Trump’s limit is not his morality, it's fear

This week’s coverage circles a familiar but increasingly unstable reality in West Asia: escalation without strategy and policies that are being vindicated for the wrong reasons.

As the world watches Washington’s taskforce throttle towards Iran without a clear objective, the Saudis have succeeded in blunting Emirati influence in south Yemen (for now), even as the quiet risk that Gulf competition may harden into bloc rivalry and spread across the region.

The common thread in all these developments is not necessarily strategic calls but potential miscalculations. Power is being exercised, but without a clear sense of the second and third-order effects.

Below, I break down what shifted this week, why it matters and where the risks are quietly stacking up.

Now let's get into it.

The many paths to confrontation between the US and Iran

What happened: US–Iran tensions are not accelerating in a straight line but branching into multiple, overlapping pressure tracks.

Washington continues to apply sanctions, rhetorical deterrence and selective military signalling, without committing to either escalation or de-escalation.

Tehran, meanwhile, is responding asymmetrically; avoiding outright confrontation while expanding leverage through proxies, regional positioning and calibrated nuclear ambiguity.

Why it matters: As we explored in this week's article, there is no single “path” to conflict. There are several, and they are increasingly disconnected from any clear political objective.

This ambiguity is often mistaken for strategy. It isn’t. The absence of a defined U.S. endgame has created space for misreading on all sides.

Iran interprets Washington’s posture as risk-averse but unpredictable. Regional actors hedge accordingly. Israel plans for unilateral action. Gulf states quietly prepare for containment, not resolution.

The result is a crowded escalation ladder where no actor controls the pace.

What this means: The danger is not a deliberate war but an accidental one, triggered by an incident that no party originally intended to escalate. In this environment, deterrence is less stable, not more. Washington’s current approach buys time, but it also multiplies the number of ways things can go wrong.

Read the full analysis below:

The multiple murky paths of U.S.-Iran tensions

An American flotilla is nearing Iran as the country recovers from a violent state crackdown on mass protests. The U.S. task force’s goals remain unclear, driving tensions in southwest Asia.

The Geopolitical DeskThe Geopolitical Desk

Yemen was Saudi Arabia’s red line

This week’s newsletter is built around a moment that stuck with me.

At Davos, Mark Carney described the collapse of a “pleasant fiction” — the idea that the rules-based international order still works as advertised, and that middle powers can remain safe by quietly going along with it.

If you received my last newsletter of 2025, you'll find the argument familiar.

That framing also resonates with two pieces we published this week:

1. One looks at Europe’s growing strategic irrelevance and its reluctance to name reality.
2. The other looks at Libya’s energy transition, where ambition keeps colliding with political fragmentation and external dependency.

Below is a breakdown of both pieces, although I encourage you to read the original articles to get the full picture.

🇪🇺 Can Europe still save itself from irrelevance?

What happened: Europe has struggled to respond coherently as power politics return. The performance of deference became a form of virtue signalling for European leaders, existing mainly to reinforce an imperfect but functional political status quo.

Why it matters: The rules-based order no longer constrains great powers, and middle powers that continue to perform belief in it risk strategic subordination. The previous arrangement worked for Europe until Trumpism entered the political ecosystem, and suddenly the assumptions that underlied the post-war system started failing.

What this means: Today, most of the threats that Europe has traditionally ascribed to China and Russia (economic coercion, weaponised interdependence, political pressure through trade, and threat to territorial integrity) are coming from the U.S., Europe's closest ally. Unless EU leaders can articulate a clear-eyed response in a world of great powers, the bloc risks becoming a rule-taker in a system that no longer protects it. As Carney put it, sovereignty today is less about rhetoric and more about the ability to withstand pressure.

Can Europe still save itself from irrelevance?

Faced with the reality that the system that once benefited Europe is now failing it, the EU must decide how it will define itself in the modern world.

The Geopolitical DeskThe Geopolitical Desk

🇱🇾 Libya’s stumbling energy transition

Let's be honest: too much is going on in the world. And is it just me, or did this week go Monday–Tue-Wed-Thu–Friday?

