Australia in the World

Stephen Dziedzic of the ABC returns to catch up on a remarkable month in Australian foreign policy.

The conversation begins with China’s submarine-launched ballistic missile test into the South Pacific. Stephen and Darren ask who Beijing was really signalling, what the test says about China’s nuclear deterrent, and why Pacific governments responded much more strongly than they did to China’s 2024 launch.

They then turn to Australia’s rapidly expanding Pacific integration agenda: the Nakamal Agreement with Vanuatu, the new Vuvale Union and Ocean of Peace Alliance with Fiji, and the wider web of Australian agreements across the region. The discussion examines why Fiji and Vanuatu struck such different bargains; whether Australia coerced Vanuatu; the risks of strategic overstretch; and what happens when Canberra eventually has to enforce one of the new agreements’ red lines. Darren also offers an alliance-theory puzzle: these treaties appear designed less to deter a clear external threat than to institutionalise alignment and deny rival security access.

The episode also covers Taiwan’s decision to suspend spot purchases of PNG LNG after Port Moresby moved against Taiwan’s representative office; the fragile stabilisation of Australia–China relations and an Australian variation on Kevin Rudd’s “managed strategic competition”; and Narendra Modi’s visit, including whether India now truly qualifies as a top-tier Australian security partner.

Recommendations: Ezra Klein’s interviews with Kevin Rudd and Maggie Haberman, and Sam Dalrymple’s Shattered Lands.

Australia in the World is written, hosted and produced by Darren Lim, with research and audio editing by Hannah Nelson and theme music composed by Rory Stenning.

Relevant links

Stephen Dziedzic's relevant ABC reporting

Stephen Dziedzic and Lillyrose WelWel, “Vanuatu critical infrastructure to remain ‘free from militarisation’ under Nakamal pact,” ABC News, 29 June 2026, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-06-29/australia-vanuatu-sign-strategic-pact-nakamal-agreement/106852624

Stephen Dziedzic, “Vanuatu deal a sign of what’s to come in ‘permanent contest’ for Pacific influence with China,” ABC News, 1 July 2026, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-01/how-vanuatu-deal-shapes-pacific-influence-contest-with-china/106863266

Lice Movono and Stephen Dziedzic, “Solomon Islands PM says ‘growing consensus’ in support of regional security agreement,” ABC News, 3 July 2026, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-03/solomon-islands-pm-says-growing-consensus-for-security-deal/106874902

Stephen Dziedzic and Lice Movono, “Prime Minister Anthony Albanese signs Ocean of Peace Alliance with Fiji,” ABC News, 6 July 2026, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-06/albanese-signs-major-new-treaty-fiji/106882252

Stephen Dziedzic and Tom Lowrey, “‘Destabilising’ Chinese ballistic missile test in Pacific prompts government concerns,” ABC News, 6 July 2026, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-06/china-test-ballistic-missile-south-pacific/106885076 

Stephen Dziedzic, “China warns Australia over military alliance with Fiji that promises to ‘act to meet the common danger’,” ABC News, 6 July 2026, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-06/china-warns-australia-over-alliance-with-fiji/106886394

Stephen Dziedzic and Tom Lowrey, “Pacific leaders criticise Chinese nuclear-capable missile test as ‘reckless’,” ABC News, 7 July 2026, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-07/china-missile-nuclear-pacific-nauru-tuvalu/106887324

Stephen Dziedzic and Doug Dingwall, “Anthony Albanese says India a ‘top-tier security partner’ for Australia as nations deepen defence ties,” ABC News, 9 July 2026, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-09/narendra-modi-arrives-in-melbourne/106894868

Tim Swanston and Stephen Dziedzic, “China demands Australia stop ‘exaggerating tensions’ over South China Sea,” ABC News, 22 July 2026, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-22/china-australia-south-china-sea-philippines-tension/106946822

Stephen Dziedzic, “Chinese diplomats leave Labor conference in Adelaide after requesting Taiwan representatives be ejected,” ABC News, 23 July 2026, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-23/chinese-diplomats-leave-labor-conference-in-adelaide/106951960

Stephen Dziedzic, “Australia supplants China as Pacific’s biggest lender,” ABC News, 28 July 2026, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-28/new-lowy-pacific-aid-map-australia-lending-investor/106967764

Stephen Dziedzic and Marian Faa, “Taiwan to stop buying PNG gas on spot market over ‘One China’ spat,” ABC News, 29 July 2026, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-29/taiwan-to-stop-buying-png-gas-on-spot-market/106972968

Other links

Siobhan McDonnell, “The Nakamal Agreement has been signed, but at what cost?”, Devpolicy Blog, 24 July 2026: https://devpolicy.org/the-nakamal-agreement-has-been-signed-but-at-what-cost/

