Trump Faces Reality on Ukraine and Iran

By Seth Mandel

Wednesday, July 08, 2026

 

Neither Iran nor Russia wants peace. This has been true every single day of the multi-year wars each of them launched unprovoked on their neighbors—Iran on October 7, 2023, and Russia in early 2022.

 

But the length of those wars is significant for the following reason: If you want to believe that Iran and Russia launched these wars over legitimate grievances that have yet to be addressed by the always-somehow-at-fault West, you have been living now for several years in an alternate reality.

 

Which would make today’s spate of news on both fronts massively confusing. To those who have been clear-eyed from the start, however, developments in Ukraine and the Gulf make perfect sense, including the resumption of U.S. strikes on Iran.

 

Iran has been utterly refusing to stop firing on vessels traveling through the shipping lanes in its near abroad, especially the Strait of Hormuz. And it has been unwilling to ditch its desire to establish the strait as a tollway, which would mean Iran gets to hold the global shipping economy hostage in perpetuity while reaping the ransom payments from those using the waterway. In other words, legalized piracy.

 

There is also no indication that Iran would be willing to have the kind of on-site inspections necessary to fully prevent its nuclearization. Finally, Iran is rebuilding its missile capabilities, using the “cease-fire” for explicitly offensive military purposes.

 

In sum, there is no universe in which Iran is even pretending to play ball with the West, despite the fact that President Trump has been willing to be far more generous with Tehran than he has any reason to be.

 

So although Vice President Vance and the “restrainers” in the administration were anticipating being able to blame any breakdown of the cease-fire on Israel, they will have to settle for reality: Iran is the reason war continues. Not only that, but Iran wants to be credited with the resumption of the war. Perhaps its leaders believe this is a show of strength, but whatever the reason, Iran wants the world to know it has chosen violence.

 

Trump seems fine with that. “For me, I think it’s over,” he said of the cease-fire. “They can talk, but I think they’re wasting their time.”

 

Trump also had some choice words for the Iranian leadership: “I don’t want to deal with them anymore. They’re scum. You know what scum is? They’re scum. They’re sick people. They’re led by sick people.”

 

The president seemed desperate for a deal, but Iran keeps reminding the world that it has agency. Not everything that happens is the fault of the U.S. or Israel.

 

Regarding the Russia-Ukraine war, Trump has always been willing to delude himself regarding Vladimir Putin’s intentions while treating Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as the troublemaker of Europe. The restrainers inside and outside the administration tend to take some of Putin’s grander threats at face value. They see almost any improvement in Ukraine’s warfighting abilities as a provocation that could result in nuclear winter.

 

But again and again, reality has intruded. Ukraine improved some of its offensive capabilities on its own, putting Moscow on the defensive. It’s true that Russia has hit back hard, but it has not nuked Europe. Ukrainian battlefield success should therefore not be seen as a danger to the world. Let them fight.

 

Just how much the U.S. specifically, and NATO more generally, should help Ukraine do so is a matter of legitimate debate. But once one shakes off the fear of Ukrainian victory—and let’s be honest, that has absolutely been behind much of the anti-Zelensky punditry, especially earlier in the war—a wider array of options presents itself.

 

Which explains the second Trump shift today. He and Zelensky met on the sidelines of the NATO conference and the president decided to grant Ukraine the license to produce Patriot missiles. “Just a little birdie told me this, about the fact that we’ll give them the right to make Patriots, we’ll show them how to do it,” Trump said. “It’s very complex, actually, but it’s — you’ll figure out the complexity quickly.”

 

This is excellent news. Ukraine has helped the U.S. war effort in Iran by aiding Gulf allies with intercepting Iranian drones. That, in turn, helps Ukraine as well, because the Iranians were supplying Russia with those weapons and anything that weakens Iran weakens Russia’s war machine against Ukraine. This is because the U.S., Israel, and Ukraine are all on the same side of the same war. And that reality can only be ignored until it can’t.