Editor’s Notes: In this Greater Eurasia Podcast episode, Professor Jeffrey Sachs joins Glenn Diesen to discuss the escalating tensions with Iran and what he describes as the “collapse of institutionalized rational processes” within the U.S. government. Sachs offers a scathing critique of current American leadership, characterizing recent diplomatic claims as “total improvisation” and “delusional” while highlighting the lack of coherent military or economic planning. The conversation explores the potential for a wider global conflict and the role that Russia, China, and India may play in providing a diplomatic off-ramp to prevent further destruction. (Mar 25, 2026)
TRANSCRIPT:
Introduction
GLENN DIESEN: Welcome back. We are joined by Professor Jeffrey Sachs. Thank you for coming on the program. It’s great to see you again.
PROFESSOR JEFFREY SACHS: Of course. Love being together with you, Glenn. Thank you.
Trump’s 48-Hour Ultimatum and the Question of Negotiations
GLENN DIESEN: So we saw that Trump went for this new round of escalation, it seems. Well, first he attacked the South Paris. Then the Iranians had a very brutal retaliation. And then he gave the Iranians 48 hours to essentially capitulate by opening up the Strait of Hormuz. And the 48 hours passed. And he said, well, we had two good days of constructive talk, and so we’re going to delay Armageddon now. We’re not going to do this destruction of Iran’s energy facilities, and Iran won’t retaliate.
However, the Iranians come out and say, well, we never actually had any talks at all. Not direct, not indirectly. How do you make sense of this? Is Trump walking back, or is he simply waiting, preparing for his ground troops to arrive to the region? How do you make sense of this?
Trump’s Mental State and the Theories Behind His Behavior
PROFESSOR JEFFREY SACHS: It’s not easy to make sense of a President of the United States that just brazenly lies in a way that is exposed immediately. So there were no talks, much less what Trump said of great progress and comprehensive deals.
There are, of course, many theories, and I don’t think we can absolutely land on one of them as being decisive. One theory which I think really needs to be taken seriously is that Trump confabulates, meaning that he lives in a delusional world. I believe he is a mentally ill man, and a lot of psychologists believe that he’s suffering from frontotemporal dementia combined with the underlying pathology of malignant narcissism, meaning the guy’s a megalomaniac, the guy is a narcissist, the guy is a psychopath. And that’s been true his whole life. But in addition to that, he’s losing it. He’s been nasty, but he’s losing it.
That’s the psychological interpretation. I think we should not put it aside because Trump is extraordinarily erratic right now. His sentences are not coherent. Sometimes the words are not coherent. And while this is kind of brushed aside to get to the political or tactical analyses, I think this needs to be taken very seriously. In fact, I’ve spoken over many years about Trump’s mental state. His dark triad personality is obviously psychopathic, obviously narcissistic. What the psychologists have told me for many, many years is that the conditions would worsen. And recent analyses by several psychologists say that there are all the evidences of a greater impulsivity, a lack of speech capacity in the ways that phonemic paraphasia is one condition, which means you don’t finish the words properly. So this, I think, is very real.
Then there is a second kind of purely tactical possibility, which is Trump, idiotically — because I think it’s undeniable, the man’s just not smart — painted himself into a corner with an impulsive 48-hour threat. He couldn’t fulfill it. The markets were tanking in Asia. Trump can’t stand the markets tanking in the United States. So he had to do something. And this theory is, he’s just so stupid that the best thing that he can come up with is a lie that is disproved within moments. That’s plausible too, that this is just backing off from something because he’s not very clever.
A third possibility, which many people subscribe to, and it’s not mutually exclusive, is that he or his cronies are front-running the markets. The markets are swinging. They make announcements. They knew that this would cause stock markets to rise, oil prices to fall. And all you have to do is have a one-minute advance notice of what the President’s going to say and, voilà, you can make millions of dollars in the easiest possible pickings. And there are people who are analyzing that there are mysterious trades in the market a minute or two before market opening and so forth. I don’t discount this at all because the brazen corruption of this administration is beyond belief.