Here's a quick breakdown of GPD's coverage this week:

• We covered Iran from multiple angles: from the missing pieces of the puzzle in Iran's protests, to the new Iran coming online before it even takes shape, to Tehran’s subsidy reform amid unrest, and even the way Baluch militancy is being nationalised rhetorically.
• We tracked the aftershocks of Venezuela’s political rupture and examined why Maduro’s fall is not Tehran’s nightmare.
• In Libya, we looked at a potentially imminent leadership vacuum and a regional contest hiding in plain sight
• In Syria, we went hyperlocal to examine how the shifting balance of power in Aleppo is creating a growing and problematic anomaly.

Synthesising all of that into a single, clean narrative isn’t easy — partly because these stories aren’t neat, and partly because the world has entered uncharted territory.

But one thing is certain, 2026 is going to be an interesting year.

Now let's get into it.

Iran’s protests and why they are harder to read this time

Iran’s latest wave of unrest has been widely reported, but poorly understood.

What we are seeing is not a classic protest cycle driven by a single grievance or unified opposition movement. Instead, it is a convergence of unresolved pressures: economic exhaustion, generational change, digital mobilisation and elite paralysis.

That is why the recurring question of – Is this the beginning of the end? – misses the point almost entirely.

Iran’s Protests and the Missing Pieces of the Puzzle

The recent protests in Iran have been some of the largest in years, yet gaps in their strategy will prevent them from breaking the regime.

The Geopolitical DeskThe Geopolitical Desk

While there is no shortage of reasons to believe the Islamic Republic is structurally brittle, inevitability does not mean imminence.

As long as elite fractures do not translate into moderates persuading the military and security establishment to step aside, and as long as there is no credible opposition with a coherent and reassuring vision, the system can endure or collapse in ways that produce state failure rather than transition.

Our reporting this week unpacks why current protests are less likely to lead to regime change and why this latest cycle of unrest may prove more destabilising precisely because it lacks a single centre of gravity.

We also explain why parallel developments, such as subsidy reform during protests and the emergence of a digitally networked, post-ideological “new Iran”, matter less in isolation than in combination.

Iran’s gamble of subsidy reform during protests

Iran is attempting to reform its subsidy regime in the middle of its most combustible protest cycle in years.

The Geopolitical DeskThe Geopolitical Desk

The new Iran is online before it even takes shape

Protests and public anger are meeting the realities and challenges of the new AI age

The Geopolitical DeskThe Geopolitical Desk

Libya's prime minister is sick at a fragile moment

Abdulhamid Dabaiba has now been Libya’s prime minister for several years, presiding over one of the most demanding political roles in the country’s post-2011 period.

What has often gone underappreciated is not only how long he has survived in office, but the personal and physical toll that survival has required.

In recent months, that strain appears to have intensified. He has reportedly been hospitalized twice due to heart related issues, prompting quiet concern within political and security circles in Tripoli and Misurata.

Libya’s prime minister is sick at a fragile moment

With the possibility that Dabaiba may need treatment abroad, Libya’s Government of National Unity could be forced to run on autopilot at a critical time.

The Geopolitical DeskThe Geopolitical Desk

Venezuela after Maduro

Delcy Rodríguez succeeds Maduro-era Chavismo, which further prioritised loyalty over competence as the primary path to power. Lacking Chávez’s charisma, Maduro ruled through patronage, distributing offices and oil wealth to loyalists.

Rodríguez now stands between a belligerent Trump administration and a rent-seeking domestic elite. Washington wants oil access; the Chavistas want to preserve wealth and power. Both sides ultimately pursue conflicting demands.

The testing of Delcy Rodríguez

The Trump administration and the Chavistas appear to have reached the same conclusion: Delcy Rodríguez will be their woman in Caracas. The question is whether she can balance both sides.

The Geopolitical DeskThe Geopolitical Desk

Rodríguez must also manage multiple internal factions, while balancing external ties with Cuba, Iran, Russia, and China – even as Washington pressures her to sever them, moves that could leave her exposed if U.S. policy shifts again.

Why Maduro’s fall is not Tehran’s nightmare

Hailed by some Americans as a blow to Iran’s “Axis of Resistance”, the fall of Maduro in Venezuela is mostly a minor inconvenience for Tehran.

The Geopolitical DeskThe Geopolitical Desk

A regional contest hiding in plain sight

At first glance, Egypt’s posture toward Libya and Sudan can look reactive: border security here, mediation there, cautious diplomacy everywhere.

In reality, something more deliberate is taking shape.

