This is so even if the leader of the Free World believes otherwise. It seems the deal is Trump’s Achilles heel, one that readily steps on friends. Opinion.
Dr Anjuli Pandavar is a British writer and social critic who holds a PhD in political economy. She was born into a Muslim family in apartheid South Africa, where she left Islam in 1979. Anjuli is preparing to convert to Judaism. She is one of the staunchest defenders of Israel and a constructive critic of the Jewish state when she believes it is warranted. She owns and writes on Murtadd to Human, where she may be contacted.
Had Adam Kredo but read George Orwell’s essay “Looking back on the Spanish War” before sitting down to write “American Adversaries Meet To ‘Coordinate Their Positions’ on Iran’s Nuclear Program,” in The Washington Free Beacon, he might have recalled the following Orwell insight:
“…Against that …world in which black may be white tomorrow, …there are in reality only two safeguards. One is that however much you deny the truth, the truth goes on existing, as it were, behind your back, and you consequently can’t violate it… The other is that so long as some parts of the earth remain unconquered, the liberal tradition can be kept alive. Let Fascism, or possibly even a combination of several Fascisms, conquer the whole world, and those two conditions no longer exist.” (My emphasis)
This was written in 1943, the kernel of Nineteen Eighty-Four already present here. This “combination of several Fascisms” has been a feature of the global landscape in various forms: since before the start of WWI with Arab intellectuals’ admiration for the “Blut und Eissen” Germans; the Bolsheviks making the German proletariat indispensable to the coming Russian Revolution; Kemal Mustafa serving as the role model for both Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler; Hajj Amin Al-Husseini’s pilgrimage to Berlin via Ankara and Rome; the Communist International; the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact; the Muslim Brotherhood modelling its organisation (though not its ideology) on the Nazis; the Axis Powers; the USSR/”Democratic Peoples Republics”/national liberation fronts/the Western Left; etc.
Since they are all totalitarian, none of them can abide the existence of the others, but suppress their mutual animosity to make common cause against their mutual enemy, the world free of totalitarian dictatorship. Their mutual animosity and their common cause are in dynamic tension, alternating between dominating and submitting to the other, hence, for example, Hitler invading the Soviet Union despite the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, or even within Communism, the Sino-Soviet Split.
This same mutual animosity/common cause exists in a modified form on a larger scale when their common enemy has overwhelming military power and a reputation for using it. A clear instance of this is was when the US under Donald Trump killed ISIS caliph Abubakr al-Baghdadi, leader of the Sunni jihad, in October 2019 and three months later, assassinated IRGC terror mastermind Qassim Soleimani, leader of the Shi’a jihad. Iran was radioactive, pun intended, in that its own allies were reluctant to get too close it for fear of what America might do to them.
The fearsome reputation Trump thus gained amongst all totalitarian regimes went with him into the White House in January 2025, only to immediately be eroded by none other than Donald Trump himself declaring “We want peace” and “We wanna make a deal.” Russia and China could not believe their ears, but were prudent enough to be cautious, after all, Trump and Netanyahu were getting ready to bomb Iran!
And as the months went by, they watched Trump tire of the game of kings and yearn for what he both knows best and does best, making deals. It is astonishing that the shrewd dealmaker extraordinaire could not see that Iran was stringing him along by holding out the carrot of a deal. For as long as they can play Trump, Trump will hold back Netanyahu, “because we’re so close to a deal”. What the US President doesn’t realise is that both Russia and China know exactly what Iran is up to because they do it themselves, all the time. It is how their world works.
Trump could not see Vladimir Putin was playing him for the fool in Ukraine. All that Putin needed to do is “agree to negotiate”. After Iran had tried to assassinate Trump, he started openly talking to them, saying. “They gotta make a deal. They gotta make a deal.” Even an embarrassment like Cyril Ramaphosa was inspired to think he’s got what it takes to hoodwink Trump. How much more so the serious threats like Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Ali Khamenei, who will now all step on the gas.
Americans cannot see it yet, but it is now up to Israel to save them.
This brings us to Adam Kredo’s article “American Adversaries Meet To ‘Coordinate Their Positions’ on Iran’s Nuclear Program.” The point that Kredo misses is that Donald Trump has so eroded his reputation for tough action—oh yes, he took on the Houthis and instead of wiping them out, he made a deal with them! Similarly, instead of allowing Israel to wipe out Hamas, Trump made a deal with them, too.
The deal is Trump’s Achilles heel, one that readily steps on friends.
Iran, supposedly negotiating a nuclear deal with Trump, just combined with the other two “Fascisms,” Russia and China, to signal the weakness of the US President. “The combination of several Fascisms” now feels itself sufficiently emboldened to meet openly and flaunt that they are strategising on how to protect Iran’s nuclear facilities.
What does Donald Trump have to counter this? “A strong document.” Yeah, right. Not like the flimsy piece of paper Neville Chamberlain held up in triumph because it bore Herr Hitler’s signature. This is exactly what happens when you say to your totalitarian adversaries, “We want peace; we want to make a deal,” and you equate an “agreement” with peace, win-win, everybody’s happy, the height of pointlessness to a totalitarian mind.
All three “Fascisms”, Russia, Iran and China, used the Houthis and Hamas, i.e., the Arabs, as their canary in the coal mine. If they survive Trump, we do x; if Trump, with or without Netanyahu, wipes them out, we do y. To Muslims and communists, agreements are not part of peace, they are part of war.
Donald Trump knows what a bad deal is. The question is whether he knows there is no such thing as a good deal with Iran, Russia or China. Even now this combination of Fascisms is working out how to use Trump’s “strong document” to get closer to absolute victory over Western civilisation, in other words, destroy it utterly.