What’s also true, of course, is that Trump says anything, anytime, but the deeper movements of troops say that we’re going to have a ground invasion of some kind. With the thousands of Marines heading towards the region, it hardly seems like we’re at this great diplomatic breakthrough that Trump is talking about. And as time goes on from these announcements a couple of days ago, the Iranians have said repeatedly, “No, sorry, there’s no negotiations with the Americans — this way, that way, directly, indirectly.” But the Marines keep coming.
And bottom line, Glenn, I think Trump is without any plan at all. I don’t think that there is any military strategy clear. I think he’s flailing around. I think he’s psychologically disordered. And so if this is at least partly confabulation — that he thinks there were negotiations — it wouldn’t shock me, although it’s hard to prove.
But if you cut through everything and ask a different question, not why did he do it, but what’s going to happen, I think we’re on a path of escalation. Obviously, despite the “great progress” that Donald Trump talked about, immediately there was shelling by Israel of Tehran, there was counter missile attacks by Iran on Israel.
There wasn’t the slightest hint of any pause in anything. And we know that the Marines are on the way. So this is an escalating battlefield, extraordinarily dangerous. And I don’t give any credence at all to bilateral negotiations.
I have one, maybe vain, hope that won’t pan out at all. But I have one hope that’s not based on negotiation but on a different kind of diplomacy, which is that Presidents Putin and Xi and Prime Minister Modi, who represent a lot of the world and are powerful countries, will say clearly to Donald Trump, probably in private, “You’ve got to stop this. This is completely out of control and unacceptable.” And that hasn’t quite happened yet. But I think that that is, for me, the only hope that I have for a diplomatic off-ramp. It’s not based on negotiation. It’s based on basically someone — or three leaders of considerable stature — saying to the President of the United States, “This is the reality. You can post all you want on your Truth Social and all the rest, but this is the reality. The world’s about to go up in flames if you continue this way. You’ve got to stop.”
A Pattern of Miscalculation: Russia, China, and Iran
GLENN DIESEN: Well, I agree with your character description of Donald Trump. It’s hard to disagree. But the problem seems to be much wider though. It’s not just Trump.
I saw the former head of MI6 give an interview where he made the point that Iran has the upper hand now, and it appears that the US miscalculated. But it’s not just this one miscalculation. It’s not only the United States. We also miscalculated with Russia. We thought that their economy would break the first week. We thought that they would be beaten on the battlefield. We thought they would be isolated internationally. We miscalculated with China. We thought that their ability to resist this economic war, the tech war — that simply cutting them off from the semiconductors — their industries will begin to fall apart.
Where does this come from, though? Because we seem to underestimate all our opponents these days. Is it simply no respect for them anymore? I mean, same with the Iranians. The Iranian government has some popular support. It’s powerful. The same with Russia. I make the point they consider this to be an existential threat. They’re powerful, they’re able to — they will fight back. They have both the capabilities and intentions to fight back. But yet we always underestimate. How is it possible that we are not able to assess our opponents in a rational manner?
The Collapse of Institutional Competence in the United States
PROFESSOR JEFFREY SACHS: Yes, this is extremely important. Basically, the quality of governance in the United States, even the governance to go to war or the governance to make an attack, is extraordinarily low, shockingly low. And this is a crisis of basic competence. It can be even worse — it may be a crisis of dementia. And in the previous president, we also had at least two years of dementia as a part of the US administration. So it could be that basically we’ve had two presidents in a row with dementia. And this is not at all impossible as part of the explanation.
