The Negotiations With Iran Went Belly Up. Will the War Re-Start?

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Trump has said the US will begin blockading the strait of Hormuz in an attempt to take control of the strategic waterway from Iran in the aftermath of failed peace negotiations between the countries in Pakistan.

The US president also threatened to bomb Iran’s water treatment facilities, power plants and bridges, repeating an earlier threat, if Tehran does not agree to abandon its nuclear weapons programme, the key sticking point between the two sides.

Trump’s surprise announcement of a blockade came after face-to-face peace negotiations between the US and Iran in Islamabad that lasted 21 hours collapsed on Sunday morning.

Vance said Iran had refused to give up the possibility of developing nuclear weapons, while the Iranian delegates said Washington needed to do more to win their trust.

Risking another increase in oil prices, Trump said he had instructed the US navy to begin “blockading any and all ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz,” and he accused Iran of extortion with its own scheme of charging tolls to tankers.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards responded by declaring that if any warships approached the strait to enforce a blockade – usually considered an act of war – it would be considered a breach of the current ceasefire and would be dealt with strongly. They insisted the strait remained under Iranian control.

Two US destroyers crossed and recrossed the strait without incident on Saturday, although Iranian media said they were threatened as they left. The US military said it was the start of a mine-clearance mission.

Trump said US warships would “seek and interdict every vessel” that had paid Iran since the start of the conflict and begin de-mining the central section of the strait, previously declared a “hazardous area” by Tehran, although it is unclear how many mines have been laid.

About 100 tankers have transited the strait since the US and Israel started bombing Iran, paying up to $2m each time for passage.

Many were bound for China and India, carrying Iranian oil products, and chasing them down could complicate relations between the US and the importing nations.

#trump #iran #strait #hormuz #vance #blockading

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The US and Iranian delegations left Pakistan soon after the talks ended. Vance said he spoke with Trump at least half a dozen times during the talks, held during a 14-day ceasefire announced by the US, Israel and Iran overnight on 7 and 8 April.

“We need to see an affirmative commitment that [Iran] will not seek a nuclear weapon, and they will not seek the tools that would enable them to quickly achieve a nuclear weapon,” Vance said.

“That is the core goal of the president of the United States, and that’s what we’ve tried to achieve through these negotiations.”

Mohammad Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Iranian parliament, who led Tehran’s negotiators, said he and his colleagues had offered “constructive initiatives” while the US had been “unable to gain the trust of the Iranian delegation in this round of negotiations”.

Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency said “excessive” US demands had hindered reaching an agreement, and the foreign ministry said more time was needed.

“Naturally, from the beginning we should not have expected to reach an agreement in a single session,” the ministry’s spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said, according to the state broadcaster IRIB.

Pakistani mediators called on the US and Iran to refrain from renewing hostilities and said they would try to arrange a fresh round of talks.

“It is imperative that the parties continue to uphold their commitment to the ceasefire,” said Pakistan’s foreign minister, Ishaq Dar.

Vance was accompanied by the US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Kushner.

They met Ghalibaf and the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, for several negotiating sessions at the Serena hotel in Islamabad, with Pakistan’s army chief, Asim Munir, also present.

Iran’s delegation arrived on Friday dressed in black in mourning for the late supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and others killed in the war.

They carried shoes and bags of children killed during the bombing of a school next to a military compound, the Iranian government said.

A Pakistani source said the discussions, the highest-level direct contact between the US and Iran since 1979, were unpredictable in tone.

“There were mood swings from the two sides, and the temperature went up and down during the meeting,” a Pakistani source said after the first round.

Trump said: “The only thing left, really, is their water, which would be very devastating to hit. I would hate to do it, but it’s their water, their desalinisation plans, their electric generating plants, which are very easy to hit.”

The president was asked if gas and oil prices might be lower by the US midterms in November, an indication that attacking Iran was not an economic mistake. Prices “could be the same or maybe a little bit higher,” a non-committal Trump replied.

At the Vatican, Pope Leo XIV called for a ceasefire after his Sunday prayers and said he felt “closer than ever” to Lebanon’s people.

#trump #iran #strait #hormuz #vance #blockading

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Ray Dalio:
The Great Investor On the War in Iran and the Contemporary World

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As a global macro investor for over 50 years who has needed to study all things that affected markets over the last 500 years to know how to deal what’s coming at me, it appears to me that most people tend to focus on and react to the attention-grabbing things that are going on at the time—like what is going on with Iran now—and miss the much bigger, more important, and longer-term-evolving things that are driving what is going on and what is likely to happen. 