Cairo is quietly trying to reassert itself as a central stabilising — and gatekeeping — power across its western and southern flanks.

What links Libya and Sudan from Cairo’s perspective is risk:

• uncontrolled borders,
• conflict spillover,
• refugee flows,
• and the danger of rival regional actors shaping outcomes Egypt cannot live with.

At the same time, the UAE has been steadily working to build its own regional network of allied forces and local partners across key theatres such as Yemen, Somalia, and Sudan.

This ambition has increasingly brought Abu Dhabi into competition with Egypt, whose strategic equities are directly exposed.

Egypt, Libya and Sudan: What Is Really Being Played Out

Growing geopolitical competition between Egypt and the United Arab Emirates is taking shape in the Sahel, with the LNA poised to benefit due to its increasing presence in the region.

The Geopolitical DeskThe Geopolitical Desk

A brief aside: our reporting on Egypt–UAE competition across Libya and Sudan was cited this week by Semafor and flagged as one of their Weekend Reads.

That's it for this week.

If what we do is useful to you — whether you work in policy, business, academia, or simply want to stay oriented in a volatile world — please consider sharing this newsletter or subscribing to one of our paid plans.

Oliver Crowley
Co-Founder, The Geopolitical Desk

P.S. Please forward this to anyone who might find it useful. If you’re reading this second-hand, you can sign up for our free newsletter here.

Barely a week has passed since the start of the New Year and 2026 is already setting up to be turbulent.

As a colleague said to me just a few days ago:

"What a year this week has been!"

Even in the first days of the year, several pressure points are already flashing red:

• Iran is facing renewed public unrest under deepening economic strain.
• Libya is drifting toward a decisive 2026 shaped by four competing visions.
• Syria flared again with little notice, lost amid Trump's power politics, inter-Gulf rivalries, Iran's protests, Somaliland and the ouster of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
• Across North Africa, early Gen Z protest dynamics are becoming harder to ignore.

We’ve been tracking each of these in depth over the past months.

Given all that's happened, a quick recap of what’s been unfolding across the world feels warranted.

By January 3, 2026, the U.S. Department of Justice was supposed to explain why it failed to release all remaining Jeffrey Epstein files by the original congressional deadline (December 19, 2025).

Instead, on January 3, the United States carried out an operation that felt like it had been taken from an episode of Jack Ryan: a sitting president was apprehended, removed from his country and taken to the United States to be tried under U.S. law.

Although the stated pretext for "Operation Absolute Resolve" was the enforcement of an arrest warrant against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on drug trafficking charges, the tactic felt unmistakably familiar: when there is a crisis, international law becomes elastic and multilateral treaties can be bent, questioned or ignored entirely.

We have seen this reasoning applied before by Benjamin Netanyahu to justify Israel's war in Gaza and by Vladimir Putin to justify Russia's war in Ukraine (which, incidentally, the Kremlin also dubbed a "Special Military Operation").

So, how did the world react?

Unsurprisingly, China and Russia openly objected to the unilateral move.

Europe, however, largely stayed quiet. With the notable exception of France, European leaders avoided clear condemnation, seemingly unwilling to provoke U.S. President Donald Trump.

Instead of using this as an opportunity to project unity and uphold the values that underpin the Union, European leaders chose to look away and have set a new precedent in the process.

The response from much of the mainstream media to events in Venezuela was perhaps just as troubling.

Rather than challenging the operation, large parts of the press softened their language and avoided hard questions. The so-called “fourth estate” acted less as a watchdog and more as cover.

That is precisely why independent media matters now more than ever. Not to claim moral authority, but because double standards have become normalised.

Because let us be very clear about what happened in the first week of 2026.

A U.S. president asserted that U.S. law applies beyond its borders, and that the Americas are effectively its domain.

The short-term political gains for Trump are obvious. The long-term damage is not.

As many have already pointed out, if this logic is now acceptable, then we have to ask:

• What stops China from applying it to Taiwan?
• What stops Russia from extending it in Ukraine?
• What stops regional powers in the Middle East or Africa from justifying abductions, targeted killings or enforced removals of their ideological rivals?

We are already seeing early indicators of what 2026 might look like, with the same fault lines that existed in 2025 flaring up once again.

Only this time, the world is different to what it was just two weeks ago.

