In his effort to sell a victory to the American people in the Iran war, Donald Trump has stubbornly repeated that the Persian country has already been “annihilated” militarily, so the “total victory” at the strategic level is just around the corner. “They have no Navy, no communications, no Air Force,” he said two months ago, when he lied by claiming that the war was “practically over.” “They have already fired everything they had to fire,” he added: “Iran’s drone and missile capability has been completely destroyed, the navy has disappeared.”

If it were a Broadway musical or a theatrical show, the luminous neon signs of Times Square and 42nd Street would proclaim “Charles III’s most complex and dangerous journey,” that “the king is going to Washington at the lowest point in bilateral relations in almost a century,” “he will use his charm to try to tame Trump,” “he runs the risk of being humiliated,” or “his life depends on a Secret Service that has allowed three assassination attempts.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping may have been formal in his welcome to his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, this Wednesday at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. However, he chose to call for “an immediate cessation of all hostilities in the Middle East,” noting that their reactivation would be “even more serious.” At the end of their meeting, both leaders signed a joint declaration in favor of “a multipolar world.” Otherwise, according to them, the current “disregard for international legality” and global institutions leads us to “the law of the jungle.”