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The Trump administration’s “Iran deal” isn’t just a grant of massive financial resources to the long-sanctioned the Iranian regime — it also signals a plan to grant international legitimacy to one of the most brutal and repressive dictatorships in the world.
Vice President JD Vance is touting his central role in “negotiating” the deal and is standing in for Trump during the ceremony to “celebrate” it. And while the war was a resounding defeat for the United States, Vance’s “peace deal” could be a key step toward implementing his plan to place America in alliance with authoritarian regimes across the globe.
Vance and the “America First” tradition
While Donald Trump has long had a partiality to dictators (and to Vladimir Putin in particular), Vance has transformed that partiality into a foreign policy vision traceable back to the fascism-friendly views of the pre-World War II America First Committee.
America First leader Charles Lindbergh admired the supposed strength of authoritarian leaders like Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, as well as their racism and antisemitism. But openly advocating for the US to join the fascist Axis was not politically viable, particularly once Hitler began World War II by invading much of Europe. So Lindbergh and his compatriots came up with a disingenuous — but popular — alternative message, advocating for a “peace” that actually amounted to a call to allow fascists conquer Europe in peace.
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The America First Committee, however, dissolved almost as soon as Japan attacked Pearl Harbor (and Hitler declared war on the US) in December 1941. Most of its former members preferred to forget their participation in an effort to give aid and comfort to fascism. For decades thereafter, no remotely mainstream politician would have contemplated adopting “America First” as a political calling card — until Donald Trump.
But while Trump has little interest in the ideology and rhetoric underlying 20th century isolationism, Vance has long had a deep interest in reviving and updating it, particularly the advocacy for a kind of “peace” that just happens to aid authoritarian regimes in conducting expansionist wars unimpeded.
Vance began to unveil his authoritarian vision a few years ago, soon after renouncing his past as a “never Trumper” and beginning a political career underwritten by right-wing billionaire Peter Thiel.
As a newly Trumped candidate for Senate in Ohio in 2022, Vance mouthed many “standard” Republican foreign policy lines, including support for Israel and for Taiwan’s independence. But in a state with a sizable population of Ukrainian and Polish Americans who hold no candle for Russian imperialism, Vance made little effort to hide his desire to see Putin prevail in his brutal war of conquest against Ukraine.
After entering the Senate, Vance made his partiality for Putin’s Russia even more clear. In a 2024 op-ed, he declared he was “opposed to virtually any proposal for the United States to continue funding this war.”