At the recent NATO summit in Ankara, U.S. President Donald Trump did not merely flatter Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. He opened the door to lifting sanctions on Turkey and selling it F-35 fighter jets.
It was presented as diplomacy. It looked more like strategic amnesia.
The F-35 is not a ceremonial gift to be placed before an ally as a token of affection. It is one of the crown jewels of Western air power, a stealth aircraft built upon the sensitive architecture of American military superiority. Turkey was removed from the F-35 program because it purchased Russia’s S-400 air-defense system, a decision Washington recognized as a direct threat to the aircraft and to alliance security. The West could not place its most advanced weapons within reach of Moscow’s machinery.
The question is whether or not Erdoğan’s Turkey has earned its way back into the program. Has Ankara disposed of the S-400? Has it ended its hostility to Israel? Has it severed its embrace of Hamas? The answer is no.
Turkey today is not merely a difficult NATO ally. Under Erdoğan, it has become an ally in name only. Erdoğan has refused to call Hamas what it is. He has hosted Hamas figures. He has built political capital by standing not with the victims of Oct. 7, but with the movement that turned Jewish homes into slaughterhouses, Jewish children into hostages and Israeli villages into fields of ash.
A government that supports Hamas cannot be treated as though it is simply waiting for an overdue weapons shipment. NATO membership cannot launder anti-Western conduct. Alliance paperwork cannot wash blood from the hands of those who embrace the men who spill it.
Trump’s approach to Iran is equally misguided. He once understood the regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) with moral precision. Indeed, his own administration rightly designated the IRGC a foreign terrorist organization.
The IRGC has not changed its ways. It still sits at the center of Iran’s terror architecture. It still uses front companies and oil networks to generate revenue. It still turns money into weapons, repression and proxy war. When cash flows into the Islamic Republic, it flows into a revolutionary machine built to export fear.
Thus, Trump’s framework deal with Iran should have shocked every serious observer: sanctions relief, access to frozen assets, oil-sales waivers and talk of a massive reconstruction fund, while the hardest nuclear questions are postponed for future negotiation. That is not the architecture of Iranian surrender. It is the architecture of Western self-deception. It pays the regime before dismantling the threat.
This is the pattern now unfolding before us. Erdoğan receives warmth while Israel sounds the alarm. Turkey is welcomed back to the F-35 conversation while the S-400 shadow remains. Iran is offered pathways towards financial relief while the IRGC remains embedded. The men who arm terror are not being broken. They are being courted.
This is not realism. Realism begins with seeing the world as it is. Erdoğan is not made trustworthy by a NATO nameplate. Iran is not made moderate by a negotiating table. Hamas is not made legitimate by Turkish hospitality. The IRGC is not made less murderous because diplomats place conditions on the money.
For Israel, this is not theory. It is within the blast radius of Western indulgence. It is Israel that will face the emboldened proxy, the strengthened autocrat, the shifted balance of power and the terror network replenished by funds that diplomats insist will buy quiet. It is Israel that will be told to show restraint after others have placed weapons in the hands raised against it.
A true ally does not hand leverage to Erdoğan. A true ally does not send cash to Tehran while the IRGC remains intact. A true ally does not reward the arsonists and then ask the fireman to be grateful for the hose.
America once understood that civilization survives by making distinctions. It knew the difference between an ally, an adversary and an ally in name only. It knew that weapons have meaning, that money has consequences and that evil does not become tame because powerful men flatter themselves into believing they can manage it.
The free world does not fall only when enemies march across its borders. It also falls when leaders reward the men sharpening knives behind the curtain. Trump has not abandoned Israel with one speech. He has endangered Israel through indulgence of the wrong men.
If America continues offering concessions before its enemies surrender, it will not be buying peace. It will be financing the next war.
