Donald Trump failed illegal Iran war is expanding with no end in sight

“We won,” 😒😕😏😩 Trump announced on March 11, less than two weeks into his Iran war. “In the first hour, it was over.”

The Dead End to Trump’s ‘Perfect’ War

Echo opinion published in The New York Times by Nicholas Kristof

On March 24, in the Oval Office, he reiterated, “This war has been won.”  On April 6, he asserted, “They are militarily defeated.”

On April 11, Trump posted on Truth Social, “The United States has completely destroyed Iran’s Military.”

“The war in Iran is going along swimmingly,” Trump said on April 16. “It’s perfect.” (Maine Writer- What the hell does "swimmingly" mean❓ This word sounds like a psychological neologism, meaning, it makes absolutely no sense.😒😖)

The perfection of Trump’s war has confused his supporters. “I don’t understand how it’s possible that Iran has the capabilities to fight this way and continue to try to lash out at Gulf countries and U.S. military bases,” Maria Bartiromo of Fox (FAKE❗) News said on air recently. “Because the U.S. has obliterated Iran’s military, and the president continues to reiterate that.”

Yet Trump’s far from perfect war has flaws, including the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and, in the past few days, the partial closure of passage through the Red Sea as well. 

So Trump is escalating attacks in what looks like a doubling down on a failed strategy. (But the attacks have cause the military to become low on ammunition and, therefore, at risk for being in a dangerous defensive position when Iran launches a massive drone attack against U.S. ships.)

Also, in an updated, a missile exploded a mine in the Strait of Hormuz so now nothing is getting thru the blocked section. 

A reported explosion involving an oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz has intensified concerns over security in one of the world's most important maritime chokepoints. According to Iran's Tasnim News Agency, the tanker allegedly struck a naval mine after deviating from a navigation route announced by Tehran. Iranian officials have previously warned that vessels leaving designated routes would bear responsibility for any consequences. The incident comes amid heightened tensions in the Gulf, where military activity and disruptions to commercial shipping have increased.

But the problem now is not Trump’s terrible miscalculation in illegally starting the war on February 28, in ways that weakened America, depleted munition supplies, reduced our capacity to deter China in Asia and strengthened Iranian hard-liners. 

Rather, the issue at the moment is the way he is disastrously escalating the war.

Trump has lately been striking sites across Iran each day, and he warned that the United States would hit a power plant or bridge for each ship that Iran struck. Putting aside the question of war crimes, there’s also the problem that Iran responds in kind.

“Iran still retains multiple escalation options,” noted Danny Citrinowicz, a retired Israel Defense Intelligence expert on Iran. Citrinowicz noted that Iran could attack Persian Gulf states, cut undersea cables or harness the Houthis in Yemen to attack shipping in the Red Sea.

Both sides have already struck water and desalination plants, which could be disastrous for Gulf countries if this continues. Iran is not heavily dependent on desalination, but Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates rely on desalination for almost all of their drinking water. Cities could become pretty much uninhabitable if power plants and desalination plants are destroyed.

Likewise, if the United States attacks Iranian oil and gas sites, Iran is likely to do the same in Gulf countries, reducing oil flows for months or years. The Houthis have announced that they have joined the conflict, targeting Saudi maritime traffic in the Red Sea and thus diminishing global oil supplies even more. The Houthis had stayed out of the war until now, and I wonder if this means they see Iran as the effective victor.

Trump is threatening to strike the Houthis. But he should remember that he and Joe Biden before him spent some $7 billion bombing the Houthis for a bit more than two years and achieved nothing obvious. Trump extricated himself from the bombing campaign in May 2025 with a standard diplomatic magic trick: Both sides declared victory, and the bombing ended.

What is Trump trying to achieve by ramping up attacks? What’s the intent❓

“Any realistic strategy should begin with one core assumption: Iran is unlikely to capitulate,” Citrinowicz said.

In other words, increased airstrikes seem a fiery dead end. 

I hope Trump isn’t considering invading with ground troops, for that would be even more disastrous. 

Barry R. McCaffrey, a retired general, estimates that it would take a year and 600,000 American troops to subdue Iran, taking casualties along the way.

“Then what❓” McCaffrey asked. “Stay❓”

I do see one military escalation that could be useful to squeeze Iran: Help the United Arab Emirates recover the disputed islands of Greater Tunb, Lesser Tunb and Abu Musa, if the Emirates are willing to do this with their troops rather than ours. 

Iran forcibly seized the islands in 1971, but the Emirates have a plausible claim, and the islands are strategically located by the Strait of Hormuz and could help control it.

Indeed, I’m increasingly fearful that the most dismal legacy of this catastrophic war may be that a decade or two from now both Saudi Arabia and Iran will have nuclear weapons. Two unstable, misogynist Middle Eastern autocracies with nuclear weapons — what could go wrong?

