Georgian Dream Prime Minister and party chairman Irakli Kobakhidze called current U.S.-Georgian relations “actively negative” and stated that they cannot be “neutral” due to the sanctions already imposed and potential future ones against Georgian Dream officials.
“The silence of the new U.S. administration is not silence at all. Silence can be called a state of affairs if there is a neutral status in relations; however, this status is not neutral in our relations,” Kobakhidze said on Imedi TV on May 14. A day before the interview, Kobakhidze had addressed an open letter to U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance, expressing the government’s concern that his proposal to restore relations with the U.S. “from a clean slate” was ignored.
Kobakhidze stated that “the Biden administration imposed sanctions, for example, on our Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Internal Affairs, Vakhtang Gomelauri, and other high-ranking officials from our law enforcement agencies.”
“Also, to mention the ‘Friend Act’ and so on, this is not a state of neutral silence; it is not a passive status. Our relations have a kind of active negative status,” he noted.
Kobakhidze reiterated that the ruling party is “in a waiting mode” to see what Trump, with whom, he said, it shares values, will say. The Georgian Dream party says it wants to reset relations between the two countries, which, in its opinion, will depend entirely on the outcome of the “battle” between Trump and the “Deep State.”
“We hope there will be a reaction, but we’ll see. It all depends on who wins the battle between the Trump administration and the Deep State. There will be a clear battle. We hope that President Trump will win, but we don’t rule out the second option,” he said.
It seems that the Georgian Dream’s hopes for Trump are waning, as the MEGOBARI Act—which provides for broader sanctions against Georgian Dream officials and their family members—has reached Trump for signature. On May 6, the bill passed the U.S. House of Representatives with significant support, and the next day it was included in the Senate’s legislative calendar. On May 14, as reported in a previous Caucasus Watch article, the Georgian Parliament issued a statement criticizing the MEGOBARI Act as “extremely hostile” and “factually incorrect,” warning that its advancement risks diminishing Congress’s credibility among Georgians. If the Senate passes the legislation, it will be sent to Trump for signature, after which the law will enter into force. As of May 18, 2025, the Senate’s decision remains pending, according to recent updates.
“We should be optimistic. We hope that relations will be reset, we hope that the ‘Deep State’ will be defeated, or at least weakened in the fight against Trump,” said Irakli Kobakhidze.
Regarding the MEGOBARI Act, Kobakhidze criticized its co-author, Congressman Joe Wilson, calling him a “little agent” of the “Deep State.” “In this case, they singled out this man and made him write such things. If you ask him about Georgia, he may not be able to point to it on a map, but sometimes he writes five or six posts about Georgia a day,” Kobakhidze noted.
“When you write that a pro-Iranian government is operating in Georgia, this could all be based on something,” he added. “I’m not talking about Russia and China anymore. This discredits everything related to the U.S. and Europe. The Soviet Central Committee did not frame such things in the ‘80s, because there were some principles there. What the Soviet Central Committee did not frame in the ‘80s, we hear from specific officials in America and Europe,” Kobakhidze said.
“What do they want from our small country? Talking about being worried about the democratic state of our country is ridiculous,” said the Georgian Dream Prime Minister, who has contributed to Georgia’s leadership in governance ratings in Europe and around the world.
Kobakhidze also criticized USAID and NED, portraying them as instruments of foreign influence that, he said, serve to “sow hatred in Georgian society” with methods reminiscent of the KGB. “I remember the beginning of the ‘90s, when a lot of hatred was sown in society directly by the KGB. The KGB worked on this in the early ‘90s; they made Georgians hate each other… I can tell you directly that since the beginning of the ‘90s, no one in Georgia has sown so much hatred as is being sown in Georgia today through USAID, NED, and other funds,” Kobakhidze said, adding that USAID and NED funded organizations that were “directly engaged in sowing hatred against the Orthodox Church.”
Regarding the topic of U.S.-Georgian relations, Kobakhidze was asked what would happen if the U.S. did not respond. According to him, this would be an indication that the “Deep State” cannot be weakened by the Trump administration, and in such conditions, there will be more challenges in Georgian-American relations. “We had to defend our national interests for four years in much more difficult circumstances and were prepared for the worst-case scenario, which was the election of Trump’s opponent and, consequently, the continued dominance of the ‘Deep State’ in the U.S. government. Even now, we would defend our interests while engaging with the European Union,” he stated.
“The state of bilateral relations does not depend on the Georgian Dream government,” Kobakhidze said, repeating for emphasis, “It’s simple: if Trump weakens the Deep State, then Georgian-American relations will be reset; if he fails to weaken it, then the status quo will remain… We will remain in a one-sided friendship regime,” he added.
During the interview, Kobakhidze also spoke about Europe and said that European countries are losing their national identity. He praised the Georgian Dream party for preserving Georgia’s national identity. Kobakhidze also mentioned Ukraine and accused the West of “sacrificing” it in the war with Russia. He called on Western powers to “take care” of Georgia. “If you are trying to create artificial problems here, to impose sanctions, what logic does that make at all? It seems that there is no rule-based order here, and everything is broken,” he said. When asked about his planned visit to Albania, where he will participate in the sixth summit of the European Political Union, Kobakhidze said that he calls on European leaders to have a “fair attitude” toward Georgia and its people. He also commented on the upcoming local elections in Georgia, which the main opposition parties intend to boycott. Kobakhidze noted that “it will not be a big challenge if the radical opposition still takes part in the elections, since they will be poorly represented in the municipal councils.”