Ezra Klein, “What Xi Jinping Wants (with Kevin Rudd)” The Ezra Klein Show, The New York Times, 14 July 2026, https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/14/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-kevin-rudd.html

Ezra Klein, “How Trump Has Changed, With Maggie Haberman,” The Ezra Klein Show, The New York Times, 31 July 2026, https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/31/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-maggie-haberman.html

Sam Dalrymple, Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia, HarperCollins, 19 June 2025, https://harpercollins.com.au/products/9780008466831

Darren is back at the mic after a month away and, again, back on the Iran/Hormuz story. The deal he spent an hour analysing in June is dead inside three weeks, the two sides are fighting again, American soldiers are dying, important infrastructure has been destroyed across the region, and a fresh ceasefire proposal is circulating even as Washington weighs a much larger campaign alongside Israel.

This episode is his effort to describe the machinery that keeps generating these crises, with his analysis intended to hold up whether there's a ceasefire or a major escalation by the time you listen. Darren starts with the collapse of the June memorandum and why the agreement that used the word "permanent" turned out to be the shortest-lived of the lot. He then works through what Tehran believes it saw in the three weeks after signing, a short theory of how wars stay limited and how those limits break, and the idea that sits at the centre of the episode: that this is no longer a war about what the two sides don't know, but about their inability to make any promise the other has reason to believe.

From there it's the oil clock — how close the market is running to empty, and why the cushions that saved us the first time may not be there again. Then he moves to the the risk that Iran's apparent victory is quietly turning into a trap, what a durable settlement over the Strait of Hormuz might actually look like, and why none of it touches the nuclear question that started the war. The episode closes well beyond Iran, with a more general thought about a world economy that has become cheap to disrupt, slow to reassure, and which no government can any longer credibly promise not to weaponise.

Australia in the World is written, hosted, and produced by Darren Lim, with research and editing by Hannah Nelson and theme music composed by Rory Stenning.

Relevant links

Note: Not everything below is named in the episode; some pieces sit behind the analysis rather than being quoted directly. Where Darren refers to a work explicitly, it's marked with an asterisk (*).

On the collapse of the deal and the view from Tehran

* Vali Nasr, "Why Iran is returning to war," Financial Times, 17 July 2026: https://www.ft.com/content/22fdb2d5-b454-4a65-9aa9-e56371533ccf

* Ali Vaez, "This Is a Forever War in the Making," The New York Times, 15 July 2026: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/15/opinion/us-iran-forever-war-strait-of-hormuz.html  

* International Crisis Group, "From Deal to Ordeal: The U.S. and Iran" (panel featuring Vali Nasr; moderated by Ali Vaez), 16 July 2026: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ka_G_Oi2Ez8

* Rob Malley, remarks on the drafting of paragraph 5 (via X / Crisis Group), July 2026: https://x.com/Rob_Malley/status/2076796118604632398

* Ali Hashem, “'The word belongs to the battlefield': Why Iran, US are drifting back to conflict”, Al-Monitor, 14 July 2026: https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2026/07/word-belongs-battlefield-why-iran-us-are-drifting-back-conflict

On Trump, strategy and the limits of American power

* Trita Parsi, “Yesterday's US-Iran escalation is a mere prelude to what is likely to come”, Substack 19 July 2026: https://tritaparsi.substack.com/p/yesterdays-us-iran-escalation-is

Peter Baker, "In Iran, Trump Has Found an Opponent He Cannot Easily Dominate," The New York Times, 14 July 2026: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/14/us/politics/iran-trump-war.html

Robin Wright, "Donald Trump's Ad-Lib Strategy on Iran," The New Yorker, 17 July 2026: https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/donald-trumps-ad-lib-strategy-on-iran

Greg Jaffe and Eric Schmitt, "Trump Faces the Limits of U.S. Firepower and the Lessons of Past Wars," The New York Times, 17 July 2026: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/17/us/politics/trump-iran-war-afghanistan-iraq.html

"The Iran war is America's least popular since polls began," The Economist, 19 July 2026: https://www.economist.com/united-states/2026/07/19/the-iran-war-is-americas-least-popular-since-polls-began

On Hormuz, oil markets and the equilibrium

* Javier Blas, "Iran Risks Overplaying Its Hand on Hormuz," Bloomberg Opinion, 16 July 2026: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2026-07-16/strait-of-hormuz-iran-risks-overplaying-its-hand-on-oil-chokepoint

"Donald Trump has no good options for reopening the Strait of Hormuz," The Economist, July 2026: https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2026/07/14/donald-trump-has-no-good-options-for-reopening-the-strait-of-hormuz

