Ukraine Peace Blocked AGAIN by Europe | Ian Proud

## Introduction The current diplomatic and military churn across three theaters—Ukraine, Iran, and the wider Middle East—reads less like disciplined strategy than like a series of overlapping pressure plays that risk enlarging conflict rather than containing it. The recent convergence of airlifts, naval posturing in the Gulf, and parallel Geneva talks with Russian, Iranian and Ukrainian interlocutors reveals two linked dynamics. First, powerful actors are leveraging displays of force and unconventional negotiators to extract political concessions. Second, European politics and institutions are behaving as both accelerant and obstacle: they have helped militarize policy, consolidated authority at the EU level, and simultaneously blocked credible pathways to end the war in Ukraine. The combination threatens to cascade into new crises—an Israeli strike drawing in the United States, an Iran confrontation that strengthens Tehran’s partnerships, and a long-term restructuring of European sovereignty and security around a perpetual enemy narrative. ## Israel strike risk and US entanglement What is unfolding in the Gulf resembles classic coercive diplomacy—massive showings of force intended to bend an opponent’s behavior without full-scale invasion. Yet the scale and context matter. The U.S. armada and airlifts to the region are significant, but they are not comparable to the major force packages required for decisive regime change as seen in earlier campaigns. That asymmetry makes the posture more likely a pressure tactic than a reliable prelude to occupation. However, pressure tactics have their own perils. They harden domestic constituencies in the targeted state and provide emotional and strategic cover for allies who may prefer kinetic options. Israel is the wildcard here. Driven by its own domestic politics and strategic fears, Israel possesses incentives to strike Iranian targets, and any Israeli operation—even an airstrike campaign—would almost inevitably entangle the United States. Washington’s public and covert ties to Israel make a clean separation improbable: political pressure, military logistics, and regional alliance management would draw the U.S. into some form of response. The result could be a limited but highly destabilizing exchange that inflames regional proxies, disrupts global energy markets, and strengthens Tehran’s argument for tighter strategic partnership with Russia and China. Importantly, the current posture also feeds back into Iranian domestic politics. Heavy-handed external pressure tends to consolidate hard-line forces and delegitimize moderates, making negotiated de-escalation harder. The dual reality—that the U.S. lacks the credible ground forces for regime overthrow while simultaneously signaling willingness to use airpower and special operations—creates a precarious equilibrium where miscalculation by an ally or proxy can escalate faster than diplomatic channels can respond. ## Witkoff and Kushner credibility and sequencing The Geneva mix of negotiators—business figures and former insiders rather than career diplomats—highlights a shift in how deals are being brokered. Steve Witkoff’s business background and Jared Kushner’s intimate ties to one powerful ally bring transactional agility but limited institutional legitimacy. The very fact that Russia agreed to go to Geneva under these conditions signals that non-traditional channels can open doors where the standard diplomatic corps have failed. Yet such channels carry costs. There is a clear distinction between enabling talks and being impartial mediators. The crosscutting role of Trump-aligned actors has been effective at prompting Russians to the table, and that is potentially valuable for a ceasefire in Ukraine. But this informal architecture is less credible when it comes to Iran. Kushner’s close ties to Israeli interests and his role in previous regional political engineering raise legitimate concerns about impartiality. When negotiators are perceived as partial, any agreement risks being unstable or rejected by crucial domestic audiences in the adversary state. Sequencing complicates matters further. Holding parallel tracks—Iran and Russia-Ukraine—creates opportunities for deal linkage, but also risks conflating distinct security logics. A settlement on Ukraine might be used as leverage elsewhere, or pressure in the Gulf could be timed to affect negotiations in Europe. That engineered simultaneity may suit those who aim to rearrange alliances, but it makes durable settlement more fragile. Informal brokers can be nimble, but without institutional buy‑in from established diplomatic actors, outcomes are prone to collapse when political winds shift back in Washington or within European capitals. ## EU militarization, enemy politics, sovereignty pushback A striking theme emerging from the conversation is the way Europe has used the Russia war as a vector for institutional empowerment. The war has