Gustavo de Arístegui,
May 12, 2026
I. BRIEF INTRODUCTION
May 12, 2026, is shaping up to be one of the most geopolitically charged days of recent months, with a confluence of mutually reinforcing risk factors that this analyst has been consistently diagnosing: the stagnation—or, more accurately, the slow-motion collapse—of negotiations between Washington and Tehran; the imminent Trump-Xi summit in Beijing, a meeting whose outcome could redefine the strategic balance in the Indo-Pacific; the political upheaval in the United Kingdom, where Prime Minister Keir Starmer is fighting for his political survival after a historic electoral debacle at the hands of right-wing populism embodied by Nigel Farage; and the devastating Reuters/Ipsos poll that confirms what this report has been warning about since the beginning of Operation Epic Fury: that the Trump Administration has lost the battle of strategic communication with its own citizens. and the unstoppable global rearmament, whose figures published by SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute) corroborate that the world has entered an unprecedented militaristic spiral since the Cold War.
These are five major news items, five signs that converge on the same diagnosis: the liberal international order, already seriously eroded, faces a perfect storm in which the erratic diplomatic leadership of the Trump Administration —brilliant in some aspects, deplorable in others— simultaneously constitutes the problem and the only instrument available to tackle it.
II. MOST IMPORTANT NEWS OF THE LAST 24 HOURS
1. Iran-US negotiations collapse: Trump rejects Tehran’s counterproposal and the ceasefire is left “on life support”
Facts
President Donald Trump strongly rejected Iran’s counterproposal to end the conflict that began on February 28, 2016, with the U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign against the nuclear facilities of Tehran’s jihadist oligarchy. Trump called the Iranian document “garbage” and declared the ceasefire “on massive life support,” adding that he hadn’t even finished reading the pages presented to him. “I don’t like it; it’s totally unacceptable,” the president wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social. The previous week, the U.S. administration had formulated a 14-point proposal demanding that Iran abandon its uranium enrichment program for at least 12 years, surrender its approximately 440 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60%, and unblock the Strait of Hormuz within 30 days in exchange for the gradual lifting of sanctions and the release of frozen assets. Tehran rejected this proposal, calling it a “demand for surrender.” Brent crude oil traded higher, reaching $104 a barrel, against the financial backdrop of a crisis that has now lasted ten weeks. On the same Monday, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on twelve individuals and entities for their role in the sale and transport of Iranian oil to China.
Implications
The breakdown of negotiations—or at least their indefinite paralysis—has consequences that extend far beyond the Persian Gulf theater of operations. The prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic waterway through which 20 to 25% of the world’s oil passes, has already generated a shock of historic proportions in global energy markets. Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest crude oil exporter, warned on Monday that if the reopening of the Strait is delayed “a few more weeks, normalization will be prolonged until 2027”; and that even if the passage were reopened today, “the market would take months to rebalance.” In practical terms, gasoline prices are unlikely to recover to pre-war levels in the short term, which directly impacts the wallets of American citizens and fuels Trump’s domestic woes.
The paradox of the decapitation that this analyst has been describing is manifesting itself in all its starkness: each successful blow against the command structures of the jihadist oligarchy hardens the positions of those who remain, since the most intransigent elements are, by definition, the most resistant. The triumvirate of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)—General Ahmed Vahidi, Mohamed B. Zolghadr, and Rezaei—has thus far managed to systematically block any opening to negotiations, leaving the reformist President Pezeshkian with no real room to maneuver.
Perspectives and scenarios
The most likely scenario in the short term is a prolonged negotiating deadlock with low-intensity exchanges on the ground—in other words, a war of variable temperature that neither side can win nor afford to lose. An agreement before the Trump-Xi summit in Beijing this week is not out of the question, but it is improbable: Tehran’s jihadist oligarchy knows full well that Trump is going to China weakened and in need of a diplomatic success, which paradoxically increases its negotiating leverage. The worst-case scenario—a resumption of large-scale hostilities—cannot be ruled out if Trump’s frustration with Iranian intransigence leads to renewed military action. What is certain is that the absence of a coherent plan for the aftermath—the most justifiable criticism that can be leveled at this administration—makes any scenario a leap into the void.