"Oil traders warn market is close to running on empty as Hormuz shuts again," Financial Times, 15 July 2026: https://www.ft.com/content/6c314457-ce9a-4689-b3e1-ff637de0d6bf?syn-25a6b1a6=1

Lewis Jackson and Sam Li, “China's oil imports have plunged during the Iran war. How much will they recover?”, Reuters, 17 July 2026: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-oil-imports-have-plunged-during-iran-war-how-much-will-they-recover-2026-07-17/

Amos Hochstein, thread on depleted energy buffers, 17 July 2026: https://x.com/amoshochstein/status/2077812227890131406

On the nuclear file

* James Acton in conversation with Jon Bateman, World Unpacked (Carnegie), 12 July 2026: https://carnegieendowment.org/podcasts/the-world-unpacked/a-physicist-explains-how-iran-can-still-go-nuclear

The theory

* Thomas Schelling, Arms and Influence (1966): https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Arms_and_Influence.html?id=P-_RDwAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y

* Herman Kahn, On Escalation: Metaphors and Scenarios (1965): https://books.google.com.au/books?id=0No5uIPpD8AC&printsec=frontcover&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

* Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (1976): https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvc77bx3

* James Fearon, "Rationalist Explanations for War," International Organization (1995): https://www.jstor.org/stable/2706903

* Robert Powell, "War as a Commitment Problem," International Organization (2006): https://www.jstor.org/stable/3877871

Darren is back to do (yet another) solo episode on Iran. This week, the United States and Iran did a deal, Trump put pen to a physical copy at Versailles, and the war looked like it might be — in a narrow sense— over.

At least, this is what Darren sought to analyse when he first recorded on Saturday 20 June. But before he could publish the following day, Iran had announced the Strait of Hormuz was closed again — saying Israel’s actions in Lebanon were a violation — while Washington insisted it was open and Vance headed to Switzerland. So the episode now opens with a short update (recorded on Sun 21 June) on that split-screen before the main recording. The good news (for Darren) was that the overnight news, if anything, sharpened his argument.

Across eight points Darren covers: (i) what happened and what they actually signed (boiled down: an agreement to negotiate a real agreement within sixty days); (ii) why the US did a deal now now — Hoover, the markets, the midterms, and Trump more or less admitting it out loud; (iii) who won (Iran) and why; (iv) why Iran could still lose the peace by overplaying Hormuz; (v) why Israel is the big loser; and then finishing off with (vi) the optimistic case for what happens next, (vii) the pessimistic case, and (viii) going back to check the receipts on the five lessons he set out in Episode 184, plus three new ones: that the strait was reopened by payment not force, that energy systems impose political clocks, and that it was regional states, not the great institutions, who helped supply the exit.

Australia in the World is written, hosted, and produced by Darren Lim, with research and editing by Hannah Nelson and theme music composed by Rory Stenning.

Relevant links

Jonathan Lemire, "Trump in Defeat", The Atlantic, 17 June 2026: https://www.theatlantic.com/national-security/2026/06/trump-defeat-iran-war/687566/

Adam Rasgon et al, "How the US–Iran Deal Came Down to the Wire", New York Times, 17 June 2026: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/17/us/politics/us-iran-deal-trump.html

Nate Swanson, "Iran Won the War but May Lose the Peace," Foreign Affairs , 18 June 2026: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/iran/iran-won-war-may-lose-peace long gam

The Long Game (podcast), “Did America Lose the Iran War? (w/ Ambassador Wendy Sherman)”, 19 June 2026: https://substack.com/home/post/p-202627995

Ali Vaez, “America and Iran Have an Agreement. And 60 Days to Prevent the Next War”, Time, 16 June 2026: https://time.com/article/2026/06/15/america-iran-peace-agreement-prevent-next-war/

John Hudson, “U.S. bears brunt of Israel’s missile defense, Pentagon assessments show”, Washington Post, 21 May 2026: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/05/21/us-bears-brunt-israels-missile-defense-pentagon-assessments-show/

Press Conference: Donald Trump Holds a Press Conference at the G7 Summit in France - June 17, 2026: https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/transcript/donald-trump-press-conference-g7-summit-evian-france-june-17-2026/ · 

US-Iran memorandum of understanding in full: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gy700j0eko

Stephen Dziedzic of the ABC joins Darren to catch up on something besides Iran and the (still-closed) Strait of Hormuz. The conversation begins with the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, where Stephen was on the ground. They discuss the mood in the room, the relative absence of Iran from the public discussion despite its obvious relevance to maritime security, and the broader regional anxiety about escalation, sea lanes, chokepoints, ports, subsea cables and the physical infrastructure that underpins the Indo-Pacific order. They also examine Vietnamese President Tô Lâm’s keynote speech, Pete Hegseth’s address on US engagement in Asia, and the significance of China again not sending its defence minister.