accelerated the transfer of competences to the EU level, from joint sanctions and pooled procurement to broader defense and fiscal measures. For some European elites, the Ukraine conflict has offered the existential framing needed to unify disparate member states around a centralized security architecture. That consolidation is not neutral: it entrenches an enemy narrative that keeps the geopolitical machine in motion. The political logic is simple and powerful. An external adversary—Russia—becomes the rallying point for defense integration, budget centralization, and authority claims by Brussels. Militarization, once seen as a last resort, is normalized as a continuing requirement of sovereignty. This has two consequences. First, it creates institutional incentives to perpetuate the conflict: resolution would remove the immediate rationale for the newer powers that elites have accumulated. Second, it undermines the traditional prerogatives of national capitals and fuels a backlash among publics who see sovereignty eroding under the guise of security. The paradox is that the EU is both militarizing and centralizing at a moment when fractures among member states could make such a structure brittle in any extended crisis. Another dimension is the EU’s handling of Ukraine accession and integration. Fast-tracking political and financial linkages into EU structures—particularly in ways that bypass normal budgetary scrutiny—represents a shock to fiscal realism. It also reinforces Kyiv’s incentive to prolong hostilities if accession benefits are tied to continued resistance. This creates a perverse alignment: European institutions become vehicles for supporting an ongoing conflict while claiming peace as the ultimate policy aim. The result is political gridlock, where the very design of European policy inhibits pragmatic settlements. Pushback is already visible. Nations and publics uneasy about ceding powers to Brussels, alarmed by rising defense spending, or worried about the domestic consequences of perpetual emergency politics will resist consolidation over time. Such resistance will reshape future negotiations and may realign European foreign policy away from the current single-narrative posture. ## China Russia Iran coordination and Hormuz risk As Western coercive measures mount, Iran naturally seeks counterweights. The emerging Russia-China-Iran triangle is less a formal alliance than an alignment of interests shaped by mutual opposition to Western pressure. Each partner gains in different ways: Russia benefits from political cover and energy cooperation; China secures resources and expanded influence; Iran obtains technological, economic, and diplomatic lifelines. The more the West pursues punitive and confrontational tactics, the more incentive there is for these states to deepen coordination to hedge against future vulnerabilities. A singularly alarming risk is the strategic vulnerability of maritime chokepoints. The Strait of Hormuz, through which a significa

Ukraine Peace Blocked AGAIN by Europe | Ian Proud A US armada off Iran, airlifts into the region, and Geneva talks running in parallel with Russia- Ukraine negotiations—signal for a real strike, or a pressure bluff meant to force a nuclear deal and spark unrest at home? In this episode I’m joined by Ian Proud, former UK diplomat and the voice behind The Peacemonger, to weigh the Iran buildup, Israel’s trigger risk, and the odd Geneva setup with Trump’s inner-circle negotiators. We also dig into Europe’s role in blocking an end to the Ukraine war, the EU’s push for militarization and central power, and the financial and political bombshell of fast-tracking Ukraine into EU structures. We close on the Russia-China-Iran triangle, hedging vs alliance talk, and the Hormuz nightmare scenario hanging over global energy. Links: Ian Proud Substack The Peacemonger: https://thepeacemonger.substack.com/ Ian Proud YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@IanProud Ian Proud on X: https://x.com/proud_diplomat Neutrality Studies substack: https://pascallottaz.substack.com (Opt in for Academic Section from your profile settings: https://pascallottaz.substack.com/s/academic) Merch & Donations: https://neutralitystudies- shop.fourthwall.com Timestamps: 00:00:00 Introduction 00:01:36 Iran buildup, flotilla scale, pressure tactics 00:05:02 Israel strike risk and US entanglement 00:06:42 Geneva dual-track talks and war theater swapping 00:10:16 Witkoff and Kushner credibility and sequencing 00:14:45 Missile demands, JCPOA legacy, Europe in lockstep 00:20:44 EU militarization, enemy politics, sovereignty pushback 00:23:49 Ukraine fast-track EU plan and budget reality 00:37:19 China Russia Iran coordination and Hormuz risk 00:40:59 Hedging logic and closing remarks #Pascal Welcome, everybody, back to Neutrality Studies. My name is Pascal Lottaz. I'm an associate professor at Goethe University. Today I'm joined again by my friend and colleague, Ian Proud, a former UK diplomat and