It is interesting to compare the life of Donald Trump to that of Otto von Bismarck, both great empire builders. Neither man’s early life had prepared him for state-building and both had taken on formidable tasks. The former wants to make America great; the latter pursued the same for Prussia. The defining difference between them was that while Trump is a dealmaker, Bismarck was an alliance-builder. Trump does 180s on a whim. It’s the art of the deal. Bismarck made and broke alliances, for sure, but in a long game extending over decades. The point at which Trump decides to settle has nothing to do with whatever he might have discussed with anyone before he joined the negotiating table. Bismarck had to think of who had what interests before he started negotiating, and who might respond how to whatever he decides to settle on.
To be clear, Bismarck’s statecraft was probably a great deal more manipulative than Trump’s dealmaking, yet while the businessman’s mindset escapes many of the pressures and constraints of politics, he lacks the patient multi-level strategising towards a longterm viable goal. It is telling that Trump is unable to pick up the Abraham Accords where he left off, reduced to quietly asking Muhammad bin Salman to join the Accords as a personal favour to him, at least, that’s the rumour.
It is not necessary for Trump to think beyond the deal, and those who depend on him politically, especially in foreign relations, may find him here today and gone tomorrow. It’s just business. Bismarck ended up entirely redrawing the map of Europe, and orchestrated the drawing of the first colonial map of Africa as a necessary adjunct to making Prussia great, despite the extremely modest colonial possessions in it for Prussia. This is not something a dealmaker could have achieved. Trump might well end up making America great again, but at what cost to his allies?
Something else could additionally be at play to account for Trump’s fickle behaviour. Exactly how many separate deals has the Muslim Brotherhood amassed in America, and how much power does it wield through their cumulative effect, including through its agent, Qatar, and its fifth column within NATO, Turkey?
A different pressure, one not in the public eye, might be bearing down on Trump. When Donald Trump admitted on camera that it was “not appropriate” at this time for Israel to destroy an existential threat hanging over her, Trump’s body language was not that of triumph for having tied down Iran, but of shame. There is more to Donald Trump’s evasion than just evading eye contact.
Mitchell Bard, in an article titled “Et tu, Rubio?” in JNS, provides an alarming list of Trump’s actions “undeniably” detrimental to Israel. These include:
- He forced Israel into ceasefires with both Hamas and Hezbollah.
- He has, like former President Biden, micromanaged aspects of Israel’s wars with Hezbollah and Hamas, as when he warned Israel not to target infrastructure in Beirut and delay “Operation Gideon’s Chariots” in Gaza.
- He imposed a 17% tariff on Israeli imports, effectively punishing one of America’s closest allies.
- He eliminated USAID funding for Israel when he dismantled the agency.
- He legitimized negotiations with jihadist enemies of Israel and their supporters—the ISIS leader of Syria, the Islamist president of Turkey, the Hamas-sponsoring Qatari emir, and the Iranian mullahs—while offering Israel nothing in return.
- He initiated direct talks with Hamas, reversing decades of bipartisan American policy that refused to legitimize the terror group.
We agree with Bard that Donald Trump is effectively doing an Obama on Israel, albeit without Obama’s evil intent. Eventually, Israel will have no choice, but to go it alone in dealing with Iran as she sees fit. Strictly speaking, thus has it ever been. The longer Israel waits, the more Trump will harden against any Israeli action at all. As soon a Trump has his precious deal, Action!—unless, of course, the deal includes the US protecting Iran against Israel, exactly where we were with Obama. It is safer for Israel to assume such is indeed the case. This brings us to the link between, “We must defend ourselves by ourselves,” and George Orwell’s “…so long as some parts of the earth remain unconquered, the liberal tradition can be kept alive.”
To remind the reader of Orwell’s insight brought above: “…Against that …world in which black may be white tomorrow, …there are in reality only two safeguards. One is that however much you deny the truth, the truth goes on existing, as it were, behind your back, and you consequently can’t violate it… The other is that so long as some parts of the earth remain unconquered, the liberal tradition can be kept alive. Let Fascism, or possibly even a combination of several Fascisms, conquer the whole world, and those two conditions no longer exist. (My emphasis)
It is civilisation’s survival imperative that Israel defend herself by herself. Israel’s presumption has to be that there is no one who will defend her or come to her aid. Already we live in a “world in which black may be white tomorrow.”
-The Palestinian Arabs attempt a genocide in Israel; the world accuses Israel of genocide of the Palestinian Arabs.
-Israel sends convoys of food into Gaza; the world accuses Israel of starving the Gazans.
-Israel goes above and beyond the requirements of International Law; the ICC issues arrest warrants for war crimes against Israel’s leaders.
This list of denials by counter-accusation is long and a communist speciality. The point is that just because “however much you deny the truth, the truth goes on existing… behind your back, and you consequently can’t violate it,” does not stop the denials. In those parts of the earth already conquered, such as entire generations in most of the free world, those denials become psychological attacks on the people in those parts of the earth that remain unconquered, in this case, Israel.
Only Israel stands between “a combination of several Fascisms conquer[ing] the whole world,” and the obliteration of “those two conditions” by which “the liberal tradition” is preserved. The alternative is “a boot stamping on a human face—forever.” It is an alternative that does not have to come to pass if this unconquered part of the earth recognises her unshakeable allies: everyone that Islam considers “enemies of Allah,” i.e., everyone that Muslims persecute – Christians, Druze, Yazidis, Zoroastrians, Hindus, Buddhists, etc., but especially former Muslims, Israel’s most important and least recognised allies.
Kowtowing to the fickle and appeasing Muslims are not the only ways of avoiding isolation; embracing the steadfast is another.
They’ve been reaching out to you for decades. What have you got to lose?
