradiction needs to be understood in the context of its historical evolution and the distancing from the original purpose of its creation. I would recall a similar situation after Napoleon’s defeat, when the European allies at the Congress of Vienna quickly clashed over the postwar territorial distribution. The shock caused by Napoleon’s return and his last “100 days” in power was also a warning to the greedy European powers that they must overcome their differences and remain united. And the only impetus to maintain unity in the absence of an external threat is ideology. That is how the Holy Alliance was formed, cementing the alliance based on the shared principles and values of conservative Europe.
NATO was in an identical situation after 1990. The American political elites, especially the neoconservatives, openly expressed concerns that after the Soviet Union’s collapse, Europe would strengthen and become more autonomous, thus threatening the alliance. To prevent a potential post-Cold War split, NATO embraced neoliberal ideology as its new raison d’être, transforming from a defensive alliance into the vanguard of the international liberal order under American dominance.
Therefore, the current internal crisis of NATO, regardless of growing external threats, can be explained solely as an ideological crisis caused by the collapse of the liberal international order. The crisis manifests itself in the American turn towards isolationism and protectionism, which began under the Obama administration. Consequently, the withdrawal of American strategic focus from Europe raises questions about Europe’s responsibility for its own security and the problem of allocating the agreed 2% of national budgets to defense. The Trump administration today demands even higher thresholds, up to 5%.
Yet Europe has collectively spent 9 trillion dollars on defense from the end of the Cold War until 2023. Since 2014, when the war in Ukraine began, expenditures have doubled. It is very telling that the promise of European leaders at the NATO summit in June to reach the 5% threshold by 2035 does not relate exclusively to military defense but also to “other security expenditures.” In other words, vast amounts will be allocated to all areas that European allies declare to be of “strategic interest” — from infrastructure and telecommunications to energy. Take the recent example of the Italian government’s announcement of a 13.5 billion euro bridge to Sicily, which the government justified as a “strategic project” within fulfilling its obligations to the alliance. It seems, therefore, that military Keynesianism is the new purpose of NATO’s existence, meaning that Europe, under the guise of security, subsidizes its faltering industry.
Regardless, the concept of collective security is still being tested. If Russia indeed attacks one of NATO’s members, the question is not only whether European countries will be able to respond, but whether the U.S. will be willing to honor Article 5 of the NATO Charter and defend the attacked ally. Trump’s statements that “there are many definitions of Article 5” and his threats to leave the alliance should not be taken lightly. The truth is that the U.S. Congress passed a provision that formally makes unilateral withdrawal more difficult (this clause was introduced by then-Senator Marco Rubio into the Pentagon budget proposal for 2024).
Still, according to the U.S. Constitution, Congress ultimately cannot prevent the president from terminating an international treaty, as confirmed by the unilateral U.S. withdrawals from the Taiwan defense agreement in 1979 and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) in 2002. This is the main reason why in the past year “parallel structures” of defense cooperation between the EU and Britain and Canada, as well as other countries outside the Transatlantic circle such as Japan, Australia, and South Korea, have been created.
Interview conducted by Matija Šerić.
To be continued.