But there’s something more that’s real and dramatic. I was in Beijing earlier this week, and for the recent days, China just finished its two sessions meetings of the senior political branches and unveiled the 15th Five Year Plan. And I spoke with many leaders in China and many participants in the planning process. So we had a deep discussion about the 15th plan. That was a plan that was undertaken over a two-year period — tremendous amounts of consultation, expert committees, think tanks across the country, leading academic specialists participating. It’s actually a remarkable mobilization of brain power and thought that goes into this. And then the Premier, Li Qiang, last week presented the work program of the government and reviewed the 2025 work program. It’s about a 50-page document in English, the one that I read. And it was a very detailed discussion of the work program.
Now I compare it with the United States. Of course, there’s no plan at all. There’s not a one-year plan, there’s not a one-month plan, there’s not a five-year plan. There’s nothing. Then we had our State of the Union. That used to be an occasion that dates back two centuries in which the President would send a report to the Congress on the State of the Union. That used to be substantial documentation. What is the State of the Union now? It’s a jeering show, it’s a public TV show — this year for Donald Trump to rant, for the US Hockey team to stand up, for somebody who’s got a medal to stand up, to tell stories, to berate the Democrats. In the case of Trump’s speech, there was no work program discussed. There was no state of the nation other than phony sound bites. This was the opposite of any kind of serious approach to governance.
So I feel this across the board. Of course, I’m not in military planning. No one asked me. But I’m watching the economic activities of the government. It’s completely haphazard, totally haphazard. The whole tariff war last year, which disrupted the world economy, was seat-of-the-pants impulsivity — crazy, naive explanations of what was done. And from my point of view, from the first day, absolutely doomed to fail in achieving any of the actual economic objectives that were stated, because it was so primitive in its formulation. And I thought it was brazenly illegal from the start. And the work of four or five people only. This was not the work of a bureaucracy that had trained analysts. There was a one-pager from the US Trade Representative that I wouldn’t have passed a first-year trade student for producing. It was an absurdity.
And so I see that repeatedly in any sphere of public policy issues that I’m dealing with. And it’s rather clear that the same is true even on these military issues, because we hear the leaks — we hear from Joe Kent, we hear the leaks from the Joint Chiefs, we hear the leaks from the CIA — that none of this is planned, none of it makes sense. Explaining to Trump that the idea that a decapitation strike is going to lead to regime change is very unlikely to succeed. We have stories — true or not, who knows — but stories that Netanyahu talked Trump into this at a personal level.
What we have is a complete collapse of institutionalized rational processes. This is true across all our government. It’s amazing anything works, by the way, really. Nobody does any serious work. Everything is a game, everything is a soundbite, everything is an impulse. And it seems that this is how this bombing went — that they were going to bomb, and then Donald Trump was going to pick the next Supreme Leader, as he said, and there was going to be unconditional surrender and we were going to live happily ever after. And when that delusion failed within a few minutes, they didn’t have a next plan. And so it’s improvisation from morning till night.
You wouldn’t think that this is how this is done. But you wouldn’t think that a person like Trump could actually be President of the United States, much less a CEO of a significant business. It’s just amazing, but it’s normalized, Glenn. Trump says these things and then all the newspapers, instead of asking “Is the man crazy?” or “How could he say there were negotiations when there were none?” — they don’t say that. There’s only, “Well, will Donald Trump succeed in the negotiations?” As if this is a serious thing, rather than — technical term, sorry — a s* show. Because there’s no seriousness in this right now. It’s total improv.
The Path Forward: Can This War End?
GLENN DIESEN: Well, the situation isn’t great on the other side of the Atlantic either. I mean, in Europe, there’s so many. A lot of these countries, they’re multi parties, so many political parties, so many media, but they’re all. When it comes to war, be it against the Russians, Iran or the way they view the Chinese, they all say the exact same thing.
I often think about Walter Lippmann. He’s attributed to the quote that “when everyone thinks the same, then nobody’s really thinking.” You have to ask yourself, how can all think in the same way? And it’s just very strange.