2. Trump travels to Beijing weakened by the Iran war: the Trump-Xi summit on May 14-15 and the fate of Taiwan
Facts
President Trump is departing for Beijing on May 14 and 15 for the first state summit in China by a US president since Trump himself visited the country in 2017. The agenda declared by the administration includes the Iran nuclear deal, artificial intelligence (AI), restrictions on rare earth exports, bilateral trade, and the nuclear issue. Trump confirmed on Monday from the Oval Office that his meeting with Xi Jinping would also address arms sales to Taiwan and the case of Hong Kong journalist and businessman Jimmy Lai, sentenced in December to 20 years in prison under Hong Kong’s National Security Law. “I’m going to have that conversation with President Xi,” Trump stated when asked about US military support for Taipei. “President Xi would like us not to do it, and I’m going to have that conversation.” Regarding Lai, he added, “I’d like to see him free.” In December 2025, Trump authorized the largest arms sale to Taiwan in history, worth $11 billion, which has yet to be delivered. Last week, the Taiwanese Parliament approved a special defense budget of $25 billion, far below the $40 billion requested by President Lai Ching-te.
Implications
The geopolitical reading of this summit is unequivocal: Trump arrives in Beijing in a position of structural weakness that Xi Jinping will exploit with his usual mix of strategic patience and tactical pressure. The Council on Foreign Relations has accurately pointed out that Xi managed to withstand the Trump Administration’s unprecedented tariff escalation in 2025—tariffs that reached over 140%—and that every time Washington threatened to escalate, Beijing activated its “glass-shattering tool”: the restriction of rare earth and magnet exports, to which Trump yielded. This asymmetry of negotiating power places Taiwan—as Taiwanese analysts rightly fear—”on the table,” with the risk that it will become a bargaining chip to obtain Chinese concessions on Iran, energy, or trade. Washington’s historical strategic ambiguity regarding Taiwan could be further diluted by a president who has publicly questioned the rationale for arms sales to Taipei and accused the island of “stealing” the American semiconductor industry.
As Bonnie Glaser, director of the Indo-Pacific program at the German Marshall Fund, rightly warns: any softening of Trump’s rhetoric, however ambiguous, would be “the most destabilizing outcome” of the summit, as it could be interpreted in Beijing as an implicit concession on China’s sphere of influence over Taiwan.
Perspectives and scenarios
The best-case scenario is that the summit will produce transactional agreements on rare earth elements, energy, and Iran, without substantive concessions on Taiwan. The intermediate scenario—the most likely from this analyst’s perspective—is that Trump’s rhetoric will introduce enough ambiguity for Beijing to present the outcome as a political breakthrough without Washington making any formal concessions. The worst-case scenario is an explicit or implicit concession on arms sales to Taiwan that emboldens the Chinese Communist Party to intensify its pressure on the island. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has tried to send reassuring signals to Taipei, declaring that U.S. policy toward Taiwan “has not changed,” but the history of this presidential term demonstrates that Rubio’s statements and Trump’s actions do not always align.
3. The defeat in the battle of communication: Two-thirds of Americans believe that Trump has not explained the objectives of the Iran war
Facts
A Reuters/Ipsos poll completed on Monday, May 11, and released today reveals that 66% of Americans—including a third of Republican voters and virtually all Democrats—believe that Trump has not clearly explained the objectives of U.S. military involvement in Iran. The survey, conducted among 1,254 adults nationwide with a margin of error of three percentage points, also shows that 63% of American households say their financial situation has been negatively impacted by rising gasoline prices, a direct result of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, compared to 55% in the March poll. Trump’s approval rating has risen slightly to 36%—two points higher than in the poll from late April, when it reached a low of 34% during his current term—but remains well below the 40% he enjoyed before the start of the war. Regarding the development of the conflict, only one in three citizens believes that the United States has the advantage; one in seven believes that Iran has the advantage; the rest say they do not know or that neither side has the advantage.