The conversation then turns to DPM Richard Marles’ Shangri-La speech and its focus on subsea cables and maritime infrastructure. Darren sees a reframing of the “rules-based order” towards a physical system that must be monitored, protected and defended. They also discuss the AUKUS announcements made in Singapore, including the Pillar II underwater drone project and the shift in Australia’s planned Virginia-class submarine acquisition from a mix of new and used boats to three in-service submarines.

The second half of the episode covers several other major stories: Solomon Islands Prime Minister Matthew Wale’s visit to Canberra and the possibility of a “reset” in Australia–Solomon Islands relations; Beijing’s decision to ban four New Zealand MPs after a visit to Taiwan; the Trump administration’s proposed tariff on Australian goods; and the Quad foreign ministers’ meeting in New Delhi, which produced unexpectedly concrete outcomes on maritime awareness, infrastructure, critical minerals and energy security.

Australia in the World is written, hosted, and produced by Darren Lim, with research and editing this episode by Hannah Nelson and theme music composed by Rory Stenning.

Relevant links

IISS Shangri-La Dialogue 2026: https://www.iiss.org/events/shangri-la-dialogue/shangri-la-dialogue-2026/

Joint Statement, AUKUS Defence Ministers’ Meeting, 30 May 2026: https://www.minister.defence.gov.au/statements/2026-05-30/joint-statement-aukus-defence-ministers-meeting

Australia–Solomon Islands Leaders’ Meeting, Joint statement, 3 June 2026: https://www.pm.gov.au/media/australia-solomon-islands-leaders-meeting-0

Quad Foreign Ministers’ Meeting Joint Statement, 26 May 2026: https://www.foreignminister.gov.au/minister/penny-wong/media-release/quad-foreign-ministers-meeting-joint-statement

Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, Freedom at Midnight (1975): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_at_Midnight

Carl Hendrick, “The Death of the University Degree”, The Learning Dispatch (Substack), 24 May 2026: https://carlhendrick.substack.com/p/the-death-of-the-university-degree

Eleven weeks into the U.S.-Iran war, the news cycle is relentless, but the strategic position has barely moved. Darren looks to step back from the weekly churn to lay out the five durable lessons of this conflict — the things that were becoming visible in March, that have held through April, that are still true in May, and that may well remain true for some time yet.

The episode begins with a factual update: the collapse of Project Freedom, the trading of fire that neither side will call a ceasefire violation, Iran's 10 May counter-proposal demanding sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, Trump's dismissal of it as "garbage," and the bombshell New York Times report that Iran has regained operational access to most of its missile capability — directly contradicting the administration's public narrative just as Trump leaves for his summit with Xi Jinping.

The bulk of the episode then works through five structural lessons:

Coercion doesn’t work if your adversary wants it more

The geography in geo-economics—how Iran has demonstrated a modern model of asymmetric power

Both sides still prefer no deal to a deal, and Trump's overnight Truth Social post tells us more than he realises

Policy competence actually matters a lot

The decaying pillars of the international order, with the oil market as case study

Darren closes with the model he keeps coming back to: what actually constrains Donald Trump. With JP Morgan predicting Hormuz will reopen in June on inventory grounds, the institutional architecture that has buffered the shock running out of room, and Republican Senate primaries clearing through May and June, the question is whether material reality and the political calendar finally converge to produce a binding constraint on a president who has resisted almost every other form.

Australia in the World is written, hosted, and produced by Darren Lim, with research and editing by Hannah Nelson and theme music composed by Rory Stenning.

Relevant links

Adam Entous, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, "U.S. Intelligence Shows Iran Retains Substantial Missile Capabilities," New York Times, 12 May 2026: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/12/us/politics/iran-missiles-us-intelligence.html

Sudarsan Raghavan, "The Art of the Ceasefire," The New Yorker, 12 May 2026: https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/the-art-of-the-ceasefire

International Crisis Group, "Iran Crisis Monitor #5," 12 May 2026: https://www.crisisgroup.org/bnt/middle-east-north-africa/iran-israelpalestine-united-states/iran-crisis-monitor-5

Danny Citrinowicz, "How the War Saved the Iranian Regime," Foreign Affairs, 29 April 2026: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/iran/how-war-saved-iranian-regime

Gregory Brew, "America Will Pay Dearly for Its Energy Arrogance," New York Times, 2 May 2026: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/02/opinion/trump-us-oil-crisis-strait-of-hormuz.html

Jason Bordoff, "If OPEC Falls Apart, It'll Cost Us All," New York Times, 6 May 2026: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/06/opinion/opec-oil-markets-trump.html