On Wednesday, President Donald Trump defended Iran’s ballistic missiles as “self-defense;” floated Space Force monitoring of Iranian uranium, should extraction prove “impossible,” as a solution; and dismissed skeptics of his Iran memorandum as “losers” too blind to recognize his “genius.”
Vice President JD Vance supplied the doctrine the next day. Trump, he said, was the “only world leader still sympathetic to Israel.” Then he warned Jerusalem to “respect this peace process,” halt strikes in Beirut, and not “go wild in Lebanon,” even as Hezbollah keeps firing. Vance placed Iran’s missiles and Israel’s self-defense on the same moral plane and told Israeli critics to “wake up.”
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That was not reassurance. It was a surrealist dress.
TRUMP’S CRUCIBLE COMES IN 60 DAYS
Vance’s stances have made clear that support for Israel is no longer a strategic assumption but a favor dispensed by a transactional “America First” faction that treats allies as liabilities and enemies as partners. Given his admiration for New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, no one should assume a future Vance presidency would make pro-Israel policy its default. The chatterboxes on The View celebrate him precisely because he poses zero threat to the progressives’ agenda; he is the perfect, intellectually hollow front man keeping the Democrats’ disastrous foreign policy on life support.
The U.S.-Iran memorandum compounds the insult. It funnels $344 billion in sanctions relief, asset releases, investments, and unlocked energy value to Iran: about $24 billion through Qatar, another $20 billion through UAE channels, and a $300 billion redevelopment fund. Israel was not at the table; however, it is ordered to accept a framework that leaves Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran’s regional aspirations intact.
The United States provides Israel $3.8 billion a year in military aid, plus more than $21 billion since Oct. 7, 2023. Yet aid now comes with political shackles. Weapons meant to help Israel crush Iranian proxies have become leverage to make Jerusalem swallow Washington’s betrayal.
Vance’s isolationism in combat boots traded Rubio’s freedom instinct for Tucker Carlson’s Jordan River spiritual gush in a Muslim country with four times fewer Christians than Israel. The New GOP once mocked foreign entanglements. Now it excuses Tehran and treats Israeli self-defense as the crisis.
Beijing will not miss the signal. After Trump’s “Islamabad surrender,” as Middle East Forum’s Executive Director Gregg Roman rightly called it, and his recent criticism of Taiwan, China sees the pattern: block the Taiwan Strait tomorrow and watch Washington rationalize inaction. A Taiwan “Hormuz 2.0” could cost the world up to $10 trillion in one year. This memorandum tells America’s enemies that U.S. deterrence is negotiable.
Trump, echoing Vance’s criticism of Israel, has made fringe attacks respectable. That is why some Turning Point USA voices now accuse Jerusalem of “genocide” in Gaza — and why the international media will soon massively demand Israel quit southern Lebanon before Hezbollah is disarmed.
Same Gaza script: tie Israel’s hands, spare the terrorists, sell retreat as peace; in other words, cyanide with media polish.
Congress should answer with an iron law: no sanctions relief or asset releases without verified dismantlement of Iran’s long-range missiles and the defunding of its proxies; no aid conditioned on Israeli passivity; and a full investigation into Qatari influence and their “economic incentives.”
TRUMP’S IRAN AGREEMENT AND THE MIDDLE EAST’S UNTHINKABLE NEXT STEP
Israel must expand domestic munitions production, deepen co-development with India, diversify suppliers, enlarge war reserves, and revive the Periphery Doctrine through Greece, Cyprus, African and Eastern European partners, and Abraham Accords channels. Dependence on one capital is existentially dangerous.
Vance got the danger right: the problem is not Iranian violations; the real threat is this memorandum surviving the midterm elections and becoming the new baseline for Republican foreign policy.
Jose Lev Alvarez is an American–Israeli scholar specializing in international security policy. A multilingual veteran of the IDF special forces and the U.S. Army, he holds three master’s degrees, a medical degree, and is completing a Ph.D. in Intelligence and Global Security in the Washington, D.C., area.