I try to, if you make the point that the Chinese, the Russians, Iranians, they have reasonable security concerns and interest and they’re quite powerful and, if you threaten their existence, they will be able to fight. It’s like, oh, well, that’s very pro Ayatollah or pro communist China or pro Putin. But that’s where the discussion ends. So it feels like we’re obligated to only underestimate and undermine and it’s not a great climate for strategic thinking is what I’m saying.
PROFESSOR JEFFREY SACHS: What is so strange is politicians are supposed to at least be incentivized or moved by public opinion so that they carry approval and they win votes. That stopped happening a few years ago. Also, any European politician basically has, if they have a 20 approval rating, they’re wildly popular these days. They’re basically near zero. They make no sense to the public. They don’t even try to make sense to the public.
I think it’s probably not independent of the craziness of the United States. I have to believe that it’s not just a contagious bout of craziness, but actually, unfortunately, European subservience to American craziness is the big driver. In other words, what European leaders have to this day basically been unable to do is to speak honestly when the United States is being crazy, and it continues.
The only one that is impressive in this regard in this war is Pedro Sanchez of Spain, who is very clear. And by the way, the President of Germany today — this is great — President Walter Steinmeier said this is a terrible war, this is a huge blunder. Of course, the German media start attacking their own president. “How dare you say this.” But being president, he can say this.
The Prime Minister. Oh, they’re so terrified of the United States. “What will Donald say? We’re scared of Donald. Donald’s going to hurt me. Donald’s going to do something terrible to me.” And then Rutte, who is a caricature of a caricature, says NATO has to get behind this great cause of the United States of America. God, he makes Stoltenberg look like a genius. It’s just. Honestly. Sorry. It’s just unbelievable what comes out of Rutte’s mouth. How subservient can one get? How much can one crawl on the floor? And that’s what the Europeans are doing, and it doesn’t work. By the way, this latest crisis is just going to be another catastrophe for the European economy, which is just slip sliding away because von der Leyen and Merz and Macron and Rutte. Come on. Are you kidding?
Iran’s Demands: Political Settlement, Not Ceasefire
GLENN DIESEN: Well, the Belgian prime minister made a similar point. He got also attacked because he was making the point that after this war is over with the Russians, we should normalize relations because, well, that’s what a peace agreement means. You end the conflict and you have peace. And he was attacked for this because there can be no normalization, but then there can be no peace either.
So it’s a very strange era to live in when the warmongers claim the moral high ground, and somehow the ones calling for normalizing relations and peace are the ones who are condemned.
But let me ask, though, with the Iranians, because when the Iranians said there had been no talks at all, they also made the comment that the foreign minister, that they are not interested in any ceasefire. They want a political settlement. They don’t want the Americans and Israelis to be back again in another six months to do some more bombing and try their luck again.
How do you see the possibility of this ending? What is it that — do you see a common meeting point where the demands of the Iranians can meet the demands of the Americans? Because Trump just released his demands, which was essentially the complete capitulation of Iran. I mean, it was an absurd list. Which begs the question — of course, it might be just an opening position, but it doesn’t seem like there’s anything to talk about there.
PROFESSOR JEFFREY SACHS: And the Iranians won’t talk about that. And there won’t be any bilateral discussions, because, by the way, they know that that is the moment where they’re most vulnerable to being literally assassinated — when they’re talking with the Americans. So there won’t be negotiations over these 15 points of capitulation.
I think the question, and it’s a very, very difficult question to solve — and it’s the reason why we should expect a war to continue with very, very grave consequences, unless really some near miracle occurs — is that Iran is facing an existential threat. That’s not paranoia, that’s just listening literally to the words of the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Israel, who said, “We are going to topple you and I am going to run your country,” says the President of the United States afterwards. Okay, it doesn’t get more basic than that. Unconditional surrender.
So Iran is facing an existential surrender threat. Iran has watched how Europe has been completely pathetic in not even defending the most basic principle of non-aggression. And so Iran has a real question: what are we negotiating? If the fighting stops one day, they attack two weeks from now, a month from now. It means that this is going to, probably like the war in Ukraine, come down to battlefield realities more than anything else.