Implications
This poll confirms, with irrefutable empirical data, something this analyst has been pointing out since the first day of Operation Epic Fury: the Trump Administration launched a military campaign of enormous strategic complexity without first constructing a narrative to justify it to the public, without explaining what success is and how it is achieved, and without a coherent plan for the aftermath. Modern wars are not won solely on the battlefield: they are also won or lost in the cognitive sphere, in domestic public opinion, and in the international narrative. The fact that three-quarters of the population—including half of Republicans themselves—consider his Administration “at least partly responsible” for the rise in fuel prices is a political time bomb with delayed effects in a pre-election year in which Republican members of Congress will have to defend their seats in the November midterm elections.
Perspectives and scenarios
Trump’s communication challenge is, practically speaking, unsolvable in the short term as long as the Strait of Hormuz remains closed. High gasoline prices are the most tangible daily reminder of a war whose objectives remain unclear to most citizens. The president has repeatedly promised that prices will fall when the war ends, but energy analysts warn that this will not happen immediately, even if an agreement were reached tomorrow. The “mission accomplished” narrative that resonates with his most loyal supporters is insufficient to convince the third of undecided Republicans that the poll identifies as potentially vulnerable. Trump needs a visible diplomatic victory before autumn. The Beijing summit is his best opportunity.
4. United Kingdom: Farage’s Reform UK crushes victory — Starmer on the brink
Facts
British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer faces a critical cabinet meeting on Tuesday amid an unprecedented political storm for the Labour Party. The May 7 local elections, dominated by the right-wing populist Reform UK party led by Nigel Farage, have sparked an internal rebellion of historic proportions: 73 Labour MPs have demanded the prime minister’s resignation, four junior ministers have resigned, and several members of the entire cabinet—including Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood—have reportedly urged him to step down privately, according to various sources. Reform UK swept the elections, winning control of Essex, the top London borough authority—Havering Council—and the city of Sunderland, among other territories. Former Deputy Prime Minister and longtime party heavyweight Angela Rayner publicly declared that “what we’re doing isn’t working, and it has to change,” adding that “this may be our last chance.” MP David Smith went further, calling on Starmer to set “a clear timetable for his departure.” Starmer himself responded with terse firmness: “I’m not going to abandon ship and plunge the country into chaos.”
The Labour leadership crisis cannot be fully understood without addressing the episode that best illustrates both Starmer’s underhanded intentions and his proverbial strategic ineptitude: the blocking of Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham from standing as the Labour candidate in the Gorton and Denton by-election, held on February 26, 2026. Burnham—the most popular Labour politician in the country, with a net approval rating of +10 compared to Starmer’s devastating -40, and with the hypothetical support of 62% of Labour members in a head-to-head against the Prime Minister—applied on January 24 to stand for the vacant seat, which would have allowed him to return to the House of Commons and, thereby, formally challenge Starmer’s leadership, a sine qua non condition required by the party’s rules. The Labour Party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) vetoed his candidacy on January 25 by eight votes to one, a decision in which Starmer himself played an active role, according to Bloomberg and various parliamentary sources. The official pretext was that Burnham’s departure from the mayoralty would have necessitated costly local elections in Greater Manchester, with the risk that Reform UK would capitalize on the opportunity. The real pretext, obvious to any observer, was Starmer’s political survival.
The maneuver, reprehensible in its methods and clumsy in its outcome, produced the opposite of the intended effect: the seat held by Gorton and Denton, which should have been Burnham’s springboard to leadership, ended up being won by Hannah Spencer, the Green Party candidate, the same opponent Burnham had comfortably defeated in the 2024 Manchester mayoral election. The Labour Party lost a parliamentary seat it should have retained without difficulty, a poisoned gift that reinforced the perception of a party in freefall and a prime minister incapable of distinguishing between the party’s interests and his own.