For one, Iran’s streets have erupted across dozens of cities over economic hardship, just as U.S. military movements toward the Middle East raise the risk of a new escalation.

Is Iran shielding the state or its people?

Iran is navigating a prolonged period of structural strain in which economic fragility, energy imbalances, and deep social change increasingly intersect.

The Geopolitical DeskThe Geopolitical Desk

Similarly, Libya is heading into a make-or-break 2026. With low oil prices, the barrels that sustained years of mismanagement are losing their cushioning effect all while four competing visions are accelerating the unravelling of the status quo.

Libya 2026: A clash of competing visions

Facing growing economic, political, and security challenges, Libya is on the verge of a new status quo. What that will look like, however, remains unclear as domestic and international actors compete over the country’s future.

The Geopolitical DeskThe Geopolitical Desk

Meanwhile, the Syria-Israel agreement quietly clears the geopolitical board, allowing Damascus to focus less on external pressure and more on consolidating full control at home.

Is Ahmed al-Sharaa redefining the geopolitical chessboard?

The now-iconic Washington Post photograph of Ahmed al-Sharaa calmly contemplating a chessboard during his visit to Washington reflects the strategy that has defined his rise: a blend of calculation, patience and a willingness to play a long game with pieces others assumed were unwinnable.

The Geopolitical DeskThe Geopolitical Desk

What really happened in Suwayda?

A ten-day episode of fighting erupted across Suwayda, in southern Syria, on July 12. What began as a local clash between Druze militias and Sunni Bedouin tribal armed groups quickly spiraled into a full-scale tribal war on a national level.

The Geopolitical DeskThe Geopolitical Desk

Understanding these events and maintaining an awareness of early warning signals has become harder not because there is less information, but because too much of it is filtered, diluted or deliberately vague.

In a world overflowing with information, we paradoxically know less.

So with that: welcome back to a new year of GPD.

Next week, we will be publishing a series of articles that dive deeper into some of the fault lines mentioned above.

If what we do matters to you, please consider supporting us as we work to become your go-to source for clear, honest geopolitical insight.

You can support us by sharing this email to your colleagues, following us on social media, subscribing to one of our paid plans, or simply contacting us to give us your honest feedback on our reporting.

Oliver Crowley
Co-Founder, The Geopolitical Desk

P.S. Please forward this to anyone who might find it useful. If you’re reading this second-hand, you can sign up for our free newsletter here.

I’m Oliver Crowley. I co-founded The Geopolitical Desk after years working across North Africa and the Middle East, mostly as a consultant, often behind the scenes.

Over time, one thing became impossible to ignore: how wide the gap can be between what is actually happening on the ground and the information that filters through to decision-makers.

And how costly that gap can be, not just for organisations or governments, but for the communities that end up living with the consequences of bad planning.

What struck me wasn’t that reliable information didn’t exist. It was that it was fragmented, siloed and exhausting to piece together.

Everyone serious I worked with (diplomats, journalists, political officers, analysts) was (and probably still is) running on fumes, juggling dozens of conversations across WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, email, and whatever else they’d picked up along the way, trying to build context in real time.

That was the starting point for GPD.

This year, our focus has been on building a space for reporting that is nuanced, grounded in local realities and actually useful.

We still have a A LOT to do. But we're taking big strides.

In the past twelve months, our small team has walked the streets of London, Dubai, Moscow, Damascus, Cairo, Paris, Tripoli, Rome, Benghazi, Tunis, and Washington, D.C.

We moved between boardrooms, embassies, airports, oilfields, desert waystations and political hubs to speak with executives, diplomats, engineers, military officials and local stakeholders whose perspectives rarely make it into mainstream coverage but whose actions shape the headlines of tomorrow.

More than anything, 2025 has underscored just how far the world has drifted from the post-Cold War idea of a “rules-based international order.”

The 12-day war between Israel and Iran showed how quickly deterrence can erode and how limited the appetite now is among major powers to enforce hard constraints once escalation begins.

Is Iran shielding the state or its people?

Iran is navigating a prolonged period of structural strain in which economic fragility, energy imbalances, and deep social change increasingly intersect.

The Geopolitical DeskThe Geopolitical Desk

The war in Gaza has become a prolonged stress test not only for the region, but for Western cohesion itself, exposing deep political fault lines inside the United States and across Europe.