Beyond that, there’s really no alternative but negotiation, recognizing that any negotiated outcome will be unpalatable — though not as unpalatable as escalating a war to nowhere. Perhaps the most important aim of negotiation should be keeping Iran from getting nuclear weapons, but Trump’s foolish new nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia, if it goes forward, will make that even harder. 

If the Saudis are enriching nuclear fuel, the Iranians will insist on doing so as well, and the upshot may be a nuclear competition between them.

Progressive voters finally being heard because we are enraged by Donald John Trump's draconian policies

Of the three New York City congressional candidates endorsed by Zohran Mamdani in Tuesday’s primary, Darializa Avila Chevalier was the weakest.

Echo opinion published in The New York Times by Michelle Goldberg: Democrats Are Done With Caution

A sociology Ph.D. student and doctrinaire leftist who has never held elected office, she was running against Adriano Espaillat, head of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. He’d built an uptown political machine known as the “squadriano” in New York’s 13th District, which includes Washington Heights, Harlem and parts of the Bronx. Many of the area’s neighborhoods are reliably progressive but not known for their radicalism. After all, in the last presidential election, Donald Trump improved his margin in the Bronx by double digits, one of the largest swings in the country, in part because of voter angst about crime and migration.

Last week, in an interview with the New York Editorial Board, a group of veteran journalists who question local political and civic leaders, Avila Chevalier said she opposed all deportations, even those of violent criminals. A prison abolitionist, she either couldn’t or wouldn’t answer repeated questions about whether murderers should be incarcerated. Both she and Espaillat are Dominican, and on the morning of the election, she walked off a popular Spanish-language radio show after she was asked about old tweets, including some that seemed to disdain Dominican nationalism. (In other since-deleted tweets, Avila Chevalier cursed at Kamala Harris, called Joe Biden a “rapist” and derided his support for Ukraine as “bullying Russia.”) Her name was notably absent from a get-out-the-vote message that Bernie Sanders posted for other progressives on Tuesday.

But in the end, Avila Chevalier won, carried to a narrow victory by the left-wing tsunami that created landslides for the other congressional candidates Mamdani endorsed, Brad Lander and Claire Valdez. She will almost certainly become the most left-wing member of Congress, and Republicans are sure to try to make her the face of the Democratic Party.

New York’s primary demonstrated the astonishing political power of the mayor and of the Democratic Socialists of America, the organization that he, Avila Chevalier and Valdez are all members of. It suggests that Democratic voters have been radicalized by the horrors of Donald Trump’s second presidency and infuriated ❗by their leaders’ failure to contain him. And, it’s a sign that after the savagery of the war on Gaza, support for Israel has become toxic among large parts of the party’s base. 

Avila Chevalier was an organizer of the anti-Israel protest encampments at Columbia, whereas the American Israel Public Affairs Committee poured money into a super PAC supporting Espaillat.

The city, of course, is not particularly representative of the rest of the country. New York’s electorate is more progressive, and Mamdani, who has brought a joyful, dynamic energy to the city’s governance, has a unique clout. The same night that his slate dominated in New York, AIPAC’s preferred candidate, Adrian Boafo, won a congressional primary in Maryland.

Still, progressive outsider candidates are surging in many parts of America. There’s now a democratic socialist mayor in Seattle, and a democratic socialist just won the primary to become mayor of Washington. 

In Maine, Graham Platner — who, like Avila Chevalier, had a vituperative social media history — easily defeated the state’s governor, Janet Mills, for the Senate nomination. Voters in Maine’s rural Second District, which Trump won by nine points, chose a progressive, Matt Dunlap, to run for the House seat of an outgoing moderate Democrat, Jared Golden, defeating Joe Baldacci, the candidate endorsed by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

This leftist momentum is a bullish sign for progressives in other Democratic primaries, like Abdul El-Sayed, running for Senate in Michigan, and Francesca Hong, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, running for governor in Wisconsin. Both are either ahead or competitive in recent polls.

That means the 2026, midterms could end up being a giant national experiment that tests the populist left’s theory of victory. 

For years, it has argued that Democrats have failed because, in thrall to corporate interests, they let themselves become the party of the status quo. Unable or unwilling to galvanize voters with an economically progressive alternative to the right, they’ve offered only timid, business-friendly incrementalism. Usamah Andrabi, a spokesman for Justice Democrats, the organization that recruited Avila Chevalier to run for Congress, told me that too often, the Democratic Party “tries to stymie big and bold ideas” in favor of technocratic pragmatism. “I think what voters have really made clear, particularly this past year, is that they are desperate for bold, visionary leadership,” he said.