Three Possible Outcomes
And there is a fundamental question. There are three ways for this to stop.
One is that the United States crushes Iran, of course, with grave devastation, war crimes, everything horrible, but crushes Iran.
A second possibility is that, no, that can’t really be done. It’s almost never done by the air. It’s never done in a country as large and populous as Iran. Serbia, which is a small, weak country compared to Iran, was bombed for 78 days by NATO without giving in, and then finally capitulating in 1999. So there’s a lot longer to go on this one. And the argument which many of the people you have discussed this issue with have said, I think with a lot of cogency, Iran has more missiles than the other side has missile defenses. And that’s the most basic point perhaps, which is that Iran can blow up the Gulf and it can probably blow up a lot of Israel in the interim.
The only other answer I can see is that the other great powers unite, speak clearly, speak both publicly and privately, and tell the United States it’s over. Go home. You can’t do this. We can rally 180 countries around the world to be honest about this, and you go home and you stop. And that the Gulf countries, as part of this, say our military facilities are closed. They’re done. We do not host US military facilities anymore. They don’t protect us. In fact, they are the cause of war itself.
With that, the fighting could stop. It wouldn’t resolve all issues, but it would stop the fighting. That these bases are non-operative, that the United States goes home, and that Israel cannot fight at all without the United States. And the only ones that I believe can bring this about are India, China and Russia. And if they’re united, I think they could actually succeed in bringing this about.
A Multipolar World: Integration or Confrontation?
GLENN DIESEN: Well, I was hoping that all these countries in the east would facilitate a multipolar system, which was something that the US would be integrated into. Indeed, they have a leading position, but instead the unfortunate position is where it can take on a very anti-American format if it continues like this.
None other than Brzezinski, who actually wrote — which we often refer to as the Bible essentially for the unipolar moment — he actually wrote a book back in 2012 where he argued that if the unipolar moment’s ending, we should choose. We have a choice. Do we want a favorable — like if a multipolar system is emerging, we can either push back and this might — the multipolar system would then be formed against us, or we can help to facilitate it and then have a privileged position. Now it is the —
PROFESSOR JEFFREY SACHS: Well, the US made that choice clearly, which is we are still after hegemony. This is basically what we’re seeing, but I won’t say in a farcical way, but in a completely tragic way, because the US is trying to be the global hegemon in a world that’s already multipolar and in which the US can’t even strategize an hour ahead anymore. And so it’s flailing around to keep hegemony.
Of course, this is what Brzezinski wrote about 15 years after he wrote the text for how we’re really going to be unipolar in the grand chessboard, because he said Russia could never resist the advance of NATO and Europe and it will never join with China, so it will accede to the Western demands. And with that pivot of Ukraine and Russia ceasing to be a great power, the United States has the keys to Eurasia. So that was the blueprint. It failed.
It’s failing again. Trump is not a clown. He’s far, far, far, far more dangerous than that. But he is absolutely incapable of a strategic idea and of success. So we’re watching destruction, continued escalation, until that non-western part of the world — which after all represents the vast majority of the world — stands up and says, “No, you can’t destroy the whole world. We won’t let you do it.”
GLENN DIESEN: Well, thank you for taking the time. I know it’s late over there in Hong Kong, so I will let you go.
PROFESSOR JEFFREY SACHS: And by the way, I just want to clarify my last statement. When I say “we won’t let you do it,” I don’t mean that they’re going to go to war with the United States, but I do mean that they will create a united diplomatic front that will involve the vast majority of the world, because the African Union certainly will join this. Actually the Arab world will join this. And the message will be the US has to stop this delusional approach and Israel — for God’s sake, 30 years of war across the Middle East — stop, go live within your own borders and stop bothering the whole rest of the world.
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