What Caught My Eye (no. 64)
Some interesting articles and podcasts that caught my eye this week
Here’s this week’s edition of articles I thought worth reading and sharing. Don’t hesitate to recommend your own reads; I may include some as well.
Samantha Schmidt, Anthony Faiola, Karen DeYoung, and Samuel Oakford, “Trump’s Unofficial Venezuela Viceroy Shapes U.S. Policy, Raising Oversight Concerns,” The Washington Post, May 25, 2026. Mauricio Claver-Carone, a Florida lawyer with no current official government title, has quietly become the de facto U.S. power broker in post-Maduro Venezuela — relaying instructions from Washington to Caracas, vetting investors, and serving as the primary conduit between the Trump administration and interim president Delcy Rodríguez. The report documents Claver-Carone’s presence on a key post-raid call with Rubio and Rodríguez, his role in steering at least one major financial contract toward a favored firm, and his business partner’s repeated trips to Caracas — all while he and his partner maintain they are unpaid and conflict-free. Critics inside the State Department and beyond argue the arrangement epitomizes the Trump administration’s blurring of private interest and public power, with Venezuela policy concentrated in a tiny White House circle and largely bypassing normal diplomatic channels. As one former U.S. official put it, “For a guy who has no role in government, he plays an oversize role.”
Robert F. Worth, “The Magician of the Kremlin,” The Atlantic, May 25, 2026. Kirill Dmitriev — the sanctions-laden Russian banker now serving as Putin’s lead negotiator in Ukraine peace talks — is the subject of this deeply reported profile, which traces his arc from would-be reformer to Kremlin illusionist. Worth reconstructs how Dmitriev parlayed his American credentials (Stanford, Harvard Business School, stints at McKinsey and Goldman Sachs) into a role running Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, where he once genuinely courted Western investors and preached transparency — until Putin’s annexation of Crimea made that project untenable, and Dmitriev smoothly pivoted to serving the kleptocracy instead. Worth documents his transformation in granular detail: steering pension funds to oligarch-controlled companies, cultivating Gulf autocrats with opaque investment pledges, leading the troubled Sputnik vaccine rollout, and now shuttling to Mar-a-Lago to pitch Trump-world on Arctic mineral deals and joint Mars missions as sweeteners for abandoning Ukrainian sovereignty. What gives the profile its particular sting is Worth’s reporting from Kyiv, where Dmitriev was born, and his conversations with former classmates — some of whom have fought on the front lines of the war he helps sustain. One former friend, wounded at the front, declined to be interviewed: “I just want to shoot him in the knees.”
Michael Crowley, Ashley Cai, and Lazaro Gamio, “The War Is Over. The Strait Is Open. We Totally Won. The Iran War According to Donald Trump,” The New York Times, May 26, 2026. This data-driven piece systematically documents the chasm between Trump’s running commentary on the U.S.-Iran war and the actual state of the conflict, showing how his statements have repeatedly moved markets even as the underlying reality failed to follow his script. Since the war began in late February, Trump has oscillated between threats of civilizational destruction and claims of imminent peace deals — sometimes within hours — with each pivot sending oil prices and equity markets lurching accordingly, though markets have grown progressively less responsive as the pattern repeats. The reporters track specific moments where the disconnect was sharpest: a claimed cease-fire mediated by Pakistan that Iran said was immediately violated; a blockade of Iranian ports that prompted Tehran to keep the Strait of Hormuz closed in retaliation; and a Memorial Day weekend in which Trump announced a near-deal before authorizing fresh strikes on southern Iran.
Shashank Joshi, “A former CIA boss on how to handle America’s adversaries,” The Economist, May 26, 2026. An interview with Bill Burns, an ambassador-turned-spy-chief, is one of America’s most respected diplomats. He initiated the secret talks with Iran which paved the way for Barack Obama’s nuclear deal. He helped to thaw Sino-American relations after the Chinese spy-balloon incident in 2023 had plunged them into a deep freeze. Most recently, he negotiated the extraordinarily difficult ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. But not all talks succeed. Burns was ignored when he warned Vladimir Putin not to invade Ukraine. And much of his work on Iran now appears to have been undone. Burns discusses what he’d do differently with the benefit of hindsight, his approach to handling strongmen and the future of American spycraft.
Vali Nasr, “Why Iran Fears a Deal Today Means More War Tomorrow,” Financial Times, May 29, 2026. Nasr, a Johns Hopkins professor and author of Iran’s Grand Strategy, offers the clearest explanation yet of why Tehran keeps refusing what looks from Washington like a reasonable off-ramp — and why that refusal is strategically rational rather than simply obstinate. His core argument is that Iran’s leadership, across factional lines, has internalized a single lesson from its history with Trump: any deal that requires Iran to disarm before securing lasting guarantees is not a peace agreement but a trap, designed to strip Tehran of its deterrents so the U.S. can return to war against a weakened adversary. Nasr documents how Iran views control of the Strait of Hormuz and its stockpile of highly enriched uranium not as bargaining chips to be traded away, but as the structural guarantees of survival that no American promise can replace — particularly from a president who already walked away from the 2015 nuclear deal and launched strikes during active negotiations. Nasr captures a damaging feedback loop: the louder American commentators describe the war as a U.S. strategic failure, the more Iran’s Revolutionary Guard concludes that Washington will eventually seek to reverse that outcome with another round of fighting, making deterrence the only rational posture. Any deal that emerges, Nasr warns, should be understood as a pause rather than a resolution — the deeper questions of Hormuz and the nuclear file remain structurally unsolvable under current conditions.
Simon Romero, “Blowing Up Boats Hasn’t Slowed Cocaine Traffic to U.S., Experts Say,” The New York Times, May 29, 2026. Nearly nine months into the Trump administration’s military campaign against drug-smuggling vessels off South America’s coast — 59 strikes, 196 people killed, $4.7 billion spent — epidemiologists, addiction scientists, and public health researchers say cocaine remains as available, as pure, and as cheap in the United States as it was before the operation began. Romero marshals four distinct empirical measures to make the case: street prices ($60–$100 per gram) are flat, cocaine purity is unchanged, CBP border seizures have actually increased since the strikes began, and overdose data shows no supply shock. Even the general overseeing the operation told the Senate Armed Services Committee that boat strikes are “probably not the most effective” long-term tool. The gap between the campaign’s stated logic and documented reality is captured cleanly by one researcher: “It’s as likely to succeed as bombing a handful of McDonald’s in Dallas, Texas, and claiming that you’ve made America healthy again.”
Finally, it’s been a busy week of writing and interviews. Below are links to some of the things I did and wrote this week.
I wrote my bimonthly Politico Europe column about America’s losing ways of war, and spoke to NPR about its implications for Iran.
In anticipation of a deal to end the Iran war, I argued that we are much worse off than before the war in America Abroad and made the same points on CNN.
I spoke to CNN about the Russian drone attack on Romania.
I spoke to the Corriere della Sera about the Iran negotiations (in Italian).
I joined Dutch TV’s Eenvandag and was interviewed bye NRC Handelsbald about the state of the transatlantic alliance (in Dutch)
This week’s World Review focused on Iran, Europe’s diplomatic role, and the Pope vs. AI.
Finally, I will host another Ask Ivo next week — add your questions in the comments.
Happy reading, watching, and listening! Stay safe.