This spring, I met Hong, a member of the Wisconsin Assembly from Madison, when she was visiting New York. She argued that winning the general election would require motivating voters who feel “disenfranchised or angry at the Democratic Party” with an anti-establishment, working-class campaign. 

Electability, said Hong, is subjective. “We have to take a step back and look at the current political moment and where voters are at and what they care about,” she said. “Who is the candidate that actually responds with a solution that they believe Who is the candidate that presents a vision that they will see themselves in❓”

Hong is right that many voters can’t be mapped onto a neat left-right spectrum. They judge candidates on a whole range of axes — whether they seem like normal people or career politicians, insiders or outsiders, populists or elitists. That’s why there are voters who went from Sanders to Trump, or Trump to Mamdani.

Still, as someone who desperately wants to see Republicans beaten, I’ll admit I’m anxious watching Democrats stake so much on a strategy of left-wing audacity. After all, progressive overreach has backfired in the past.

The D.S.A., remember, also surged during Trump’s first presidency. In 2018, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a D.S.A. member recruited by Justice Democrats, stunned the political world with her upset victory over the longtime Democratic congressman Joseph Crowley, and was joined in the House by a fellow D.S.A. member, Rashida Tlaib, and the like-minded progressive Ilhan Omar. Other D.S.A. members won local offices nationwide.

Mainstream Democrats rushed to ally themselves with the left’s insurgent energy. Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand and Cory Booker signed onto Bernie Sanders’s Medicare for All bill. 

When the Black Lives Matter protests exploded in the summer of 2020, Harris sent out a fund-raising appeal to bail out people who were arrested protesting in Minnesota. Though Joe Biden beat out Sanders for the presidential nomination, once elected, he worked closely with progressives, adopting ambitious climate policies, expanding the safety net and welcoming migrants. Before the war in Gaza made him a villain to many on the left, he was hailed as the most progressive president in a generation.

All that gives the left a renewed opportunity to wield power. The question is what lessons leftists have learned from the past dismal decade. As both candidate and mayor, Mamdani has usually embodied a practical, optimistic sort of left politics — a sewer socialism — laser focused on New Yorkers’ material concerns. Avila Chevalier represents something different, an academic leftism rigid in its refusal to accept trade-offs or make concessions to ordinary people’s moral intuitions. One approach is a recipe for building, the other for backlash. The danger is that a movement flush with success may think it doesn’t have to choose.

Then came collapse. During the Biden administration, the D.S.A. hemorrhaged members amid sectarian infighting, especially over Palestine. In 2021, some factions tried to expel the recently elected representative Jamaal Bowman for being insufficiently anti-Israel, and the national D.S.A. unendorsed Ocasio-Cortez.

At the same time, centrists swung against a left that had indulged its purist tendencies. Bowman would go on to lose a primary fight to a more moderate challenger, as would Representative Cori Bush, the former Black Lives Matter activist who’d been endorsed by the D.S.A. In the 2024, election, the vast majority of American counties shifted right.

Andrabi attributes Democratic failure to Harris’s uninspiring centrism, and there were certainly people who declined to vote for her out of disgust with Biden’s unstinting support for Israel. But as Blueprint Research has found, swing voters who backed Trump overwhelmingly saw Harris as soft on crime and the border, and “too focused on identity politics.” She was weighed down in part by positions she took amid the frothy left-wing ascendance of 2020.

Maybe this time will be different. The electorate is furious, and now it’s the right that represents a hated status quo. 

Much of the Democratic establishment has proved itself feckless; a candidate as flawed as Avila Chevalier could win only against a complacent political machine that’s lost touch with the people it’s supposed to represent. Calls to abolish ICE were once seen as fringe, but since Trump has turned the agency into something akin to a personal militia, in most recent surveys, a plurality of voters want to scrap it. (Maine Writer- Does Senator Susan Collins know this❓)

All that gives the left a renewed opportunity to wield power. The question is what lessons leftists have learned from the past dismal decade. As both candidate and mayor, Mamdani has usually embodied a practical, optimistic sort of left politics — a sewer socialism — laser focused on New Yorkers’ material concerns. Avila Chevalier represents something different, an academic leftism rigid in its refusal to accept trade-offs or make concessions to ordinary people’s moral intuitions. One approach is a recipe for building, the other for backlash. The danger is that a movement flush with success may think it doesn’t have to choose.

Donald Trump caused the reflecting pool to become toxic and the Strait of Hormuz to close: IOW Donald John Trump is a failure

New York Times review about the Trump failed Washington DC reflecting pool environmental crises, by Maxine Joselow and Donald A. Fahrenthold. 

Maine Writer preface: Let me get this❓On February 27, 2026, the Strait of Hormuz connecting the Persian Gulf (to the west) with the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea (to the southeast) was open and free for international shipping.  