For instance, this week, headlines have focused on the recently announced two-week ceasefire of the U.S.-Israel-Iran war. But I believe the conflict in Iran is just one part of a larger potential world war, with countries like China, Russia, and Iran on one side and the United States and countries with U.S. military bases on the other. 

I wish it were not true, but I fear we are entering a world war.

I wish it were not true, but I fear we are entering a world war.

Certainly, what will happen with the Strait of Hormuz (most significantly, whether control of passage through it will be taken away from Iran, and which countries are willing to spend how much blood and treasure to make that happen) will have many enormous repercussions all around the world.

There are also the issues of whether Iran will still have a capacity to inflict harm on its neighbors through missiles and nuclear weapons, of how many troops the U.S. will send to the region, of the cost of gasoline, and of the upcoming U.S. midterm elections.

All these near-term issues are important, but they lead people to miss the really big, even more important things. More specifically, because most people tend to have this short-term perspective, they now expect, and the markets are pricing in, that this war won’t last long, and when it ends, that we will get back to “normal.”

Virtually nobody is talking about the fact that we are in the early stages of a world war that isn’t going to end any time soon. 

Interconnected conflicts
It may sound like hyperbole to say we are in a world war, but it is indisputable that we are now in an interconnected world that has a number of shooting wars going on (e.g., the Ukraine-Russia- Europe-U.S. war; the Israel-Gaza-Lebanon-Syria war; the Yemen-Sudan-Saudi Arabia-UAE war that also involves Kuwait, Egypt, Jordan, and other related countries; and the U.S-Israel-GCC-Iran war).

#dalio #iran #trump #nuclear #weapons #military #bases

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Most of these wars involve major nuclear powers, and there are also significant non-shooting wars (i.e., trade, economic, capital, technology, and geopolitical influence wars) that most countries are in. Together, these conflicts make up a very classic world war that is analogous to past “world wars.” 

For example, past “world wars” consisted of interrelated wars that were generally slipped into without any clear start dates or declarations of war. Those examples of both past and current wars combine in a classic world war dynamic that affects them all.

Understanding how the sides are lining up and what their relationships are is very important. 

It is quite easy to see objectively how the sides are lining up via indicators such as their treaties and formal alliances, their votes at the U.N., their leaders’ statements, and their actions. For example, one can see how China is aligned with Russia and Russia is aligned with Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela, and how that group is largely opposed to the United States, Ukraine, most European countries, Israel, the GCC states, Japan, and Australia. 

These alliances matter a lot in imagining how things will go for the relevant players, so they need to be considered when observing what’s going on and what’s likely to happen.

For example, we see that reflected in China’s and Russia’s votes at the U.N. on Iran needing to open the Strait of Hormuz.

Similarly, while it’s said that China is particularly harmed by the closing of the Strait of Hormuz, that is wrong because China’s mutually supportive relationship with Iran will probably allow oil going to China to get through. Plus, China’s relationship with Russia will ensure China gets oil from Russia.

China also has a lot of other energy (coal and solar), and it has a huge inventory of oil. Also noteworthy is that China consumes between 80% and 90% of Iran’s oil output, which adds to the power of its relationship with Iran.

All things considered, it appears that China and Russia are the relative economic and geopolitical winners from this war. Though to be sure, the United States is relatively advantaged in terms of global energy economics, because it is in the enviable position of being an energy exporter.

Studying history is immensely valuable to me and helps me contextualize current events.

For example, both an examination of several analogous cases in history and logic make it obvious that how the United States (the dominant power of the post-1945 world order) performs in the war with Iran (a middle power), how much money and military equipment it expends and depletes itself of, and how well it defends (or doesn’t defend) its allies will be watched by other nations and will enormously influence how the world order changes.

Most importantly, we know that what happens in the war with Iran will have huge implications for what other countries (most importantly, those in Asia and Europe) will do, which will have big implications for how the world order will change. 

#dalio #iran #trump #nuclear #weapons #military #bases

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These changes will come in ways that have repeatedly happened before. For example, from studying history, it’s easy to identify over-extended empires, develop indicators for how overextended they are, and see how overextended empires have suffered from being overextended.

In looking at what is happening now, it is natural to examine what is happening with the U.S., which now has 750–800 foreign military bases in 70–80 countries (site note: China only has 1) and has commitments that create expensive vulnerabilities all over the world.