Implications
What has happened in the United Kingdom is not merely an episode of British internal turmoil: it is an eloquent symptom of the systemic crisis affecting the political center in Western democracies, which this analyst identifies as one of the greatest risks to the cohesion of the Atlantic bloc. Reform UK, a party born out of Brexit and which shares with continental populism a programmatic hostility toward established liberal institutions, has achieved in less than two years of local establishment what no political movement outside the Labour-Conservative duopoly has managed for decades: to break the structural two-party system of the British political system. Farage, who celebrated his victory by proclaiming the “end of the two-party system of the old established elite,” also enjoys the tacit support of the Trumpian circle and generous donors from the crypto-libertarian universe.
The Burnham blockade adds a dimension to Starmer’s crisis that goes beyond mere tactical incompetence: it reveals a leadership willing to sacrifice the party’s collective interest—and, ultimately, the country’s interests—on the altar of its own survival. This short-sighted maneuver is worthy of the worst examples of party politics this analyst has witnessed in decades of diplomatic service. And the final irony—that the seat went precisely to the Greens, the party Burnham had soundly defeated when he ran in person—encapsulates in a single image the strategic mediocrity of those who orchestrated it.
Starmer’s weakness has direct consequences for the Atlantic security architecture: a politically paralyzed United Kingdom, with a caretaker government unable to lead the European response to the challenges posed by Iran, Russia, and China, is a diminished partner in its capacity for concerted action precisely when it is most needed. The real threat is that a hypothetical replacement of Starmer with a more left-leaning successor—pressure being exerted by the Corbynist wing of the party—would deepen London’s dealignment with Washington at the most critical juncture.
Perspectives and scenarios
Burnham remains out of Parliament, without a seat and with no clear path back to Westminster in the short term, which for now technically shields Starmer from the most formidable challenge he could face. But this Pyrrhic victory comes at a cumulative political cost: each such maneuver worsens the perception of a leadership that prioritizes its own survival over the party’s well-being. Starmer has three options: hold on and hope the tide will calm, shift to the left to win back votes lost to the Greens and hardline Labour, or move to the center to directly challenge Reform UK’s support among the working class. None of these options guarantees political survival. In the short term, Starmer is most likely to survive the week—it’s unlikely the party will bear the cost of a leadership crisis at this point—but the clock is ticking, and the prime minister’s real authority has suffered damage from which it will be difficult to recover before the 2029 general election. For European and Atlantic allies, the only reassuring scenario would be a strengthened Starmer or a successor who could guarantee the continuity of Atlanticist foreign policy. That scenario, as things stand, cannot be taken for granted.
5. The global arms race: global military spending exceeds $2.88 trillion in 2025 and the escalation continues in 2026
Facts
Two weeks ago, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) published its final figures on global military spending for 2025, which reached $2.87 trillion, a real increase of 2.9% compared to 2024 and the eleventh consecutive year of growth. Global military spending as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) reached 2.5%, the highest level since 2009. The top three spenders are the United States ($954 billion), China ($336 billion), and Russia ($190 billion), which together account for 51% of the global total. Europe led the growth with a 14% increase to $864 billion—the fastest growth rate for Central and Western Europe since the end of the Cold War—while Asia and Oceania grew by 8.1%. Germany, with $114 billion and 2.3% of its GDP, surpassed NATO’s 2% threshold for the first time since 1990. The United States Congress has approved a defense budget exceeding $1 trillion for 2026, which could rise to $1.5 trillion in 2027 if Trump’s budget proposal is accepted. The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), for its part, estimates global defense spending in 2025 at $2.63 trillion according to its own methodology, representing real growth of 2.5%, driven primarily by Europe and the Middle East.
