OP-ED: Trump vs. Iran — When the Nuclear Issue Steals the Spotlight from the Ukraine Negotiations

A Circle Too Small for Two Simultaneous Crises

Steve Witkoff, Trump’s envoy to the Middle East, is also the main intermediary with Moscow. His latest visit to the Russian capital ended without a documented agreement—the meetings took place without American note-takers or translators, according to RFE/RL. This unusual practice had consequences: Putin was able to interpret Witkoff’s positions as more accommodating than what Washington officially confirmed. Secretary of State Marco Rubio had to publicly deny on June 26 that the Alaska summit had produced an agreement—“There was a proposal, not an agreement,” he stated—thus refuting the Russian interpretation that Lavrov was promoting as the “spirit of Anchorage.”

These missteps are not mere bureaucratic details. They reflect the structural instability of diplomacy conducted by a small circle of intermediaries without a solid institutional framework. When that circle is absorbed by the Iranian issue, the Ukrainian issue no longer has an active advocate in Washington. And Ukraine knows this. That is why Zelensky is stepping up direct contacts with European allies—because the American channel is overloaded and unpredictable.

The White House and Kyiv: A Facade of Alignment

According to RFE/RL, the White House and Kyiv are now reportedly aligned on a “freeze-in-place” ceasefire—a freeze of the front lines without any withdrawal of forces. This represents a genuine convergence on form. But the substance remains unresolved: what security guarantees for Ukraine? What is the timeline for its NATO membership? What mechanism will verify the ceasefire? These questions remain unanswered as long as U.S. intermediaries are busy negotiating fuel supplies in the Strait of Hormuz.

“Freeze-in-place”: two words that sound like a solution but which, in reality, may be paving the way for the next war. If the front lines are frozen without guarantees, it is merely a pause. Putin knows how to read pauses. He used them in 2014–2022 to rearm.

What Does “Finishing the Job” Really Mean?

The phrase “finish the job,” which is circulating in discussions at the Pentagon and the White House according to the WSJ, is deliberately vague. It could mean destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities. It could mean regime change. It could simply mean forcing Tehran to sign a binding agreement under maximum military pressure. Trump has not specified. And this vagueness is itself a diplomatic weapon: the ambiguity keeps Iran under pressure without committing Washington to an irreversible course of action.

But Ukraine is watching this spectacle with understandable anxiety. If Trump ultimately chooses to “finish the job” with Iran, U.S. military resources—ammunition, precision-strike capabilities, naval presence—would be mobilized in the Persian Gulf, not in Eastern Europe. Arms deliveries, security guarantees, and pressure on Moscow would take a back seat. Geostrategic calculations leave no room for two major simultaneous wars—even for the world’s leading military power.

China, an Interested Spectator

China is watching all this with the attention of a chess player who calculates six moves ahead. It supplies Russia with electronic components and machine tools that fuel the Russian war industry—without ever crossing the threshold of direct lethal weapons, in order to preserve its trade relations with the West. It monitors America’s distraction in the Middle East as an indicator of Washington’s readiness for a potential conflict in Taiwan. Every month that Trump is absorbed by Iran is a month in which Beijing gauges America’s capacity to respond to a simultaneous crisis in the Pacific.

China is playing out all three conflicts at once—Russia, Iran, and Taiwan—without triggering any of them itself. It is a masterpiece of proxy strategy. And the West, always in reactive mode, allows itself to be guided by its adversaries’ agenda rather than its own.

The Silence of the American Media

Between June 26—when Rubio denied Russian claims regarding the Alaska agreement—and July 1—when the WSJ revealed the anti-Iran military briefings—there were no significant announcements from Washington regarding Ukraine. No new aid package. No date for a visit by Witkoff to Moscow. No commitment on security guarantees. This silence is not neutral. For Putin, it is an implicit permission to continue. For Kyiv, it is confirmation that the U.S. agenda lies elsewhere.

The Kremlin, for its part, has fully grasped the dynamics. The strategy of invoking the “spirit of Anchorage”—claiming that an agreement existed even as Rubio denies any such agreement—is specifically aimed at exploiting U.S. diplomatic inconsistency. If Washington is internally divided over what happened in Alaska, how can it present a united front against Moscow? Putin reads the cracks. He widens them. That is his art.

