Calling Out Trump’s Iran Surrender Is Not TDS
It’s not derangement if the problems are real.
Garry Kasparov is the chairman of the Renew Democracy Initiative, which publishes The Next Move.
To call the Trump administration’s pending deal with Iran anything other than a surrender—a corrupt bargain—requires having your brain switched off.
I realize that we don’t have the precise terms yet. I’ve read the appeals to reserve judgment.
“Never have so many opined on something currently understood by so few,” Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies admonished on X. “Let’s see the details before rushing to judgment.”
Dubowitz further bemoaned: “My feed is full of TDS [Trump Derangement Syndrome].” (For some measure of balance, he also complained about “Trump Messiah Syndrome” on the right—but, as we’ll see, this isn’t really something you can both-sides.)
I will certainly have more to say once we have the exact details, but the contours of the deal are already taking shape through reports and leaks over the weekend.
Iran will reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and the US will lift its blockade of Iranian ports—confirmation to the Islamic Republic that simply closing a waterway is enough to get the world’s only superpower to cry “uncle.”
The deal could force Israel to end its campaign in Lebanon even as Hezbollah continues to strike Israeli territory.
Vice President JD Vance has also confirmed that Tehran will get access to a $300 billion reconstruction fund if they meet certain conditions after denying the existence of any such fund just days earlier. More on that in a moment.
Make no mistake: This was the US suing for peace with Iran, not the other way around. The Trump administration could not have continued such an unpopular and economically damaging war into the midterm season.
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Even as we await the text of an agreement, we can confidently judge: Any tactical victories in Iran are overshadowed by a massive strategic failure.
How can we know this? We need only look back at the record.
I sharply criticized President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. It gave away far too much without addressing the fundamental issues: the Iranian regime’s support for terrorist proxies, its Islamic fundamentalist ideology, and its oppression of its own people. With Tehran now collaborating with Russia on the slaughter in Ukraine, I feel even more strongly now than I did in 2015 that accommodation with this evil enterprise is not possible.
Yet throughout the JCPOA negotiations, I never doubted that Obama was operating in what he believed to be America’s best interest. Nor did I think that he was seeking to personally enrich himself or his associates in his diplomatic outreach to Tehran. Those are low bars to clear in a democracy, but the US has tragically sunk beneath them.
With Trump, you have to ask whether he’s looking out for his country or whether he’s simply listening to the dictator who flattered him most recently. As I noted back in December, it’s more than curious that Putin is so quick to get in Trump’s ear whenever the US president speaks with Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
And when it comes to Trump, you also have to ask whether any given policy is just a ploy to improve his bottom line. The proposed reconstruction fund should raise alarms for anyone who’s been awake for the past 12 years and has seen how openly this president intermingles his family business with the affairs of government.
That the $300 billion for the fund will come from the Gulf Arab states and not the US is hardly reassuring given presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner’s well-documented ties to the region. We should keep an eye on Eric and Don Jr.’s interests in the fund as well—the elder Trump sons have a stake in a Kazakhstani mining company that just got $1.6 billion in federal backing from Washington.
Donald Trump cannot be judged by the same metrics as any other president because he is so unlike every other president. Some will call this way of looking at things Trump Derangement Syndrome. I call it recognizing reality.
The real derangement is tribalism—many of the same people who confidently (and rightly) criticized the feeble Joe Biden’s indecisiveness on Ukraine are mum when it comes to Trump’s total capitulation on Iran.
Some of Trump’s most belligerent defenders—those most guilty of selective criticism—should revisit Matthew 7:3: “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?”
A special message from the Renew Democracy Initiative: The Renew Democracy Initiative, publisher of The Next Move, is pleased to join the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, publisher of The UnPopulist, as a media partner for the third annual Liberalism for the 21st Century Conference—LibCon 2026—in Washington, DC on July 16 and 17. Click here for more information and to register. Coinciding with America’s 250th anniversary, the theme of the conference is the Reconstruction Agenda. The conference will assess the damage that authoritarian and demagogic politics have caused to the country’s liberal institutions and propose a path forward to rebuild accountability and confidence in the rule of law. The conference features a stellar lineup, including RDI Vice Chair Linda Chavez, along with Francis Fukuyama, Anne Applebaum, David French, Hong Kong dissident Nathan Law and many more. We’ll be there and so should you.
Garry … you missed one key point! Iran said it won’t charge tolls … BUT will charge shipping maintenance fees (which are tolls by another name … SO months of war, billions in munitions, thousands dead) we are worse off than ever before!)
I interviewed you years ago for World Policy Journal which I ran .. you may want to subscribe (even free!) to my SubStack: Andelman Unleashed !
Apparently, you have TDS if you understand trump is a prodigious liar! He proves it every time he squirts something out of that face-anus of his.