The Broken Clock
Joint action against aggressors should always be in fashion
One month into the current round of US and Israeli strikes on Iran, allies seem increasingly determined to do too little to defeat Russia and nothing to defeat Iran. To counteract this unfortunate trend, let’s acknowledge two issues the Trump White House, in spite of itself, has almost got right over the past year.
Trump has done this ‘in spite of itself’ because this administration, when it pushed for higher levels of military spending from NATO allies, did not intend for this to translate into larger commitments to finance Ukraine’s defence needs. After all, key members of Trump’s team — from Vance and Rubio to Witkoff, Kushner and Gabbard — cut off virtually all US military support for Ukraine in a brazen attempt to tilt the military balance in Russia’s favour and help the Kremlin end the war on its terms. This group, which retains considerable if not always decisive influence, continues to see Russia as a ‘geopolitical partner’ or even strategic ally.
The Trump administration have only ‘almost’ got Iran right because the need to counter Iranian aggression in the Middle East and further afield has been clear for decades. Washington’s misguided Iraq war only made the threat posed by Iran more acute. The JCPOA gave Iran virtually a free hand to bolster its axis of resistance.
But now that a sustained military campaign is underway, the current White House seems determined to go about it in the most ham-fisted way imaginable — without a serious plan to keep shipping lanes open or commercial traffic flowing; without enacting maximum economic and political pressure, which was even more richly justified by the January 2026 bloodbath inflicted by the Khomeinist regime on its own people; without engaging allies (apart from Israel) in advance military planning; and without exerting military or economic pressure on Russia, which remains Iran’s primary military and strategic enabler and partner.
In other words, the Trump White House has rightly pushed for more allied defence spending and tougher action against Iran. But they have done so while: (i) wrongly cutting off virtually all US military aid for Ukraine; (ii) engaging politically with aggressor Russia, the main military and strategic partner of aggressor Iran; and (iii) alienating allies — over potential invasions of Greenland and Canada and other issues — that might otherwise have been prepared to help.
It is almost as if the Trump Administration is using its current military campaign against Iran to drive maximum division and dysfunction within NATO.
This would obviously be an outcome Moscow would relish.
But they will probably not see it. Trump, his strategists and Kremlin pals are unlikely to have satisfaction on this divisive score for three reasons. First, the degradation of Iran’s military capabilities is a setback for both Moscow and Beijing. Second, Ukraine’s agility in partnering with Gulf states on counter-drone capabilities only adds to the Kremlin’s strategic discomfort. Third, Ukraine’s destruction of Russia oil export infrastructure on the Baltic and elsewhere means Moscow is unlikely to enjoy any oil price windfall, however long today’s elevated prices last.
Yet the truth remains: spending more on defence and taking strategic action against Iran are the right things to do. Israel has long been engaged in intelligence and military operations to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Since the October 7th, 2023 terrorist attacks, which Iran orchestrated together with Hamas and Russia, Israel has kicked such operations into high gear, over multiple theatres, by targeting the entire axis of resistance and its enablers in Iran.
Allies need to get over themselves to find ways to contribute to the defeat of both Iran and Russia. Those who continue to focus only on one or the other are making major strategic mistakes. It was always unlikely one dictatorship would end its aggression while the other continued to invade, bomb, occupy and wage proxy wars.
Iran and Russia are locked into this cycle of violence together. For well over a decade, Russian and Iranian aggression have not run on separate tracks, or in isolation, but rather in coordinated, integrated and mutually reinforcing phases.
Without higher levels of defence spending, Europe, Canada and Japan would be unable to provide adequate support to Ukraine to compensate for US cuts — or ultimately to defeat Russian aggression, as they must in the end do. Without effective military action against Iran, Israel, the Gulf and other states will face growing threats — including from growing Iranian long-range ballistic missile, drone and nuclear weapons capabilities.
As we have been saying from the start of this campaign, large-scale aggression must no longer go unanswered and military action to curtail Iran’s most threatening offensive military capabilities is both legal and legitimate.
For allies including Canada, this should be a moment to move beyond the reprehensible withdrawal of support from Israel — a nation facing brutal, unrelenting attacks by Iran and its proxies for decades. They should recommit to the principle of collective self-defence to counter large-scale patterns of aggression.
We will have more to say later this week about the insidious narratives still preventing most allied governments and citizens from seeing Iranian aggression for what it is.