To be sure, there is nothing precise about these indicators, the picture they paint, or the exact timing. For example, history has taught us that wars don’t always have definitive start dates with big military events followed by clear declarations of war.

The Assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, the German invasion of Poland, and the bombing of Pearl Harbor are actually the exceptions. Economic, financial, and military conflicts typically arise before there are clearly declared wars. 

Historically, major wars were typically preceded by developments and indicators like military stockpiles and monies being drawn down; budgets, debts, money printing, and capital controls being built up; rival countries observing the countries fighting and learning what their strengths and weaknesses are; and the overextended leading world power facing the challenge of trying to fight wars on different fronts that are very far apart.

These factors all matter, and my measures of them indicate that we should be concerned. 
The classic dynamic at this stage is for conflicts to intensify rather than subside, so what happens next will be influenced by how the U.S.-Iran war goes.

For example, there is already less confidence among some countries that the U.S. will defend them, which, when combined with the recognition that nuclear weapons are a great defensive as well as offensive power, is leading to more talk among countries’ senior policy makers about obtaining nuclear weapons and building up their stockpiles of them and other weapons, particularly missiles and missile defense systems.  

#dalio #iran #trump #nuclear #weapons #military #bases

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Hormuz First, Russian Oil Still Flows

Washington is turning the Gulf into a checkpoint and calling it enforcement. After the talks in Islamabad failed, Trump announced a U.S. naval blockade targeting ships entering or leaving Iranian ports, while saying traffic to other Gulf ports can still pass through Hormuz. So this is not a full closure of the strait. It is selective pressure backed by U.S. firepower.

Trump, in typical fashion, said any vessel that pays Iran an “illegal toll” should not expect safe passage. Oil markets reacted immediately. U.S. crude rose about 8% to $104.24, and Brent climbed 7% to $102.29. The message was simple: shipping through the Gulf now carries a war premium.

Then the contradiction appears. On March 12, the Treasury issued a 30-day waiver allowing some Russian oil to keep flowing through April 11, partly to limit market disruption during the Iran war. Reuters then reported that the White House was likely to extend the waiver because rising oil prices were becoming a domestic political problem.

So the same administration threatening to intercept ships over payments to Iran is still keeping Russian barrels on the market. Tehran gets threats. Moscow gets waivers. Principle holds until gas prices rise.

That is the real hierarchy. Washington is not applying one rule. It is managing exceptions. And who gets squeezed depends less on the offense than on whether the White House can absorb higher oil prices this cycle.

#Hormuz #Iran #Trump #Russia #oil #sanctions #geopolitics

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#robert #pipe #unitedstates #iran #war

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#mirsheimer #trump #desperate #unitedstates

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#kallas #us #middle #east

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Hormuz for Show, Russian Oil for Real

Washington says it is policing the Gulf. In practice, it is policing Iran and cushioning Russia.

After the Pakistan talks failed, Trump announced a U.S. naval blockade targeting ships entering or leaving Iranian ports, while allowing traffic to other Gulf ports to keep moving through Hormuz. So this is not a full shutdown of the strait. It is a selective squeeze.

Trump said any ship that pays Iran an “illegal toll” should not expect safe passage. Oil markets heard the point immediately. U.S. crude jumped about 8% to $104.24, while Brent rose about 7% to $102.29. Shipping through the Gulf now comes with a war premium.

Now the useful hypocrisy. The U.S. waiver allowing purchases of some Russian oil loaded by March 12 ran through midnight Washington time on April 11. Reuters reported on April 10 that the administration was likely to extend it, because higher fuel prices were becoming a political problem at home.

Kyiv Independent went further and said Russia’s daily oil export revenues had doubled after the war with Iran began. Whether that exact figure holds or not, the direction is obvious enough: the Hormuz shock lifted prices, and Washington had little appetite for pulling Russian barrels off the market at the same time.

So Tehran gets threats. Moscow gets flexibility. The White House talks like a navy and prices like a gas station. Sanctions expire on paper, then survive in practice when the pump starts mattering more than the doctrine.

#Hormuz #Iran #Russia #Trump #oil #sanctions #geopolitics

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Lufthansa’s Labor Budget Airline

Lufthansa pilots are striking again on April 13 and 14, with the walkout covering Lufthansa, Lufthansa Cargo, and Lufthansa CityLine. Eurowings pilots are also set to strike on April 13. Flights to several Middle Eastern destinations are exempt.