How the Gaza War exposed America’s political fault lines

Support for Israel has been a bipartisan stance in U.S. politics for decades, but the recent war in Gaza has pushed both parties in differing trajectories.

The Geopolitical DeskThe Geopolitical Desk

In the Gulf, we're seeing the redrawing of economic and geopolitical interests based on a new hard-power world where Trumpian dealmaking, competition over AI and access to critical minerals are dictating the rules of the game.

Is this the start of a new Saudi–US strategic order?

Mohammed bin Salman’s visit to Washington signalled that U.S.-Saudi relations are entering a more structured and future-oriented phase. The partnership is increasingly anchored in shared tech priorities, deeper defence integration and large-scale capital alignment with U.S. strategic industries.

The Geopolitical DeskThe Geopolitical Desk

Beyond the Middle East, Russia’s ability to continue prosecuting its war in Ukraine despite unprecedented sanctions has highlighted the diminishing coercive power of economic tools in an increasingly fragmented global economy.

The strategic sectors Russia won’t surrender

Despite intense Western sanctions, Russia has been able to maintain both arms and nuclear energy exports in an effort to sustain its economy.

The Geopolitical DeskThe Geopolitical Desk

Across these theatres, a common pattern has emerged.

There is no longer a central enforcer, and the incentives that underpin the delicate balance between status quo and momentous change are no longer the same as even a few years ago.

In some arenas, like Syria, change has moved quickly as the country's new leadership has turned it from a pariah state into a promising regional player.

Is Ahmed al-Sharaa redefining the geopolitical chessboard?

The now-iconic Washington Post photograph of Ahmed al-Sharaa calmly contemplating a chessboard during his visit to Washington reflects the strategy that has defined his rise: a blend of calculation, patience and a willingness to play a long game with pieces others assumed were unwinnable.

The Geopolitical DeskThe Geopolitical Desk

In others, like Libya, it remains stubbornly slow, constrained by entrenched elites, foreign patrons and the absence of viable alternatives.

The networks behind Libya’s instability

Through corruption and opportunism, 111st Brigade commander Abdulsalam al-Zoubi has recently become a dominant figure in western Libya, but in the country’s cyclical politics of violence, it’s unclear how long he could remain.

The Geopolitical DeskThe Geopolitical Desk

But such trends could very well flip in 2026.

The sudden emergence of “Gen Z protests” across the world has demonstrated just how quickly the tides can turn when the assumptions propping up outdated systems collide with the aspirations of a new generation of voters.

Morocco’s Gen Z rebellion

Struggling with failing services, corruption and high youth unemployment, Morocco is now finding itself caught in a global wave of Gen-Z anger.

The Geopolitical DeskThe Geopolitical Desk

Gen Z’s struggle against the old order in Nepal

With the fall of the government, Nepal finds itself at an important crossroads, with a young generation hungry for change.

The Geopolitical DeskThe Geopolitical Desk

Bangladesh’s fragile transition faces its first test

Bangladesh’s democratic transition remains fragile. The interim government struggles to deliver reforms and prepare the country’s first credible election in 16 years, with risks ranging from orderly democratic renewal to violent breakdown.

The Geopolitical DeskThe Geopolitical Desk

In the year ahead, knowing when that balance may shift is where both risk and opportunity sit.

That is the space we are trying to fill with The Geopolitical Desk.

We provide a blend of geopolitical intelligence and independent reporting, rooted in local insight, designed to help readers understand not just what is happening, but why it is unfolding the way it is.

Your readership — and, for many of you, your subscription — allows us to invest where it matters most: following files over months rather than ebbing and flowing with the news cycles; going deep in countries where access is limited; building cross-regional source networks; and most importantly paying our writers, editors, designers and contributors fairly.

As we look to 2026, the operating environment across MENA and other frontier markets will remain volatile.

The task (for us, at least) will be to separate structural shifts from passing turbulence, and to understand where interests are converging quietly, before they do so publicly.

Thank you for reading, engaging and trusting our work so far. We hope you continue following us in 2026.

From all of us here at GPD, happy holidays and best wishes for the year ahead,

Oliver Crowley
Founder, The Geopolitical Desk

P.S. Please forward this to anyone who might find it useful. If you’re reading this second-hand, you can sign up for our free newsletter here.