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The Roosters' Fight in Trump's Barn

Dawn has never been merely the hour when the sun is born. It has always been the hour when the roosters crow, each proclaiming itself the undisputed master of the barn, each convinced that its voice awakened the world—while the truth is that daylight would have arrived whether it crowed or remained silent.

This is how great stories always begin: with small creatures convinced that the universe revolves around their instincts, while the owner of the barn stands at a distance, calculating profits and losses, believing he can keep everyone under control with a simple stick—until he discovers that once instinct awakens, it no longer listens to its master.

That is precisely what the Middle East looks like today.

A vast barn where roosters jostle for dominance, feathers fill the air, blood is spilled, and deafening cries nearly drown out the voice of reason. At the center of the scene stands Donald Trump, the businessman who entered politics with the mindset of a dealmaker rather than that of an empire builder. He views the world the way entrepreneurs view markets: every crisis is an opportunity, every war a bargaining chip, every victory a new investment project, and every ceasefire a contract that can always be renegotiated. He has never truly believed that history is driven by ideology as much as by interests, nor that nations die for ideas as much as they live for deals.

Yet Trump's greatest problem is that he is dealing with players who simply do not share his worldview.

Israel, at least in the political form represented by Benjamin Netanyahu, does not see Iran as merely a regional rival with whom a stable balance of deterrence can eventually be achieved, nor as an adversary whose differences can be managed through long-term understandings. Rather, it sees the Islamic Republic as an existential project fundamentally incompatible with the very idea upon which the Jewish state, as understood by the Israeli right, is built. Consequently, any agreement that does not permanently deprive Iran of the ability to threaten Israel will, in their eyes, remain nothing more than a temporary truce that postpones the next round rather than prevents it.

On the opposite side, the picture is not dramatically different.

The Iranian regime does not perceive itself as merely a nation-state defending its borders and national interests. Instead, it sees itself as the bearer of a project that transcends Iran's geography, extending into a broader sphere of influence, identity, and alliances. Any fundamental retreat, therefore, would not simply represent the loss of a political battle; it would amount to the collapse of the very idea upon which the regime has built its legitimacy for decades.

This is where the greatest misunderstanding begins.

Trump believes he can bring both roosters to the same table and persuade each one that it has emerged victorious. He is a product of a school of thought that assumes every conflict is ultimately negotiable, provided each side understands what it stands to gain and what it must sacrifice. The two roosters, however, never approach the table thinking in terms of profit and loss. They think in terms of dominance and survival.

That is why the man who has long prided himself on being the ultimate dealmaker now finds himself confronting a conflict that recognizes no market logic.

It resembles a cockfight inside a cramped barn.

The owner of the barn may open or close the gate, feed one rooster while starving the other, wager on the winner or punish the loser—but he cannot change the rooster's nature. The instinct that drives it to fight is stronger than any economic calculation.

This is precisely what many analyses fail to grasp when they predict that the Iranian-Israeli confrontation will end with another agreement, additional security guarantees, or a package of economic incentives.

They misunderstand the nature of the two adversaries.

Each carries a conception of the conflict that extends beyond politics into identity, and beyond interests into existence itself.

Their struggle is therefore not merely about uranium enrichment, nor about spheres of influence in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, or Yemen. It is about the very image of the Middle East: who will write its rules, draw its maps, and define its balance of power for decades to come.

From this perspective, Trump's calculations are entirely different.

He wants a Middle East that is less costly for the United States, more open to investment, and less draining of American resources. He wants to close files rather than deepen them. He would rather see wars transformed into economic agreements, and rifles replaced by energy pipelines and expanding markets.

History, however, has often mocked merchants who believed that markets could tame ideologies.

Empires far greater than the United States have attempted precisely that, only to discover that ideas cannot be purchased like stocks, and ideologies are not commodities traded on financial exchanges.

That is what makes the present moment so dangerous.

If each side continues to define the conflict as a zero-sum struggle, every ceasefire will become nothing more than a brief intermission between two rounds of fighting. The Middle East will remain suspended between two rival projects, each convinced that the other's survival guarantees its own destruction.

In such an environment, it is entirely plausible that the conflict will gradually escape the ability of any external patron to control its rhythm.

History is full of wars that began as political decisions, only to end with the wars themselves dictating the fate of the politicians who had launched them.

Trump may then find himself facing a painful paradox.

The man who sought to manage the region with the logic of a businessman may ultimately discover that the region is governed by a logic far older than markets—a logic in which memory merges with doctrine, geography with history, and powerful symbols with military calculations.

Once conflicts reach that stage, the question changes.

It is no longer: Who wins the deal?

It becomes: Who remains standing after the dust has settled?

Trump has long believed that everything is negotiable.

Yet the Middle East has repeated the same lesson for decades: not every war can be sold, and not every crisis can be bought.

That is why the roosters' fight may ultimately ignite a fire that consumes the entire barn.

And its owner may discover—far too late—that the roosters were never fighting over a handful of grain, but over the illusion of absolute supremacy; and that those who unleash the instincts of conflict do not always possess the power to return them to their cages.

Conclusion

The problem is not simply that Donald Trump underestimates the depth of the conflict between Iran and Israel. It is that he views it through an entirely different lens from the one through which the two adversaries view themselves. He sees a manageable crisis, while each side sees a battle that will determine its future. Between the mindset of the businessman searching for a profitable deal and the mindset of two rivals engaged in an existential struggle, the gap widens with each passing day. In conflicts of this kind, the greatest danger lies not merely in the outbreak of war itself, but in the moment when it slips beyond the calculations of every player involved. Only then may everyone discover that the roosters are no longer fighting inside Trump's barn—but upon its ruins.