Europe as a Substitute for the U.S.

Faced with reduced U.S. availability, Europe has stepped up its commitments. The EU’s 90-billion-euro loan, the 3.9 billion disbursed on June 30, the Gripen contract with Sweden—all these decisions were made independently of the United States. This is not an Atlantic divorce: it is an adaptation. Europe understands that it must be capable of acting even when Washington looks the other way. The question is whether this capacity to step in is sufficient to compensate for the reduction in direct U.S. engagement.

I see Europe’s accelerated efforts as both positive and troubling. Positive because Europe is finally taking responsibility. Troubling because this assumption of responsibility was necessary, which means the United States was already no longer reliable as a sole partner. It is a bittersweet victory.

Tehran supplies the drones; Tehran distracts Washington

Iran is playing a dual role in this war. On the one hand, it is supplying Russia with Shahed drones that strike Ukrainian cities every night. On the other, it is monopolizing U.S. attention in the Gulf, reducing the diplomatic bandwidth available for Ukraine. This dual benefit for Moscow is no accident. The Russia-Iran relationship is an alliance of convenience based on a shared logic: to weaken Western primacy by any means available, including by multiplying simultaneous crisis hotspots.

The question of whether Trump will “finish the job” with Iran is therefore also a Ukrainian issue. If Iran’s nuclear program is neutralized, pressure on drone supplies to Russia will increase. If Iran is weakened as a strategic supplier, Putin loses a link in his military supply chain. But the path to achieving that—a full-scale war in the Gulf—would have devastating effects on U.S. readiness to support Ukraine.

The Trump Paradox

Donald Trump is the West’s “necessary evil”: unpredictable enough to worry Putin, nationalistic enough to irritate allies, and pragmatic enough to sometimes make the right choices. On Iran, he has, for now, made the right choice—preserving diplomacy rather than plunging into a costly war. But this choice comes at an indirect cost to Ukraine: prolonging diplomatic uncertainty and delaying engagement with Moscow. There is no simple solution to this paradox. Such is the reality of U.S. foreign policy under a president who improvises.

I’ve written this elsewhere and I’ll say it again: Trump is not a reliable ally, but neither is he an enemy of Ukraine. He’s something more uncomfortable—a partner whose priorities can shift from one week to the next depending on what happened at Mar-a-Lago. Ukraine must build a strategy around this uncertainty, not hope for its resolution.

Reading the Signals, Exploiting the Divisions

Vladimir Putin has a quality that his opponents consistently underestimate: he reads American institutional signals with a precision that many Western analysts lack. The debate between Rubio and Lavrov over the Alaska Treaty, Trump’s meetings with Hegseth on Iran, the delay in Witkoff’s visit to Moscow—Putin deciphers all of this like a political weather report. And what he sees, as of July 1, 2026, is an overburdened U.S. administration, divided on its priorities, and lacking robust diplomatic procedures. It is the ideal moment to test the limits.

The Russian “spirit of Anchorage” strategy—invoking a fictitious agreement to create a narrative reality—is characteristic of this modus operandi. If Lavrov can convince even a minority of Western commentators that an agreement was indeed reached, he weakens the U.S. position in any future negotiations. Putin is not seeking peace in July 2026. He is seeking favorable conditions for the peace he will later seek to impose. And every week that Washington is distracted by Iran is one more week to build those conditions.

Calculating Russian Losses Amid American Distraction

Russian losses continue to be massive—Ukrainian and Western figures, even accounting for the biases inherent in wartime reporting, point to unprecedented human and material losses in a modern conflict. But Putin has demonstrated since 2022 that he is willing to accept losses that Western democracies could never politically justify. While Washington debates Iran, and while European allies adjust their budgets, Moscow is sending waves of infantry and thousands of drones into Ukrainian cities. This is not a strategy for victory—it is a strategy of attrition. And attrition takes time. The U.S. diplomatic disarray is giving him that time.

I am not a militarist. But there is something morally indecent about the fact that Putin can afford to send waves of people to their deaths because he has calculated that our democracies will grow weary before his armies collapse. This inhuman arithmetic must be invalidated—by force, by sanctions, by economic deterrence. Not by patience.

