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Finnish President Alexander Stubb has a better claim than most European leaders to know what Donald Trump might do next. | Tim Ross\/POLITICO<\/p>\n\u201cDiplomacy is rarely a transaction,\u201d he said. \u201cI mean, interest can be transactional, but even then, you should find mutual interest. And what we\u2019re seeing now is the demise of international institutions or rules exactly at a time in history when we need them more than ever \u2014 whether it\u2019s about solving conflicts, solving climate change, solving ethical issues linked to artificial intelligence or biotechnology, solving development.\u201d<\/p>\n
And, he added: \u201cSome people are creating this illusion that you can live in a world with national boundaries and that we\u2019re not interdependent, and I think nothing is further from the truth, as we can see in the Strait of Hormuz right now. We\u2019re all affected, if nowhere else, at least at the gas pump.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Talking, but not WhatsApping<\/p>\n
Stubb has a better claim than most European leaders to know what Trump might do next. He correctly predicted last fall that Trump would hit Russia\u2019s President Vladimir Putin with a \u201cbig stick\u201d while many were skeptical. Harsh U.S. sanctions on Russian oil exports followed a few weeks later.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Finnish President Alexander Stubb has a better claim than most European leaders to know what Donald Trump might do next. | Tim Ross\/POLITICO<\/p>\n
But now Trump has eased those sanctions to mitigate the impact of the Iran war on fuel prices \u2014 throwing a lifeline to Russia\u2019s straining economy in the country\u2019s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Does Stubb worry that Trump is losing interest and could walk away from his promise to end the Ukraine war?\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, I hope not. He\u2019s very preoccupied with Iran right now,\u201d Stubb said. \u201cFor understandable reasons, the war in Iran is taking a lot of oxygen out of what\u2019s going on in Ukraine. In my mind, it seems like the peace talks are now on hold.\u201d After three rounds of negotiations involving officials from Washington, Kyiv and Moscow, none are planned in the near future. \u201cThis could be because of Iran or it could be because they have reached an end of the road.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cDiplomacy is rarely a transaction,\u201d he said. \u201cI mean, interest can be transactional, but even then, you should…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38072,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2237,11615,3074,1405,16684,16685,949,1292,16686,15073,16687,648,989,38,687,154,2276,3400,12034,11616,159,5632,11617,1281,34,688,3794,207,49,179,971,213,16688,12888,55,509,2044,947,445,56,51,1976,3869,36,226],"class_list":{"0":"post-38071","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-iran","8":"tag-airports","9":"tag-alexander-stubb","10":"tag-americas","11":"tag-artificial-intelligence","12":"tag-baltics","13":"tag-biotechnology","14":"tag-canada","15":"tag-climate-change","16":"tag-cold-war","17":"tag-competition","18":"tag-coronavirus","19":"tag-defense","20":"tag-diplomacy","21":"tag-donald-trump","22":"tag-drones","23":"tag-energy","24":"tag-energy-markets","25":"tag-exports","26":"tag-fertilizers","27":"tag-finland","28":"tag-foreign-policy","29":"tag-fuels","30":"tag-golf","31":"tag-intelligence","32":"tag-iran","33":"tag-keir-starmer","34":"tag-mark-carney","35":"tag-markets","36":"tag-middle-east","37":"tag-military","38":"tag-norway","39":"tag-oil","40":"tag-roads","41":"tag-rob-jetten","42":"tag-russia","43":"tag-sanctions","44":"tag-supply-chains","45":"tag-technology","46":"tag-trade","47":"tag-ukraine","48":"tag-united-states","49":"tag-vladimir-putin","50":"tag-volodymyr-zelenskyy","51":"tag-war","52":"tag-war-in-iran"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38071\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}