| The Pope signing the “Golden Book” ceremonial guestbook in the Great Mosque in Algiers |
When US President Donald Trump sent Vice-President JD Vance to negotiate with members of the Iranian regime in Islamabad, people initially thought that Vance — reportedly the most outspoken voice in the Trump administration against going to war with Iran — would be a soft touch.
When the talks in Pakistan broke down, however, Vance’s position could hardly have been tougher. Having seen the Iranian regime up close, he said, he was absolutely certain that these people must never be allowed to get nuclear weapons.
In recent days, he has again taken a position which contradicted previous assumptions about his worldview.
The MAGA movement is currently convulsed by a faction of poisonous, unhinged Jewish-conspiracy theorists, led by podcaster and political commentator Tucker Carlson. Believing that Israel drags America into needless foreign wars, they’ve been inflamed to the point of hysteria by the war against Iran.
A number of these people are Catholics who have positioned themselves against Christian Zionism, largely associated with evangelical Protestantism. Younger Catholics, particularly recent converts who reject modernity, are leaning into older, more “authentic” versions of the faith — and are thus embracing its earlier virulent antisemitism.
Vance, a passionate Catholic convert, has caused great unease among the Jewish community by refusing to distance himself from this tendency.
This past week, an explosive row was detonated between Trump and Pope Leo XIV that played straight into the MAGA convulsions.