The dispute is over pensions, not some grand civilizational question. The union says management has dragged out talks and offered nothing serious, even after pilots held off over Easter. Lufthansa says the demands are unrealistic and amount to doubling an already generous pension plan.

That leaves the usual European corporate script. Management pleads poverty. Labor calls the bluff. Passengers get drafted into the negotiation as unpaid extras. Lufthansa says the strike is a new escalation. The union says escalation is what happens when talks become theater.

This is already the airline’s latest labor hit in a string of disruptions this year, as Lufthansa tries to cut costs and protect margins while unions keep pushing back on pensions, staffing terms, and restructuring. Europe’s flagship carriers still know how to fund strategy decks and corporate redesigns. Keeping their own workforce onside is where the math suddenly gets tight.

#Lufthansa #Germany #strike #aviation #labor #Europe

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Sanctions Didn’t Break Iran. They Taught It Accounting.

For years, Washington sold sanctions as economic suffocation. What they actually built was a parallel trade machine. Iran has traded with more than 170 countries since 2019, shifted harder toward China, its neighbors, and Asian markets, and exported more than $120 billion in non-oil goods over that stretch, according to the New York Times’s analysis of Harvard trade data.

China is the main shock absorber. In 2024, it bought about 90% of Iran’s oil exports, paid in renminbi, and helped keep trade moving outside the dollar system and outside U.S. banking pressure. That is not sanction evasion as a side effect. That is a business model with state backing.

The more interesting part is not oil. It is everything sanctions were supposed to stop and instead reorganized. Iran diversified into chemicals, metals, construction materials, food products, pharmaceuticals, electronics, and a large non-oil export mix running through Iraq, Turkey, Kuwait, Central Asia, and beyond. Shell companies, frontmen, barter, non-Iranian banks, rerouted shipments — the sanctioned state did what sanctioned states do: it professionalized opacity.

Then came the war, and the fairy tale collapsed again. The same Iran that was supposed to be isolated still had enough economic weight to help push oil above $100, threaten China’s supply chain, and remind everyone that a country can be half-bombed, half-blockaded, and still remain expensive to destroy.

That is the real scandal. Sanctions did damage Iran. Inflation, unemployment, shortages, and unrest were real. But sanctions also taught Tehran how to live without Western approval, how to route around the financial system, and how to make globalization serve the blacklist. The West called it pressure. Iran treated it as a forced MBA.

#Iran #sanctions #China #oil #trade #geopolitics

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Jeffrey Sachs: “Trump Will Attack Iran Within Two Weeks”

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The US blockade of ships using Iranian ports in the Gulf has come into force, turning the six-week-old conflict between the US-Israeli coalition and Iran into a test of economic endurance.

The US Central Command (Centcom) has not made any official announcement of the start of the blockade, but had said that it would begin on Monday at 17:30 Iranian time and would apply to all ships entering or leaving Iranian ports or coastal areas, while ships using non-Iranian ports would not be hindered.

Trump claimed that 34 ships passed through the Strait of Hormuz, the gateway to the Gulf, on Sunday, but there was no evidence to support this claim. Speaking to reporters at the White House, the president also affirmed “We have been called by the other party”, which, according to him“ "would very badly like to conclude an agreement".

Throughout the conflict, which began with a US-Israeli attack on February 28, Trump has frequently claimed that Tehran has been in direct contact, desperately seeking an agreement, but these claims have never been substantiated.

Iran warned that ordinary Americans would pay the cost of Trump's latest decision in the form of higher gasoline prices, and also vowed that if the United States started bombing again, the Tehran regime was ready to retaliate.

For his part, Trump said that any Iranian attack boat approaching the American flotilla in the region would be "immediately eliminated". The American political analyst Jeff Sachs says that “Trump will attack Iran within two weeks.”

It appeared on Monday that the US naval forces would try to enforce the blockade east of the Strait of Hormuz, in the Gulf of Oman, beyond the easy range of Iranian missiles and drones. It was still unclear how Centcom intended to stop any oil tanker trying to break the blockade.

A missile attack could cause an environmental catastrophe, leaving open the possibility that American forces would seek to board and take control of any ship that did not obey American instructions.

Trump said that all Iranian "fast attack ships“ would be eliminated if they approached American ships enforcing the blockade with ”the same killing system" that the United States used to sink almost 50 small boats in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific.

