The mission of Issues in Perspective is to provide thoughtful, historical and biblically-centered perspectives on current ethical and cultural issues.

In the new world order emerging in the 21st century, Russia and Iran will continue to play a leading role. It is important to step back and reflect on these two pariah nations. Each one has the potential to bring the world into a larger conflict with devasting consequences. Furthermoe, as the Republican Party deals with these pariah nations during the administration of Donald Trump, there is evidence that the Party is shifting from a pro-Israel stance to an anti-Israel one.

First, Russia: The year has started badly for Vladimir Putin, argues historian Amy Knight. The war in Ukraine has lasted “as long as the Great Patriotic War, as Moscow refers to the Soviet involvement in World War II: 1,418 days. Stalin’s forces made it to Berlin in that time, but Mr. Putin’s progress has been more modest. Last year Russian troops captured less than 1% of Ukrainian territory. At this pace, it will take Russia another year to reach the Donetsk border and control the area Mr. Putin is demanding Ukraine hand over as a precondition for peace.”  Putin has experienced several other embarrassments:

• The U.S. military’s swift capture of Venezuela’s dictator Nicolás Maduro and his wife on Jan. 3 further highlighted Russia’s military weakness. As Russian political analyst Abbas Gallyamov observed: “The brilliant success of the Americans, who showed with Venezuela what a ‘special military operation’ really should look like, further demoralizes the inhabitants of Russia—both ordinary people and the elite. The contrast between the highest efficiency of the U.S. military and intelligence services and the striking inefficiency of their Russian colleagues is simply too stark.” That Mr. Maduro was a crucial ally of the Kremlin made it worse.
• Another embarrassment for Mr. Putin came [in January], when the U.S. seized an oil tanker south of Iceland that was escorted by the Russian navy. Pro-war Russian social media whose posts reach millions voiced outrage. “Your ships are seized,” one blogger wrote, “and in response to these slaps in the face you only express concern, instead of tearing out the enemy’s liver.”
• The war in Ukraine has been costly. From early 2025 to mid-October, according to the Economist, at least 100,000 Russian soldiers have died. The front line has been replaced by a “kill zone” where drones destroy up to 80% of equipment and manpower on both sides. Russia’s total military spending in 2025 has been estimated at 15.5 trillion rubles—in nominal terms, five times that of 2021. That doesn’t include the cost of maintaining the Ukrainian territories Russia has occupied or payments to soldiers and their families. In November 2025, oil and gas revenue had fallen 34% from the previous year. To plug a record 2025 budget deficit (expected to be $72 billion, or 2.6% of gross domestic product) and fund the war effort, Russia’s value-added tax on goods and services rose on Jan. 1 from 20% to 22%.
• A poll by the Levada Center shows that Russian public opinion on the war has shifted significantly. In December 2024, 37% thought the war should continue, and 54% wanted peace talks to begin; a year later, only 25% favored a continuation of the conflict and 67% wanted peace negotiations to begin.

For Putin to continue his brutal war against Ukraine, he will be asking his people to bear an increasingly heavy burden. Can he continue this costly adventure rooted in his perverse vision of Russia’s role in the new order? This is one of the penetrating questions of 2026.

Second is Iran: Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the regime has had a singular obsession with Jews. As columnist Bret Stephens observes, “The foundational political text of the regime, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s “Governance of the Jurist,” is shot through with antisemitism. As in: ‘From the very beginning, the historical movement of Islam has had to contend with the Jews, for it was they who first established anti-Islamic propaganda.’ Iran’s current leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is an avowed Holocaust denier. Though Iran officially tolerates its dwindling Jewish community, the vast majority of Iranian Jews have fled the country, often under perilous circumstances.”

• The regime also spent decades assembling the elements needed to build a nuclear weapon. One motivation was deterrence and self-defense. Another was given away by this chilling cost-benefit analysis from Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president, in a 2001 speech: “The use of one atomic bomb in Israel leaves nothing left, but in the Islamic world, there will only be damage.”
• “All this might at least be intelligible if Iran and Israel had ancient grievances or territorial disputes. There are none. Iran was among the first predominantly Muslim states to de facto recognize Israel, and Jerusalem and Tehran maintained close ties while the Shah was in power. Even today, ordinary Iranians themselves are markedly less antisemitic than people in other Middle Eastern states, according to surveys published by the Anti-Defamation League. The current regime’s obsession is purely a function of Islamist ideology, not national interest.”
• For years, the cruelty of the policy was disguised by its apparent success, as Iranian proxies entrenched themselves across the Middle East and built a so-called ring of fire around the Jewish state. But after the attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, Israel systematically dismantled that ring in the Gaza Strip, Beirut, Damascus, Syria, Sanaa, Yemen, and ultimately Tehran, “whose skies the Israeli air force dominated throughout a 12-day war in June. At a stroke, it turned decades of Iranian investment in its efforts to destroy Israel to rubble and ash. It exposed to the Iranian people the regime’s military incompetence and helplessness. And it reminded Iranians that there’s a different path for Muslim states–like the United Arab Emirates, they can be moderate, prosperous, at peace with Israel and just across the Persian Gulf.”