now a great analyst, publishing the Substack *The Peacemonger*. I highly recommend you all go there and subscribe to it—he publishes regularly. Ian also regularly posts on YouTube, on various channels. Ian, I'm sorry—your own YouTube channel, where do people find you there? I've just started; it's called *The Peacemonger* as well, but you can find it at Ian Proud, *The Peacemonger*. So yeah, hope to see people there. And the opposite of peacemongering is, unfortunately, what we have to talk about, because the warmongers are getting ready to—or, in my view, they're getting ready to—attack Iran. They've been building up this armada in front of Iran for a while, and they've talked it up for a while, but now they're adding additional components to the fleet. We're seeing reports on Twitter/X about flight logs showing the United States doing significant airlifts into the region. We've just witnessed discussions in Geneva—I don't think they were real negotiations, but at least discussions—between -- 1 of 14 -- the Americans, Viktorov and Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump's son-in-law, with the Iranians, while also doing the same with the Ukrainians and the Russians. But we'll talk about that. Ian, how do you make sense of what’s currently being built up? #Ian Proud Well, I think Trump is clearly trying to put pressure on the Iranian regime to come to some sort of deal on nuclear disarmament. Of course, Trump is also the president who, in his first term, ditched the JCPOA, which was a good framework for Iran's nuclear program—one that the European nations were fully signed up to and that was actually bringing Iran in from the cold. Rouhani, if you remember, spoke at Davos at the time; everybody was kind of courting Iran. There was a real positive mood then. And then Trump came along and completely ditched that. He's now back to warmongering with Iran. He obviously had the strikes against their nuclear facilities last year. This is just about pressuring them for a deal, you know, shortly after an attempt to actually provoke regime change within Iran itself—an operation that appears to have been sponsored by the CIA and Mossad. And so there are two aspects to this, as far as I can see. One is the timing—that the military side and the intelligence side are kind of totally misaligned. The military part may be coming into this a bit too late anyway. But in any case, despite the massive force the Americans have deployed to the Gulf... This isn't really large enough to mount a full-scale military overthrow of Iran in any case. If we think back to the first Gulf War in 1991, the U.S. had four carrier strike groups in the region. Actually, Colin Powell said he would have preferred if they'd had a six-month build-up of troops—over half a million, I believe it was, at the time for that operation. Those same military factors just don't apply in this case. I mean, obviously, it's a formidable arsenal, but it's not nearly enough to mount a credible military challenge beyond airstrikes and things like that. So this appears to be purely a pressure ploy, but what it’s actually doing is hardening the position of the Iranian government and giving them more support in the developing world, including, of course, Russia and China. I don’t think the gunboat diplomacy will succeed, but the fact that the Omani government has been brokering talks in Geneva, at their embassy, between the two sides is helpful. It just seems unlikely that this will change much, as Trump tends to shift his position on a fairly regular basis anyway. #Pascal These are good points. And, you know, the German analyst and former spy Reiner Rupp also made the point that the American forces in the Gulf have previously been much stronger than they are now, while Iran has been much weaker. However, we're still seeing this tremendous buildup going on. One of the analyses I read that makes sense to me is that it's not just in the hands of the Americans. The Israelis, too, might start strikes, and if they do, then, well, it will necessarily draw in -- 2 of 14 -- the Americans in one way or another. Do you share that assessment—that it's not just in the hands of Washington whether or not this war is going to start? #Ian Proud No, it clearly isn’t. The Israelis clearly want to provoke some sort of action against Iran for their own domestic reasons, of course. But Israel is not a major military power. It’s a very well-armed one, as you know, given its horrific actions in Gaza over the past couple of years. That’s clear, but it’s not a credible, large enough, or indeed proximate military power to offer anything more than a threat in the skies above Iran. But even then, you know, we know from all the open-source intelligence reporting that it would actually be a brief war, if it can even be called a war. Last year, Iran considerably depleted Israel’s weapon stocks in terms of aerial interceptors and that sort of thing. So yeah, of course Israel would like to do this with the