Trump’s Iran Strike and the Revival of the Trump–Putin Deal to Divide the World
Trump’s bombing of Iran is not just another foreign policy move. It is the latest sign of a deeper, longer-standing arrangement between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. The outlines of the deal have been visible for years. Trump helps Putin by undermining Ukraine, weakening NATO, and floating peace plans that amount to surrender. In return, Putin allows Trump to look like a tough guy and also, the space to act in the Middle East without interference. Together, they carve the world into spheres of influence. Trump takes Iran. Putin takes Ukraine. Each gets his zone. And the people caught in the middle are left to suffer.
This marks the end of the post-war security architecture with its commitment to democracy. We now have a shameless return of a worldview that treats smaller countries as bargaining chips and rewards those who seize power by force. It looks like realpolitik, but stripped of discipline, restraint, or even basic strategy. Trump is not a cold planner. He is impulsive and transactional. His actions follow the same logic as the imperial deals of the past.
That logic echoes Henry Kissinger, who built his career on the belief that global peace depended on a balance of power between major states. For Kissinger, morality was a distraction. He believed order could be preserved if the great powers shared power and understood each other’s zones of control. In practice, that meant abandoning countries like Chile, Cambodia, East Timor, and Bangladesh to coups, invasions, or mass killings as long as the broader framework of power remained intact.
Kissinger knew what he was doing. His decisions killed countless civilians. He never denied it. He just didn’t care. That was the bargain. What Trump has done is revive this logic, but without even pretending to understand the history and certainly not the cost.
His strike on Iran is the latest example. It was theater, a show of strength timed for maximum political effect. And it worked exactly the way Putin needed it to. Oil prices are spiking after the bombing. That helps Russia, not Ukraine and not the American people. The Kremlin relies on fossil fuel revenues to keep its war machine running. Trump hit Iran and handed Putin cash.
None of this means the Iranian regime deserves any sympathy. It is a brutal regime, anti democratic, repressive and certainly abusive to women. And Iran has played a direct and deeply destructive role in Russia’s genocidal assault on Ukraine. Iranian Shahed drones have hit apartment buildings, power plants, and emergency responders. They are a core part of Russia’s effort to terrorize civilians and destroy Ukraine’s infrastructure. Iran has blood on its hands.
But Trump’s bombing was not about holding Iran accountable. It did not target the drone factories. It did not disrupt the flow of weapons to Russia. And it certainly did not help the people of Iran, who have been suffering under one of the world’s most repressive governments for decades. If anything, the attack may make things worse. Authoritarian regimes do not typically collapse under pressure. They use it to consolidate control. Bombing Iran gives its leaders a new excuse to crush dissent, blame the West, and tighten their grip. The people of Iran, not the regime, will pay the price.
At the same time, Trump has promised to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours if he returns to the White House. He has said he would force Ukraine to negotiate with Putin. He said Ukraine has no cards and must be realistic. Ukraine must give up territory, accept Russian occupation, and live under the constant threat of renewed invasion. Trump wants to reward genocide.
And now we learn that Ukraine is not on the formal agenda at the upcoming NATO summit. That is part of the same strategy. Keep Ukraine off the table. Move toward normalization with Russia. Prepare the ground for the Trump–Putin deal to take hold. And Ka-Ching! Money to be made from the Trump syndicate/russian mafia deals.
So what we are watching is an overt return of great-power imperialism. Trump didn’t create this system. He simply takes advantage of it. He does not see countries, just leverage. He sees transactions. And he is willing to sacrifice the people of Ukraine and Iran alike if it helps him appear strong and dominate the headlines.
The war in Ukraine drags on. The Iranian regime survives. Oil prices go up. Civilians are trapped between bombs and repression. And the democratic world, once again, begins to retreat.
We’ve seen this world before. Violent. Cynical. Consumed by war. It ended in ruin then, and it will end in ruin again. What we’re witnessing now is a cold, transactional, amoral carve-up of the world, a brutal fulfillment of George Orwell’s warning in 1984: “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face, forever.”