There is “a broader lesson here in an era when anti-Jewish politics are gaining broad purchase. Antisemitism is wicked for many reasons, but it’s also wickedly dumb: for fostering a mindset of lurid conspiracy theories; for seeking scapegoats for national failures rather than taking responsibility; for stigmatizing and suppressing a productive and educated minority. Societies that have expelled or persecuted their Jewish communities, from Spain to Russia to the Arab world, were all destined for long-term decline. The same has been true for modern-day Iran.” This is precisely what God declare din genesis 12:3!

Finally, Jonathan Mahler makes an astounding prediction: “When historians look back on President Trump’s second term, they may see it as the pinnacle of the Republican Party’s enduring support for Israel. They may also see it as the moment when the partnership undergirding this support—between evangelical Christians and the Republican foreign-policy establishment—began to unravel.” Why does he argue this?

• Inside the Republican Party, something seems to be shifting. A recent Manhattan Institute survey of Republicans nationwide found that a majority of the party’s longstanding voters remain firmly pro-Israel, but that a “sizable minority” of new Republican voters — younger, more diverse and more likely to have voted for Democrats in the past — are more critical of the Jewish state. Often, their sentiments are darker than mere criticism. The Manhattan Institute’s survey found that a significant number of young Republican voters reported openly racist or antisemitic views. Some of the comments during an accompanying focus group with 20 Gen Z conservatives were positively chilling: One participant praised Hitler’s “leadership values.” Another claimed that Israel had ties to human trafficking. Still another called Jews “a force for evil.”
• Right wing social media elites appear to be in an open civil war over the matter of Israel. Candace Owens has called the Jewish state “demonic,” while spinning out wild anti-Israel conspiracy theories on her popular weekly YouTube show. Tucker Carlson, one of the most influential MAGA voices, has described Christian Zionism as a “brain virus” and characterized evangelical support for Israel as “Christian heresy.” In late October, he hosted the white nationalist influencer and prominent antisemite Nick Fuentes on his YouTube show; the fallout is still tearing apart the Heritage Foundation, an institution at the heart of the Republican establishment. This month, Carlson and Steve Bannon, a fellow nativist, traded insults with Ben Shapiro, a pro-Israel conservative and an observant Jew, at the Turning Point USA conference in Phoenix.

Mahler: “For more than four decades, the alliance between evangelicals and pro-Israel conservatives has been an almost uniquely powerful force in American politics, shaping not only foreign policy but also domestic elections, with donations flowing freely every election cycle from pro-Israel Christian groups and individuals to pro-Israel Republican candidates.”  But hints of a change were visible several decades ago. For example, in 1988, the influential conservative political philosopher Russell Kirk accused the neoconservatives of mistaking Tel Aviv for the capital of the United States. During the 1990s, the neo-isolationist Pat Buchanan, a two-time Republican presidential candidate, referred to Capitol Hill as “Israel-occupied territory” and blamed “the Israeli Defense Ministry and its amen corner in the United States” for dragging the United States into the first gulf war. Significantly, both men were Catholics which theologically embraces a replacement theology position regarding Isreal.

What we are witnessing on the right is a demographic shift, as a new generation of Christians comes of age, both theologically and politically. “There is, and really has been for at least 20 years, a revolt of younger, more intellectual American Christians against the old-American style of evangelical Protestantism that became so familiar in the 1980s and ’90s,” Samuel Goldman of the University of Florida said. “They are much less likely to see the modern state of Israel as the fulfillment of the various biblical prophecies and promises.”

Mahler is certainly correct when he maintains that “Trump has shown no signs of turning against Israel, and there is still a powerful pro-Israel faction within the G.O.P. Four decades of consistent support won’t go quietly. But the party’s post-Trump future is up for grabs, and it’s easy to imagine the fight over Israel becoming a primary battleground in the larger war for the party. Will the isolationists or the interventionists win out? How much influence will Christian nationalists have? Will antisemites be allowed inside the tent—and if not, who will have the authority to draw the boundaries that keep them out?” These are more penetrating questions concerning the emerging new world order.

See Amy Knight in the Wall Street journal (12 January 2026); Bret Stephens in the New York Times (15 January 2026); and Jonathan Mahler, “Fractured Covenant: Is the future of MAGA anti-Israel?” In the New York Times Magazine (18 January 2026).