"Hello, Jinping? It's Vlad!"
Putin and Xi catch up on recent events in Iran
PUTIN: Hey! I just got off the phone with Trump, and this time I think he’s way over his head! He got lucky bombing Iran last year and snatching Maduro in January, but I don’t think he has any clue what chain of events he has touched off in Iran.
XI: Yeah! With all his other big gambles, he normally leaves himself an escape hatch. He threatens tariffs, and chickens out when the markets turn. But what’s going on in the Middle East is going to be a mess; America’s going to be cleaning up for years.
PUTIN: Well, maybe… But Trump’s slippery. He knows how to distract from his failures. In any case, it’s all good for us. We get a little more oil money as long as prices stay higher than expected, but I’m not counting on that as other supplies and reserves come online. More importantly, he’s talking about loosening sanctions on Russia so that high gas prices don’t hurt him in the next elections. And—big bonus!—there will be fewer Patriots to supply Ukraine.
XI: You know we put out the usual condemnation statement. “Illegal war, American adventurism, non-interference, blah, blah, blah…” But it should be good for us, too. He’s due in Beijing in a couple of weeks, and he’s surely going to want a trade deal more than ever. I’m prepared to buy a few more tons of soybeans and some more Boeings, but he’d better come prepared to open up a path for more Chinese investment in America and loosen controls on advanced tech sales. Otherwise, I’ll happily send him home empty-handed.
PUTIN: You know, the funny thing is just how smart these Western reporters think they are to point out the collapse of the “Axis of Evil”—as if it were ever a real thing. That was a pure George W. Bush invention, not anything we ever talked about. Even if we weren’t bogged down in the Donbas, it would be a cold day in hell before we sent any Russian troops to Iran. We’re happy to share some intel right now, but they never gave us any Shahed drones when we needed them. We paid, and they banked a nice profit. And besides, we’re making better designs on our own now!
XI: Actually, the Iranians depend more on us, as their biggest oil customer, than we depend on them. The last thing we want is to lose any Chinese tankers in the Gulf, so we may just increase our orders with Rosneft and Lukoil.
PUTIN: You are most welcome.
XI: And when the fighting does subside, our companies will happily be the first on the scene to benefit from the reconstruction.
PUTIN: Save some contracts for us!
XI: What occurs to me is that the U.S. Navy is going to be tied down in the Middle East for a long time, securing the tanker traffic through the Straits of Hormuz. You know we don’t have any immediate plans to move on Taiwan, but maybe now’s the time. What do you think?
PUTIN: Uh, I don’t know. There’s a lot going on now, and that would be a big escalation. Even if you avoid a showdown with the Americans, there would be sanctions that could trigger a global recession or worse. And then what happens to my oil price?
XI: Hey, I’m just thinking out loud. But you know, if Trump can order his military around and you can order yours, why can’t I do the same? Gotta go.
PUTIN: Hello? Hello?
(Editor’s Note: No, even after hundreds of conversations, we don’t think they really call each other “Jinping” or “Vlad.”)