Former Israeli Defense Adviser Explains Trump's Iran Logic, and Why Israel Should Be Terrified

Ma'ayan Salmon, a diplomatic operative and former senior adviser to the chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, has published a blunt and unsettling analysis of Trump's Iran policy, arguing that the president has not lost his mind or reversed course, but is operating with a ruthlessly consistent corporate logic that Israel has fundamentally misread.

Writing in Srugim, Salmon argues that to understand what Trump is doing, you have to do what the West has refused to do for decades: get inside the mind of the man across the table.

"Trump runs the United States like a business corporation," Salmon writes. "Zero pretense, zero patience. Action and aggression. Simple and efficient."

In Salmon's reading, the key to decoding Trump's Iran pivot is not ideology but private equity. Trump used Israel to drive down Iran's value, through military strikes, economic pressure, and the degradation of its proxy network. Now, with Iran on the verge of total collapse, Trump is moving in with what Salmon describes as a "hundreds of billions of dollars" investment play, attempting a hostile takeover of a distressed asset. The goal, in Trump's corporate vision, is to flip Iran from enemy to revenue-generating ally within the American corporate framework.

"He will continue with this until he sees his money evaporating," Salmon writes, "and then he will decide whether to go back in with a move that collapses Iran's value again, or to cut his losses and exit."

The analysis does not stop at Trump. Salmon turns the lens on Iran itself, and the picture is not reassuring for anyone banking on the MOU producing lasting change. Iran, he argues, resembles a family-controlled corporation that has already signed agreements with other major investors, namely Russia and China. You can attempt a takeover, but the family, in this generation or the next, will do everything it can to take the company back.

Caught between the American corporate entity and the Iranian family regime, Salmon writes, stands Israel, which currently registers in Trump's calculus as "secondary damage."

The sharpest passage in the piece is directed not at Trump but at Jerusalem. "The State of Israel must understand that it cannot build its existential strategy on the foundational assumption that America will always be there for reasons of Zionism or shared values," Salmon writes. "In a world of CEOs, Israel must present unique value or generate independent moves. Otherwise we will find ourselves outside the deal."

The warning is not new in substance, but it carries unusual weight coming from someone with Salmon's institutional background, and appearing now, in the immediate aftermath of the MOU signing. Israel, in his telling, is neither the acquirer nor the target in this transaction. It is, at best, a line item. At worst, a liability to be managed around.