Implications
These data confirm that the world has entered a spiral of rearmament reminiscent, with all due respect to the differences, of the worst moments of the Cold War’s bipolarity, albeit with far greater structural complexity given the multipolar nature of the current international system. The Iran war and its impact on energy markets have accelerated this trend, especially in Europe, where the Russian threat—never truly gone but conventionally ignored for decades—has become tangible, a reality that governments can no longer ignore. European rearmament, which this analyst considers not only necessary but dramatically urgent, is nevertheless arriving late, in a disorganized fashion, and without the common institutional defense framework that the magnitude of the challenge demands. That Europe took three decades to react to Russian aggression, and that it is doing so now in a fragmented manner, is one of the most telling historical failures of the continent’s political class.
The rearmament process also has major macroeconomic consequences. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), a wave of defense spending of this magnitude, financed two-thirds by public debt, can stimulate short-term growth but generates fiscal pressures and imbalances that jeopardize the sustainability of European welfare states. This introduces a new internal political tension: rearmament directly competes with healthcare, education, and social services.
Perspectives and scenarios
The baseline scenario is the continuation of the spending spiral for at least three to five years, driven by the combination of the Iran war, tensions in the Indo-Pacific, the war in Ukraine, and Washington’s pressure on allies to shoulder a greater defense burden. The alternative scenario—a global arms control negotiation along the lines of the SALT agreements of the past—is theoretically desirable but virtually impossible to imagine in the current climate of geopolitical mistrust. What can be stated with certainty is that European defense industries—Rheinmetall, Leonardo, Airbus Defence, BAE Systems—are facing their greatest business opportunity since the post-Cold War era, while European taxpayers will foot a bill whose justification, objectively speaking, should have been established much earlier.
III. MEDIA RACK
Anglo-Saxon media dominate the day’s coverage, focusing simultaneously on the Beijing summit and the stalled negotiations with Iran.
Reuters and AP offer factual and balanced coverage of the dual Iran-China crisis, with headlines highlighting the weakness of Trump’s negotiating position with both parties. The American agency notes that the president “arrives in China wounded by the Iran war, seeking victories.”
The Washington Post headlines that “the ceasefire with Iran is on life support,” and provides the detail that the oil tanker anchored in Fujairah, in the United Arab Emirates, symbolizes the paralysis of traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.
CNN is providing live coverage of the conflict, with a focus on the new sanctions imposed on twelve entities for facilitating the sale of Iranian crude oil to China—a pressure tactic against Beijing days before the summit. It also highlights Saudi Aramco’s warning that the energy crisis will continue until 2027.
CNBC and NBC News report on the aggressive tone of the Iranian statement —which calls the American proposal a “demand for surrender”— and warn of the deepening of the diplomatic impasse.
The South China Morning Post (SCMP) covers the summit from Beijing’s perspective, noting that Xi Jinping “will bring up the Taiwan issue at the meeting more than Trump will,” according to the US president’s own words. The Hong Kong-based newspaper highlights Jimmy Lai’s 20-year prison sentence as the most awkward backdrop for bilateral diplomacy.
The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) has published an analysis by five experts on the Trump-Xi summit, with the telling title: “At the Trump-Xi Summit, China Will Have the Upper Hand.” It is the most rigorous analytical work published today on this topic.
Al Jazeera offers a detailed analysis of the rejected Iranian proposal, explaining each of the fourteen points in the American document and Tehran’s response. As is its custom, it maintains a style that avoids labeling Hezbollah and Hamas as terrorist organizations, which, in this analyst’s view, invalidates its editorial approach.
SIPRI and IISS provide the data that underpin the analysis of global rearmament, with a statistical objectivity that contrasts with the polarization of the political debate surrounding defense budgets.
The Times of London, The Guardian and The Telegraph dedicate their front pages to the Starmer crisis, with different approaches: The Times is the most critical of the Prime Minister’s leadership, The Guardian insists on the dimension of the social crisis that has fueled the vote for Reform, and The Telegraph —closer to the conservative electorate— records with poorly disguised satisfaction the Labour collapse.