A Date That Will Shape the Coming Weeks

August 18, 2026, is the deadline for the ceasefire between the United States and Iran. Whatever the outcome—an extension of negotiations, an agreement, or a breakdown—this date will shape the weeks leading up to it. If talks intensify in August, Witkoff and the U.S. intermediaries will be fully absorbed by this issue, further delaying contacts with Moscow. If they collapse, a U.S.-Iran crisis will immediately overshadow all other issues. In either case, Ukraine waits.

This dependence on the timeline is deeply problematic. It means that Ukraine’s diplomatic trajectory is tied to an issue it does not control, led by actors with other priorities, in a format where Kyiv has no seat at the table. Deputy Prime Minister Stefanishyna and her European counterparts are aware of this. That is why they are developing alternatives—the Ukraine Support Loan, the Gripen contract, and the SABER Act—to act independently of the U.S.-Iran timeline.

The Positive Signs That Remain

Analytical honesty requires noting that not all signals are negative. Trump has, for now, chosen diplomacy with Iran over war—a decision that conserves U.S. resources. The White House and Kyiv are aligned on the principle of a ceasefire based on the current lines. Rubio has publicly defended the Ukrainian position against Russian claims regarding the so-called Alaska Agreement. These signals indicate that the Trump administration, despite its unpredictability, has not abandoned Ukraine to its fate. But “not abandoned” and “fully engaged” are two very different states of affairs on a battlefield.

I prefer to end on this nuance rather than with an absolute condemnation. Trump is not Putin. The West is not indifferent to Ukraine. But the space between “not abandoned” and “sufficiently committed to win” is a space where people are dying. It is that space that this essay sought to measure.

What This Essay Cannot Conclude

I cannot predict whether Trump will “finish the job” with Iran. I cannot know whether the diplomatic window on August 18 will hold or collapse. I cannot confirm that Witkoff will travel to Moscow in July or October. What I can say, based on the sources available as of July 1, 2026, is this: an administration with limited diplomatic resources managing two major crises simultaneously creates competition between the two issues. And in this competition, Ukraine is not always at the forefront.

The real risk is not that Trump will betray Ukraine. The real risk is that he will neglect it—out of distraction, burnout, or competing priorities. Neglect in diplomacy feels like betrayal to those who suffer the consequences. And it is Ukraine that is experiencing those consequences—under missile fire, in the trenches, and at emergency meetings in Brussels where euros are used to make up for the guarantees Washington no longer provides.

The Lesson for the West

The real lesson from this Iranian situation is structural: the West can no longer afford a geopolitical strategy that depends on a single man in Washington. Not because that man is bad—but because the world is too complex for a single U.S. administration to manage all its crises at the same time. Europe must build its own diplomatic, military, and economic capacity for Ukraine, independent of U.S. election cycles. This is no longer just wishful thinking—it is a necessity that July 2026 makes abundantly clear.

I conclude this essay with an uncomfortable conviction: Ukraine’s future depends less on what Trump decides regarding Iran than on what Europe decides for itself. This is the bad news for those who are waiting for Washington. It is the good news for those who still believe in a sovereign Europe.

What I Assume and What I Don’t Know

What I Assume and What I Do Not Know

I take a pro-Ukrainian and pro-Western stance. I believe that Ukraine’s defeat would be a catastrophe for global democracy. But this essay also forces me to acknowledge the limits of my knowledge. The details of the skirmishes in the Strait of Hormuz on June 28–29 are not fully documented in open sources. The precise content of Trump’s briefings with Hegseth and Caine remains confidential—the WSJ cites anonymous sources. Witkoff’s actual intentions regarding his upcoming visit to Moscow are not publicly known.

My assertions are based on verifiable sources: the WSJ, Axios, RFE/RL, and NewsUkraine. When I offer an interpretation, I clearly label it as such. And when I don’t know something, I prefer to admit it rather than fill in the gaps with rhetoric.

Resisting Simplification

Political essays tend to identify clear-cut culprits and innocent victims. The reality of July 2026 is more murky. Trump is neither a hero nor a traitor on the Ukraine issue—he is a U.S. president with twenty urgent issues on his desk and an instinct for the immediate balance of power. Iran is not a one-dimensional actor—it is a state seeking to survive in a hostile environment using the tools at its disposal. And Ukraine is not simply a victim—it is a sovereign actor building its own doctrine of resistance with increasing sophistication.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist