There is no way to sugarcoat the epic scale of America’s humiliation in Donald Trump’s disastrous and irrational war with Iran, or the damaging global effects that will endure years or decades into the future. With the “stable genius” and “extraordinarily brilliant person” in the White House visibly decompensating into impotent rage and erratic burst of mania, there is no obvious exit strategy that will allow him to declare victory (as he must, for interwoven and deeply unfortunate psychological and political reasons). This war has accomplished exactly none of its stated objectives — even with those constantly shifting and being defined downward — and has almost certainly strengthened the regional power and global reputation of the Iranian regime, despite weeks of bombing and the deaths of much of its leadership.
Trump’s options would seem to be a negotiated settlement that might, at best, approximate the pre-war status quo; a potentially catastrophic military escalation favored by literally no one except Lindsey Graham, the Israeli government and a handful of right-wing Iranian expatriates; or an indefinite continuation of the current phony war over the Strait of Hormuz, in hopes that the Iranian economy will suffocate before global recession sets in (an outcome that may be unavoidable no matter what else happens). That’s a doubleplus-ungood list of options, and while it’s easy to say that the first one presents the most rational outcome for all sides, it’s not clear that even matters.
The Pakistani government’s effort to play peacemaker has once again collapsed, with neither Iran’s foreign minister and Trump’s amateur-hour negotiators willing to show up in Islamabad this weekend. Trump is “quite fed up” with this war and eager to make a deal, reports Amos Harel of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, but is trapped between Benjamin Netanyahu on one side and Iran’s new war-hardened governing faction on the other, both of whom are more than willing to fight on. Related Trump cancels latest Iran peace talks trip We know Trump wants something he can sell as a big win to his dead-ender congressional loyalists and his declining support base, and that Netanyahu still hopes for an all-out U.S.-led war of destruction (although Harel reports that the Israeli leader now understands that’s unlikely).
Opinions about what Iran’s new leaders want are all over the map, but in the words of Foreign Policy columnist Michael Hirsh, they now seem to be “calling the shots.” From the beginning of this conflict, the Iranians identified the fundamental weakness of U.S. strategy, which was based on a litany of false assumptions, starting with the premise that total victory could be achieved with air power (something that has never happened in the history of warfare) and that killing Iran’s senior leaders would cause the regime to surrender or collapse. Trump and Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio and whoever else somehow persuaded themselves — or allowed Netanyahu to persuade them — to ignore the obvious Heffalump trap that was right in front of them, that being yet another protracted, expensive and massively unpopular foreign war likely to crater or destroy a presidency.
Trump and Pete Hegseth and whoever else somehow persuaded themselves — or allowed Netanyahu to persuade them — to ignore the obvious Heffalump trap in front of them, yet another protracted, expensive and massively unpopular foreign war. Hai Nguyen, a Vietnam War scholar at the Harvard Kennedy school, told Hirsh that he saw history literally repeating itself. Like the Viet Cong of 50-odd years ago, the Iranians have perceived the American superpower’s Achilles heel: “They understand that the U.S. could drop thousands of tons of bombs, but it does not possess the patience to withstand a prolonged war.” In refusing to negotiate despite the risk of further devastation and the immense hardship inflicted on its own people, the Iranian regime is observing a time-honored principle attributed to Napoleon: Never interrupt your opponent when he’s making a mistake.
It’s almost possible to concoct a silver lining from this dreadful situation, but only by focusing on short-term electoral politics in the most bloodless and instrumental fashion. I have no doubt that Rahm Emanuel and James Carville are whispering to Democratic leaders that they need to do almost nothing from here to November in order to win back the House, and quite possibly the Senate too. Whether they can or will do anything meaningful after that, amid the likely global chaos caused by this war, remains to be seen.
We absolutely do not need to hand it to Tucker Carlson under any circumstances, but the former Fox News star turned latter-day anti-Trump penitent is probably correct to describe the Iran war as the worst single decision made by any American president in his lifetime. It brings together all the worst tendencies of U.S. foreign policy since the 1960s — overconfidence, bad intelligence, inflated bluster and outrig