'Alternate Shots'
Optimism on Stilts.
(You Tube! ‘Alternate Shots’. Episode #31. Co-hosted by Richard Haass and John Ellis. Recorded 19 June 2026. Produced by Dale Eisinger.)
(Audio only)
There are 14 points in the Memorandum of Understanding agreed by Iran and the United States. Richard summed them up in the headline of his most recent ‘Home and Away” Substack newsletter: “Defeat”.
It’s hard to argue with his assessment. There are few people left trying to do so. The question now is: what happens next? “Resolving” the 14 points to the mutual satisfaction of both parties seems fraught. Resolving them to the satisfaction of the GCC states and Israel seems unlikely.
How the Taiwan “issue” gets resolved, in the near term or eventually, is another open question. Richard and East Asia expert David Sacks address it in an upcoming Foreign Affairs essay, due out Monday (22 June).
In the podcast, Richard previews the essay in some detail. The short, oversimplified “takeaway”: President Xi is maneuvering to “acquire” Taiwan without firing a shot. The U.S.’s willingness to prevent him from doing so seems uncertain.
And for good reason. This from The New York Times on Thursday:
President Lai Ching-te of Taiwan voiced “high hopes” on Thursday that President Trump would approve $14 billion in arms orders for the island, downplaying concerns raised last month when Mr. Trump suggested U.S. military support for Taiwan was negotiable, unsettling longstanding American policy.
Moving right along, we discuss the U.S. Open golf championship and the New York Knicks. Both are reminders that great athletes sometimes produce “transitory enchanted moments.”
There’s nothing quite like U.S. Open golf at Shinnecock Hills, one of the nation’s greatest golf courses, especially so when the wind is up. The wind has been up. And it’s impossible to convey in words what the Knicks mean to millions of people in New York City. It’s the city’s game and the city’s team, at long last, triumphed. Joy paraded in lower Manhattan on Thursday. More than 2 million people showed up to share it.
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