WORLD ROUNDUPDonald Trump Is the War’s Biggest Loser | What China Just Learned from the Iran War | France Learned to Fight Russian Disinformation, and more

Donald Trump Is the War’s Biggest Loser  (Economist)
There is a reason he wants an exit from Iran.

Trump Is Wishcasting Victory in Iran  (Adam Harris, The Atlantic)
The president went from threatening that “a whole civilization will die” to claiming a “total and complete victory.” What does the already shaky cease-fire mean as he tries to steer his way out of the war?

Trump Has Stuffed the West – and Starmer Has Only Made Things Worse  (Ben Wallace, The Telegraph)
Trump started this war and it seems his desire to get back to his golf and the start of the Masters has dictated the timetable of his defeat. Make no mistake, the US President has failed in nearly all his objectives – and the Iranian Regime is not only still in place but it is also emboldened.
Trump’s ill-prepared war has trashed our Gulf allies’ economies, spread division amongst some of the US’s former most reliable allies and yet again emboldened Russia.
Trump’s 2019 agreement with the Taliban betrayed the sacrifice of all those US and UK service personnel. It was a matter of time before Afghanistan inevitably fell. The president now blames the Biden administration but don’t be fooled. It was his doing. Like so many of his deals over so many years, they are a masterclass in calamity dressed up as success. His book The Art of the Deal should be renamed The Art of the Dud Deal.

Ruthless China Is Poised to Control the Technology of the Future  (Jeremy Warner, The Telegraph)
Beijing’s dominance of key industries such as energy and electric cars have left it with a huge trade surplus.

How France Learned to Fight Russian Disinformation  (Economist)
The EU’s most-targeted country is counterattacking against fake news

Why Trump Mishandled Iran  (Ravi Agrawal, Foreign Policy)
The U.S. president has a history of following other world leaders—or his gut—instead of his own intelligence officers and experts.

What China Just Learned from the Iran War  (Simon Shuster, The Atlantic)
A blockade of Taiwan would hurt the global economy more than Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran’s Battered Leaders Emerge from War Confident — and With New Cards  (Yeganeh Torbati and Erika Solomon, New York Times)
For Iran’s theocratic rulers, just surviving the U.S.-Israeli onslaught means victory. But the seeds of their next crisis may already be planted.