Why Iran is not Ukraine, and Trump is not Putin: Habeck’s sharp comparison does not withstand the facts

Former Vice-Chancellor of Germany Robert Habeck published an op-ed in the British newspaper The Guardian on March 25, 2026, in the Opinion / Comment is free section, where he effectively equated Donald Trump’s actions against Iran with Russia’s attack on Ukraine. For European polemics, this may sound impressive. For the Israeli audience, it’s worse: too much in such a comparison simply doesn’t align with the facts.

The problem is not that Habeck decided to speak sharply.

Politicians and former ministers write columns to argue, provoke, and simplify. The problem is different: his construction erases the distinction between a country that became a victim of external aggression and a regime that for decades built regional influence through armed proxies, pressure, and constant escalation.

In this scheme, Ukraine looks like an especially strange target for comparisons. The UN General Assembly directly qualified Russia’s actions as aggression against Ukraine. That is, it’s not about a “disputed gray zone,” not about the favorite fog of formulas for Western commentators, but about a recognized international fact: Ukraine became the object of invasion, not the source of regional expansion.

Why the analogy “Iran = Ukraine” falls apart almost immediately

Habeck’s comparison is built on a beautiful political symmetry: supposedly, in both cases, leaders are guided by “megalomania, contempt for law, and a desire to make history.” On paper, it looks sharp. But as soon as the rhetorical flair is removed, very different initial conditions remain.

Ukraine did not build a network of armed allies around itself to pressure neighbors. Ukraine did not become a center for financing and coordinating groups throughout the Middle East. Ukraine did not use regional instability as part of its foreign strategy. In the case of Iran, this is precisely the central part of the regime’s entire construction: its connection with “Hezbollah” and other armed allies has long been described and studied as systemic, not accidental. And here for Israel, the most important thing begins. When a European politician tries to reduce Ukraine and Iran to a common formula with one gesture, he erases not only the difference in political regimes but also the difference in the type of threat. For Israel, Iran is not an abstract “complex international player,” but a state whose network of allied armed structures has been working against Israeli security for years.

This is not an academic theory. This is the practical experience of the region.

The nuclear issue also does not give Habeck the right to such a simple scheme

There is another point that is usually blurred in such columns so as not to interfere with the beautiful moral. The International Atomic Energy Agency continues to formulate the task very clearly in 2026: the world needs long-term guarantees that Iran will not acquire nuclear weapons. The very fact of such a formulation already shows how far apart the Ukrainian and Iranian cases are.

Therefore, in the Israeli context, Habeck’s thesis sounds not like a deep warning to Europe, but like another attempt to replace the specific Middle Eastern reality with a universal Western formula. Mix everything. Simplify everything. Declare everyone equally dangerous — and end the analysis there.

For Israel, the style of the dispute is not important here, but the accuracy of the diagnosis

One can argue about Washington’s tactics. One can argue about the limits of permissible pressure on Tehran. One can criticize Trump for impulsiveness, for political narcissism, for a tendency to make decisions in the genre of a personal spectacle.

But even if all this criticism is accepted, it does not automatically follow that Iran and Ukraine are comparable objects.

This is where the real fault line lies. Ukraine is a country that defends its statehood after a full-scale invasion. Iran is a regime that for decades invested in proxy wars, armed networks, and a strategy of pressure far beyond its own borders. To reduce this to a single moral equation is to abandon a serious conversation in favor of a newspaper effect.

NANews — Israel News | Nikk.Agency is important in such cases precisely because the Israeli reader needs not a beautiful generalization, but an accurate distinction of threats. Otherwise, the result is the old European mistake: first, the complex reality of the Middle East is translated into the language of convenient abstractions, and then there is surprise as to why the next theory does not withstand the encounter with life.

What this column really showed

Perhaps Habeck wanted to say something more: that Europe should stop seeking rationality where it is driven by ambitions, a cult of power, and political vanity. This is a separate conversation, and there is a rational grain in it. But when, for the sake of this thesis, Ukraine and Iran have to be placed side by side, the price of such a technique becomes too high.

Because then the main thing disappears.

The difference between the victim of aggression and the state that for many years itself participated in the production of regional chaos disappears.

The difference between defense and the export of violence disappears.

Finally, accuracy itself disappears — and without it, all the great European morality quickly turns into a journalistic decoration.

In the dry residue, Habeck’s column speaks more about the crisis of part of Western political thought, which still prefers an impressive analogy to a boring but necessary distinction.

For Israel, this is a bad habit. Too expensive. And too dangerous to turn a blind eye to it again.