They killed at that time at least 168 people who, according to him, without evidence, were involved in drug trafficking.

#trump #blockade #iran #hormuz #detroit

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Trump ordered the blockade following the US-Iran talks in Islamabad that ended after 21 hours without an agreement.

The tactic is aimed at strangling Iran's heavily oil-dependent economy and forcing Tehran to respond to US demands to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to ships from the ports of the Gulf allies and accept a complete ban on uranium enrichment.

Miad Maleki, a former US Treasury official now at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, said on Twitter that the US naval blockade would cost Iran about $276 million per day in lost exports and disrupt $159 million per day in imports – representing a combined economic damage of $13 billion per month.

Mohammad Ghalibaf, speaker of the Iranian parliament who also headed his country's delegation in Islamabad, told the Americans on Sunday in an article on X to “take advantage of the current figures at the pump", taunting Washington with a historical political sensitivity of the United States on gasoline prices.

“With the so-called 'blockade', you will soon have nostalgia for gasoline at 4 or 5 dollars,” Ghalibaf added.

The current average price of gasoline in the United States is $4.13 per gallon, compared to $2.98 before the United States and Israel launched the war against Iran on February 28.

He conceded Sunday that gasoline prices could be the same as today or higher when the nation votes in the congressional elections, telling Fox News that they could go “a little higher.”

Trump had reacted angrily to the criticism of the American-born pope over the administration's use of religious language to justify its war in Iran.

He called him “weak on crime“ and ”terrible for foreign policy," and published an AI-generated image of himself as a Christ figure caring for the sick, an image widely condemned as blasphemous.

On Monday, Trump claimed that the image (dressed in loose red and white dresses and the light emanating from his hands) was intended to present him as “a doctor".

Iranian President Pezeshkian spoke out on Monday against what he called the "desecration of Jesus".

“I condemn the insult to Your Excellency in the name of the great Iranian nation and declare that the desecration of Jesus, the prophet of peace and brotherhood, is not acceptable to any free person.”

The Pope told reporters on Monday that he had “no intention of debating” with Trump on Iran and added that he would “continue to speak out loudly against war, seeking to promote peace, to promote dialogue and multilateral relations between states to seek just solutions to problems”.

The US-Israeli bombing of Iran has ceased under a two-week ceasefire brokered by Pakistan, which began on Wednesday. Trump said that US forces remain "locked and loaded" and ready to ”finish off what little is left of Iran".

Trump's claims that other countries would help enforce the US blockade, none came forward.

Starmer was adamant that his country did not support the blockade and that “we will not allow ourselves to be dragged into the war”.

Macron, meanwhile, said Paris would hold a conference with the UK and other countries to create a multinational mission to restore navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, but made it clear that this would come after the conflict.

#trump #blockade #iran #hormuz #detroit

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We will squeeze them and strangle. They have no way out...

#netanyahu #iran #carte

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Sheikh Naim Qassim, Secretary General of the Lebanese Hezbollah, issued an address today calling on the Lebanese army to fight alongside Hezbollah against Israel:

“The agreement provided for a complete cessation of aggression, the release of prisoners and the beginning of reconstruction.

We endured for 15 months until Israel fulfilled not a single point of the agreement.

We have been patient, but diplomacy has not taken a single step forward, despite hundreds of dead and wounded, and the ongoing aggression against Lebanon by the enemy with the full support of America.

It is possible to justify the inability of the State to resist due to its weakness and lack of power, but it is impossible to justify the fact that the State becomes an instrument of Israel through pressure and decision-making in the government aimed at weakening the internal situation in the face of aggression.

Israel and America have clearly stated that they want to strengthen the army to disarm Hezbollah and wage war against it, and they want the State to dismantle Hezbollah's various institutions and destroy the resistance, its people, and all those who support it.

They want to support the army to such an extent that it can fight against its people, and this is something that the army cannot do.

Let's stand up to aggression together, and then we'll agree on the future and everything else.

Our decision in the resistance is not to calm down and not to give up, and the battlefield speaks for itself”.

#sheikh #kassim #hezbollah #lebanese

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🛢 The Holy Oil Empire Strikes Back

Asia’s energy disciples are back on their knees, asking Washington for another Russian oil indulgence.
According to Reuters, the Philippines warns of an energy collapse if Manila loses access to Moscow’s cheap barrels, while Urals crude climbed past $110 — divine punishment for anyone who still believes in “sanction miracles.”