Americans too, but even so, this still doesn’t amount, in scale, to a credible enough force to mount any sort of ground attack on Iran. In any case, there doesn’t really seem to be support for that anywhere in the developing world, including in the Gulf states themselves. #Pascal Hey, very brief intermission because I was recently banned from YouTube. And although I'm back, this could happen again at any time. So please consider subscribing not only here but also to my mailing list on Substack. That’s pascallottaz.substack.com. The link’s going to be in the description below. And now, back to the video. Right—what can we make of this scenario, you know, which is highly unusual: two chief negotiators, at the same time, on the same day, negotiating two kinds of wars. Although, of course, what’s going on with Iran at this point is a very, very hard conflict, it’s not yet a kinetic war. But if you look at things from the Iranian perspective, what happened to them in January and cost thousands of lives was already a kind of hybrid warfare, actually. Still, at least there aren’t missiles flying yet. And at the same time, you’ve got the Americans also negotiating with the Russians. #Ian Proud I just can’t help it. #Pascal But it seems to me as though there’s almost some kind of tag going on—you know, one war, let’s end that one, and maybe we could go into the other one. It’s just weird that it’s being mashed together right now. #Ian Proud -- 3 of 14 -- It does. And if you read the U.S. National Security Strategy that was published fairly recently, it’s a mishmash of a document—it looks like it was written by a committee. Look, I mean, Iran isn’t the U. S.’s biggest foreign policy priority. It may well be for Israel, but it certainly isn’t for the U.S. There’s no core U.S. strategic interest in regime change in Iran, even though regime change is a hard habit for them to break, going back many decades, right? Of course, China is a big adversary now, and the NSS makes it clear that’s where they want to pivot. I mean, it seems to me quite foolhardy to provoke further. I mean, this appears to be an attempt at regime change, really, because they don’t pose a credible ground military threat—at least not with the resources Iran has at its disposal. This can only be pressure aimed at fomenting further domestic unrest within Iran itself, and nothing more than that. I mean, let’s see whether it works. Hopefully it doesn’t. Hopefully they can reach some deal that lets them back away from this massively disruptive kind of conflict, which would only, as we saw with the Ukraine war, have devastating effects for Iran itself—and, I fear, for the negotiations on ending the Russia‑Ukraine war. I mean, that’s something where I actually think the Americans do seem to want to end it. And maybe they want to end it because they’d rather start wars elsewhere, you know, whatever—but they do seem to want to end that war, and the Europeans don’t. I think that’s the big problem we’re butting up against right now: the Americans are kind of brokering these really difficult, really complex talks on the basis that, yeah, up until Trump came to power, there’d been absolutely no dialogue at all between Western nations and Russia. So, you know, with the Russians themselves, they're starting from a very low base in terms of building trust in the negotiations. But the negotiations are happening, and they're sort of edging forward. I hope they deliver results soon. I see those talks as a fundamentally positive sign, although I think there are massive obstacles to actually delivering peace in Ukraine—because of the Europeans, but also because of resistance in Kyiv, with Zelensky at the top. #Pascal Why do you think these talks are organized the way they are? Steve Witkoff is not a trained diplomat—he’s a businessman and a friend of Mr. Trump. Jared Kushner is his son-in-law, a very young person. I think he’s probably 38 or 39, something like that. He’s one of the top team. The Russians are obviously going along with it. They even agreed to fly to Geneva. They wouldn’t fly over Eastern Europe, so they went down south and flew over Italy just to be sure—which the Swiss apparently also had to broker, to make sure their airspace would be open to them. But they agreed to it. They agreed to come to Geneva, although they could have said, “No, if you want to negotiate, we’ll do it either again in Abu Dhabi or somewhere else, maybe Istanbul.” I mean, that was kind of the obvious choice. But they did that for the Americans, because the Americans said they needed to be there, since they need the Iranians in there as well. It’s just a bizarre kind of setting. -- 4 of 14 -- #Ian Proud It’s a bizarre sequencing of events. I mean, the Geneva talks happened hot on the heels of the Munich Security Conference, obviously. There’s that proximity issue in terms of the U.S. negotiators. As for Kushner and Witkoff’s experience as diplomats—no, they’re not diplomats. But all the so‑called diplomat