Trump's Three Deals Feed Each Other

On the morning the Ankara NATO summit opened, Iran attacked three oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz ^[1]. The timing was not an aberration in the diplomatic schedule. It was consistent with how every track on that schedule is operating. Trump arrived at Ankara with three bilateral negotiations running — Iran, Ukraine, and NATO burden-sharing — and presents each as a separate effort to resolve a separate conflict. Read together, they form a chain. Each deal's output becomes the next deal's leverage, and the conflicts the deals were announced to end are all still running. The link Trump states most directly runs from Iran to Ukraine. On June 17, he signed a 14-point memorandum with Tehran reopening Hormuz through a 60-day window in which Iran can sell crude ^[2]. The same day, he let a sanctions waiver on Russian oil expire — a waiver that had existed only because the Iran war had threatened global energy supplies ^[3]. With Hormuz open, Trump said reimposing sanctions on Russian oil could now proceed.

Soon we’ll be able to do that because the oil is now flowing. — Donald Trump

The Iran deal's output — restored oil passage — became the Ukraine track's input. Sanctions on Russian oil, untenable while the strait was closed, became available the moment it cleared. Trump told reporters that with the Iran war finished, attention would turn to the Ukraine conflict ^[4]. The Iran memorandum functions as a sequencing device for the next negotiation, not as an end to the Iran conflict itself. That the Ukraine track has not produced a deal does not interrupt the chain. Rubio admitted the Alaska summit with Putin yielded a proposal, not an agreement, and that the gap is unbridgeable: Putin asks for things Ukraine will not give, and Ukraine asks for things Russia will not give up ^[5]. Russia's position remains maximalist — Lavrov has said negotiations cannot be based on Russian weakness, and the Kremlin confirms strikes will continue ^[6]. The NATO 3.0 drawdown of U.S. forces from Europe — cutting fighters from 150 to 100, reassigning a carrier and bomber group to the Indo-Pacific — proceeds on its own logic, driven by what NATO's Supreme Allied Commander called the potential reality of simultaneous conflict in multiple theaters ^[7]. It does not depend on the Ukraine track succeeding. The third link runs from the Iran war back to NATO. Trump escalated his spending demand from 2% of GDP to 5% at Ankara and tied it not to a generic burden-sharing case but to whether allies backed the United States during the Iran conflict.

I was testing people, I was testing to see whether or not they'd be there, because I've long said that we helped them, but I'm not sure that they'd be there for us. — Donald Trump

The 2% demand predates the Iran war — Trump was pressing NATO on that figure as far back as May ^[8]. The escalation to 5% and the justification are Iran-derived ^[9]. Rutte pushed back with data showing $1.2 trillion in increased European and Canadian defense spending since 2017 ^[9]. The spending Trump demands is already being delivered. What changed is the metric — from a fiscal target to a loyalty test. Rubio connected all three tracks in a single statement, naming Iran's nuclear program, NATO burden-shifting, and a durable peace between Russia and Ukraine together ^[10]. The throughline is extraction. The 60-day window in the Iran memorandum is being used to refill U.S. crude stocks that were drawn down to their lowest level since 1983 during the Iran war ^[11][12]. Vance described the MOU as a chance to refill stocks and then see where Iran's hand is ^[13]. Iran's continuing talks under the memorandum are about release of frozen assets, not political reconciliation ^[10]. Both sides take what they can from the framework while it holds. Vance stated the logic explicitly.

If we don’t make the final deal, their nuclear program is still destroyed. They’re still much weaker as a country, so my attitude is America wins either way. — JD Vance

The deal's value, in this framing, is in what has already been extracted — a degraded Iranian military, a destroyed nuclear program — not in what the negotiations might eventually settle. That is why the deal can continue without concluding and still serve its purpose. Both sides maintain military pressure alongside the diplomatic track rather than suspending it. Iran attacked tankers the same day the Ankara summit opened ^[1]. On the Ukraine side, the United States is simultaneously pursuing peace with Putin and providing intelligence for Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian refineries ^[5]. The extraction does not depend on the conflict ending. It works with the conflict continuing at a manageable level, inside a framework both sides can probe. Trump himself framed the Iran deal as conditional rather than settled — if Iran does not behave, he said, he will do what he has to do ^[2] — a posture that keeps the deal alive as leverage rather than closing it as settlement. The method is producing a counter-movement. European leaders are pursuing de-Americanization as a structural response — Macron declared there is no going back on European strategic autonomy, and Canada's Carney warned that if you are not at the table you are on the menu ^[14]. NATO's eastern flank states are accelerating fortifications and raising spending not because Trump persuaded them but because they fear he will abandon Article 5 ^[15]. The chain generates leverage today. It also generates a Europe that will need less of the United States tomorrow, which will reduce the leverage that the chain produces. The question the Ankara summit leaves open is whether the extraction arrangement can run indefinitely or whether it has a terminal condition no one has yet named.