IV. RISK TRAFFIC LIGHT
| ⚫ | SCOPE | RISK LEVEL | OBSERVATION |
|---|---|---|---|
| ● | Iran-US conflict / Strait of Hormuz | 🔴 CRITICAL | The ceasefire is on life support. Negotiations are collapsing. Brent crude is at $104/barrel. Risk of renewed hostilities is active. |
| ● | Trump-Xi Summit (Beijing, May 14-15) | 🔴 VERY HIGH | Taiwan “on the table.” Risk of strategic concessions from Washington to Beijing regarding arms sales to Taipei. |
| ● | Political crisis in the United Kingdom | 🟠 STOP | Starmer on the brink. Farage’s Reform UK controls the political discourse. Risk of Labour leadership change with transatlantic implications. |
| ● | US Strategic Communications / Iran-Iraq War | 🟠 STOP | 66% of Americans believe Trump has not explained the objectives of the war. Erosion of domestic support in a pre-election year. |
| ● | Global Arms Race | 🟡 MODERATE-HIGH | Global military spending will exceed $2.88 trillion in 2025 (SIPRI). Europe is leading the growth (+14%). Risk of a destabilizing spiral. |
V. EDITORIAL COMMENTARY
There are days when global geopolitics is condensed into a small number of headlines that function like an electrocardiogram of the international system. May 12, 2026, is one of those days.
Tehran’s jihadist oligarchy has played its cards well in recent hours: rejecting the American proposal with enough rhetorical grandiloquence to consolidate internal consensus—the “rally around the flag” effect that every authoritarian elite needs to survive in times of external pressure—but without definitively closing the door to further rounds of negotiations. Let’s not forget the paradox of decapitation: the more this ruthless regime is attacked, the more hardened those who survive become, because the survivors are precisely the most fanatical, the most cosmically corrupt, and the most intransigent. The IRGC triumvirate—Vahidi, Zolghadr, and Rezaei—has managed to turn Pezeshkian into a powerless spectator of his own foreign policy.
Trump, meanwhile, is heading to Beijing in the most awkward position possible for a negotiator: needy. Xi Jinping knows this, and has known it ever since Washington launched a war without a coherent exit strategy. The temptation to use Taiwan as a bargaining chip to extract Chinese concessions on Iran, energy, or rare earth elements is real, and—if it were to materialize—it would be the most serious strategic error in American foreign policy since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. This analyst is confident that the firmness of Marco Rubio and the national security establishment will curb that temptation, but the transactional and erratic nature of presidential decisions makes it impossible to rely on such confidence.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll is devastating in its simplicity: two-thirds of Americans don’t know why they are at war with Iran. In far too many international forums, we have warned that strategic communication is not an optional accessory to waging war, but a necessary condition for its legitimacy. A democracy that cannot explain to its citizens why it is fighting has a problem of far greater magnitude than the progress of negotiations in the Persian Gulf.
In the UK, Starmer’s collapse is the latest expression of a phenomenon this analyst has observed with growing concern: the colossal failure of Europe’s progressive political class to connect with the real anxieties of the working and middle classes, paving the way for populisms that, at least in their Farage-Trumpian version, are incompatible with the demands of Atlantic solidarity and Western strategic coherence. A UK governed or decisively influenced by Reform UK would be a radically different Atlantic partner than the one we know, with disturbing implications for NATO.
And global rearmament, ultimately, is nothing more than the quantified expression, in hundreds of billions of dollars, of a world that has lost faith in the norms, institutions, and mechanisms of dialogue that, for seven decades—with all their flaws—maintained peace among the great powers. The mediocre and short-sighted Europe that for three decades spent on defense barely what its conscience allowed has suddenly awakened to the brutality of reality. Welcome this reappearance of a sense of responsibility, even if it comes thirty years late and under the worst possible conditions for managing it with the effectiveness and coordination that the moment demands.
The world is not at peace. But neither is it, at least for now, in total war. We are in that uncomfortable territory of contained systemic fracture where risks accumulate, frictions multiply, and mistakes have a cost that no one can afford. This is the territory that this report attempts to map, with the honesty that the moment demands and the commitment that this editorial line remains steadfast in upholding.