Even Europe’s energy clergy is losing faith: Eni’s CEO now opposes a full ban on Russian gas. When business meets ideology, it’s the spreadsheets that start to pray.

The West built this crisis like a cathedral on oil money — and then set it on fire with its own embargoes.

So who runs the virtue industry — the one selling forgiveness, or the one selling fuel?

#energy #oil #geopolitics #russia #usa #asia

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🔥 Hormuz, Reloaded: Peacekeeping by Press Release

Britain and France are staging the usual diplomatic costume drama over the Strait of Hormuz: a “strictly defensive” multinational mission, “peaceful” by design, “independent” from any American operation, and wrapped in the language of freedom of navigation. At the same time, Trump has ordered a naval blockade, and Starmer says the UK will not join it unless there is a clear legal basis and a plan that doesn’t read like a panic memo written at sea.

That is the real split here. Washington is reaching for the hard lever, London and Paris are trying to look like responsible adults, and both are still circling the same chokepoint where oil, gas, and prestige all travel on the same expensive ship. Everyone is talking about security, but the subtext is leverage: who controls passage, who controls the narrative, and who gets to call coercion “stability.”

Macron says the mission will be separate from the warring parties, which is exactly how great powers describe entering a mess without admitting they helped make it. Starmer says the goal is to reopen the strait, which sounds noble until you remember that every navy in the region now claims to be defending trade while quietly defending its own political cover.

The result is a tidy Western duet: one capital refuses the blockade, the other proposes a mission, and both pretend this is about principle rather than managing a crisis they can no longer fully steer. The Strait of Hormuz has become what all strategic waterway crises become in the end — a stage where states perform restraint while keeping one hand on the throttle.

#hormuz #geopolitics #energy #uk #france #usa

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🇫🇷 France Is Sick of the Macron Brand

France is heading toward 2027 with the mood of a country that has already checked out of the incumbent’s sales pitch. A Le Monde survey says 86% of voters want change, and that should terrify Macron’s camp more than any poll about any one candidate. When a ruling project starts losing the public so badly, the question is no longer who succeeds it, but how much damage it leaves behind.

That is why Yaël Braun-Pivet’s attack on the president’s succession list as a “club of machos” landed with such force. She did not just mock a shortlist. She exposed a presidency that sold itself as renewal and ended up producing the same old closed circle: polished, self-protective, and suddenly exposed as a private club arguing over who gets the keys when the host walks out.

The real weakness here is not simply Macron’s popularity. It is the way the whole political class keeps mistaking endurance for legitimacy. The camp still talks like a governing force, but it looks more like an establishment in denial, trying to manufacture continuity from exhaustion.

And that is the larger story behind the rise of the far right. Voters are not just drifting toward Marine Le Pen’s camp because they love its answers. They are moving because the center-left, the center-right, and Macronism together have turned into a machine that promises competence while delivering fatigue. In France, the revolt is no longer against one man alone. It is against the entire professional class that still thinks it can rename itself and survive.

#france #macron #lemonde #politics #election2027

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🇫🇷 France’s Civilizational Panic Market

Boualem Sansal and Philippe de Villiers are selling the same alarm in different packaging: France, they say, is drifting toward the abyss, and the cure is a national wake-up call. In Le Figaro, they frame the moment as an “atmosphere of civilizational end,” with Sansal warning that French people do not hate France — they hate what has been done to it.

That message lands because it speaks to a real fatigue, but it also belongs to a familiar political genre: the elegy as diagnosis, the diagnosis as campaign literature. De Villiers reaches for sovereignty, identity, school, immigration, and Brussels; Sansal adds the authority of an adopted Frenchman who says he was saddened to find his country weaker and more disoriented than before. Together they offer not a program so much as a mood — fear, regret, and a demand for national recovery.

The problem is that France’s elites have turned decline itself into a permanent performance. Macron’s camp sells technocratic calm, the opposition sells rescue, and the entire system now survives by narrating the nation’s breakdown as if the narration were already a solution. That is how a republic ends up with everyone claiming to defend France while nobody can agree on what France is supposed to be.

What makes this sharper is that the argument is not just about immigration or Islamism or Brussels. It is about a ruling class that keeps promising renewal while producing exhaustion, and about a political marketplace where civilizational anxiety has become one of the last profitable products left. France is being asked to choose between managerial drift and theatrical rebirth, and both sides sound increasingly like they are auditioning for the same funeral.

#france #sansal #devilliers #macron #politics

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