JD Vance's axis of authoritarianism
His work on behalf of brutal regimes didn't start with Iran.
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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.
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.”
In addition to bolstering Trump’s pro-Putinism, Vance began hinting that he foresaw a future détente with a key Russian ally — the theocratic Iranian regime.
Putin and Iran’s Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, had worked together to mass murder and gas the people of Syria in a vain effort to keep Bashar al-Assad in power, and Putin relied on Iran for drone technology in his murderous assault on Ukraine. Iran’s blood-drenched alliance with Putin apparently induced Vance to develop a soft spot for the Islamist dictatorship, leading to what seemed for a time to be something of a divergence from Trump.
Trump had long demonized Iran, targeted its leaders for assassination, and derided President Obama’s nuclear deal, which he ripped up in 2018. While Vance mouthed some of the same rhetoric, be began going out of his way to indicate a desire to limit American conflict with Iran.
In 2023, for instance, Vance said he would oppose a congressional authorization of use of force against Iran, despite the fact that was not actually even on the table. And after Trump named Vance as his running mate in 2024, the senator declared that the US and Israel had “distinct interests” where Iran was concerned.
“Our interest, I think very much, is in not going to war with Iran,” Vance said, linking American opponents of Iran with opponents of Putin’s War on Russia, each of whom Vance described as “militaristic” — in contrast with Vance’s own claimed desire for “peace.”
Putin’s man in the White House
In February 2025, Vance made clear he intended to be the administration’s lead Putinist by demanding that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s publicly say “thank you” to Trump during a White House visit.
Vance went on to be a key proponent of the shambolic effort, led by Trump pal and Kremlin habitué Steve Witkoff, to coerce Ukraine into accepting “peace” terms that were literally written by Russia and would have left the country wide open to being fully conquered.
The vice president also advocated for a radical reformulation of US foreign policy directed at building new alliances with authoritarian regimes. A December 2025 “National Security Strategy” bearing Vance’s fingerprints declared America’s longtime Western European allies were now adversaries and that the US would focus on “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory.”
The Vanceist policy blueprint implied Trumpers would support neo-fascist parties as part of a scheme to undermine democratic governments in Europe. Just this week, “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth announced that he’s considering pulling US troops out of Europe as part of his contribution to Vance’s goal of undermining NATO and the Western alliance it represents.
But while Vance’s vision of trying to place the US at the center of a new partnership of dictatorships has gained traction in the White House, the forces of democracy have begun demonstrating a frustrating resilience.
Despite assiduous campaigning by Vance and Musk, the neo-fascist AfD party suffered a defeat in German elections last year. More deflatingly, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, whose assaults on higher education and immigrants were a model for the MAGA movement — and who served as Putin’s bulwark against support for Ukraine by the European Union — suffered a decisive electoral defeat this year.
In the meantime, despite Vance and Trump’s best efforts to engineer a Putin victory in Ukraine, that nation — with support from Trumpers’ newly declared adversaries, the democratic nations of Western and Central Europe — has had remarkable success not only in defending itself on the frontline and imposing punishing losses on Russian forces, but also in striking key Russian sites in Moscow and beyond.
Vance’s bold vision of a new authoritarian world, with the US at its center, has therefore recently seemed to be imperiled. But then came Trump’s defeat in his Iran war, and what could, surprisingly, prove to be Vance’s boldest pro-authoritarian move yet.
Making the most of a humiliating loss
When, in February, Trump followed up last year’s the US/Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities with a full-scale illegal war against Iran, it initially looked like yet another major defeat for Vanceism. But when Trump was forced into an ignominious surrender, Vance seized the opportunity to play a lead role in directly negotiating the terms of the “peace deal.”
Under the Vance-negotiated deal, Trump offered Iran’s rulers something their authoritarian regime has not been able to achieve in the decades since they embraced international terrorism and partnerships with rogue regimes and proxies across the Middle East and the world: the prospect of regime legitimacy, and with it the full integration of Iran into international markets and institutions.
That, of course, is the same goal Vance has been, unsuccessfully so far, seeking to achieve in Europe by making Putin and his authoritarian ilk into US allies.
Now, suddenly, out of a humiliating American defeat, Vance has managed to take a step that could revive his goal of partnering the United States with the most amoral and violent of dictatorships, and of making terror states like Russia legitimate again.
This week, Vance told the New York Times that Iran’s theocrats are suddenly “coalescing” around a desire for “peace” and suggested they may be on the verge of “transforming” the way they interact with the United States and their neighbors.
In reality, of course, there little evidence of any such transformation in the Iranian dictatorship, or that it is in the offing. Rather, it is Vance who wants to transform the policies of the US government by moving toward alliances with extremist regimes.
Many things will have to cut in Vance’s favor to realize his goal of creating an axis of authoritarianism encompassing Iran and Russia. And there are many reasons to be skeptical about the prospect.
Among other things, the Iranian theocracy is even more unpopular in the United States than is Putin’s Russian regime. And Congress — and, ultimately, the American people in upcoming elections — will have some say on whether Vance gets his way and renders Iran and Russia into US allies.
Furthermore, given that the Iranian dictatorship (as well as its agglomeration of terrorist proxies) are systemically devoted to the use of nihilistic violence, it is more than possible that their own actions could (literally) blow up the deal (as could Trump’s always erratic conduct). At the same time, Putin’s increasingly failed bloody war of conquest in Europe makes Vance’s vision of a US partnership with Russia difficult to implement.
It is questionable whether Vance can build a successful campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, let alone win the White House, on a platform of establishing US alliances with some of the most repugnant authoritarian regimes in the world. But the fact that the leading prospect for the Republican nomination is pursuing such a course should terrify every American, as well as the rest of the world.
That’s it for today
We’ll be back this afternoon with a new episode of the PN Pod (featuring co-cost Paul Waldman), and then tomorrow with a special Saturday edition of the newsletter.
Thanks for reading, and for your support.
Vance isn't an opportunist who stumbled into authoritarianism…he's an ideologue who chose it deliberately, with a coherent (if repugnant) worldview underneath.
That's actually more dangerous than Trump, who just wants mirrors and money. Vance wants to rewire the international order around a simple thesis: liberal democracy is weak, strongmen are stable, and America should pick the winning side.
The Iran deal isn't a contradiction of his anti-Iran posturing, it's the proof of concept. Humiliating defeat repackaged as diplomatic triumph, terror state legitimized, and the Lindbergh playbook updated for the podcast era.
What's missing from this piece is the harder question: who stops him? Not the Republican Party. Not a Democratic opposition that still can't articulate what it's for.
The only things that have actually checked Vance's vision so far are Ukrainian soldiers and German voters, neither of which he controls yet.
It’s up to the rest of the world to tell this freak where he can shove his authoritarian vision.
Johan
The five alarm fire just escalated into a towering inferno. I watched that bizarre press conference. I agree entirely with Johan. Vance is the real danger. Trump was a tool, one who’s obviously close to his expiry date. Impeach that bastard now. We cannot let the Christian nationalists marry us to the most feared theocracy in the world. That was my takeaway from his nonsensical press conference.
We are so screwed by these corrupt evil asshats and their dumbass followers. Trump had always said the quiet part out loud. He loves stupid people. Now we know why… and it’s not because it makes him feel like the smartest guy in the room.🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🤬🤬🤬