After Trump's illegally launched war against Iran, the shipping was shut down by Iran and the U.S. blockaded Iranian access to the Strait of Hormuz in another Trump act of war Naval Blockade.  

In other words, the attack against Iran is a complete failure and Donald Trump had to sign a surrender Memorandum of Understanding at Versailles, France for the purpose of getting Iran to negotiate about a peace deal and open the Strait of Hormuz, that had been open before his interference.  Now, Donald Trump's ego project to recreate the Washington DC reflecting pool has become a tax payer funded fiasco because too many "no bid" contractors cut corners and did not employ best practices to make the reflecting pool "USA blue". Now, the pool is half green and efforts to kill destructive algae are not working properly. In other words, the reflecting pool was beautiful, and functioning in the Washington D.C. climate and environment before Donald Trump ruined it. Meanwhile, tax payers 💲are stuck funding the failed Iranian war and for the toxic clean up in the Washington D.C. reflecting pool. 

Trump says the peeling blue coating and algae blooms that mar his $16.4 million renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool are the fault of vandals working with “knives” in the “dark of night.”

But government documents obtained by The New York Times show that while National Park Service workers found two cuts in sections of foam between the pool’s expansion joints, those were not directly related to the “American flag blue” coating that is now peeling, or to the algae that has turned the pool a bright shade of green.

Even as the documents show workers were attempting to address deteriorating conditions, Trump administration officials were insisting publicly that the pool was pristine.

The cause of the cuts was unclear. While a June 9 report by the U.S. Park Police described the cuts as “razor blade slashes” made along a 20-foot-long stretch of the foam, the administration has yet to present evidence supporting that assertion. The documents reviewed by The Times described them as two 171-foot blade cuts but did not address how they were made.

By June 16, workers had noticed that chunks of blue sealant that covered the pool’s bottom were peeling and floating to the surface, the documents show. That sealant was separate from the foam in the pool’s expansion joints, which allow its concrete slabs to expand and contract.

The workers had also discovered that some devices installed to kill algae were not working as intended, according to the documents. And enormous algae blooms had turned portions of the pool bright green instead of dark blue.

But on June 15,  Trump was still declaring the renovation a success, telling reporters that “I’m very good at building things and constructing things.”

The Reflecting Pool is a centerpiece of Trump’s attempts to remake the capital in honor of the nation’s 250th birthday. The pool has been plagued by leaks and algae for decades; Trump boasted that he had repaired it quickly and affordably, but both problems have returned in force.

In fact the pool was drained, resealed and then refilled by June 5. Four days later, National Park Service workers discovered holes, cracks and peeling caulking in parts of the pool, along with cuts in sections of the foam, according to the documents.

Work to fix the problems may not be finished until after July 4 — a setback for Trump, who wanted the renovation to be completed before then.

On Saturday, Trump acknowledged the pool would have to be at least partially drained for more work. Then, on Tuesday, Trump said on social media that six people had been arrested, and seven others had been cited, for slashing the pool’s sealant with a “sharp knife or razors.”

“It was purposefully and criminally done, and somebody had to work very hard, probably in the dark of night,” he wrote.

Trump also told reporters on Monday, without offering evidence, that vandals had poured fertilizer into the pool to feed the algae.

Neither the Interior Department nor the White House would provide charging documents, citations or the names of anyone arrested. They did share the Park Police incident report, which said any suspect or suspects were unknown. The report also did not mention any damage to the pool’s blue sealant, nor did it describe any vandals dumping fertilizer.

Katie Martin, a spokeswoman for the Interior Department, did not answer specific questions about the government documents but said in an email on Tuesday that the pool was “clear” and “reflecting beautifully.”

“While Trump was restoring a crown jewel of our nation’s capital, which is supported by Americans across the country, vandals were attempting to destroy, impede and delay the ongoing work,” she said.

On Tuesday, portions of the pool appeared dark blue and reflected the Washington Monument and the overcast sky. But an enormous clump of green algae remained visible in the center.

A few curiosity seekers braved the rain to stroll around the site, which has become a sightseeing draw. They were outnumbered by throngs of law enforcement officers and other personnel, including from the National Guard, Park Police and U.S. Marshals Service. The National Guard troops were stationed around the pool’s perimeter, with some huddling under trees to stay☔🌧️ dry.

The administration is setting up fencing around the site before the July 4 fireworks display for safety reasons, Ms. Martin said. But it’s going up earlier than originally planned because of what she called an “increase in vandalism by🙄 🤥leftist activists.”

The Trump administration awarded two no-bid contracts for the Reflecting Pool renovations, bypassing the legally required process of seeking competitive bids because of what it called an urgent need to complete the project for events around the nation’s 250th birthday.

The first 💲14.7 million contract went to a Virginia-based company called Atlantic Industrial Coatings to spread the sealant in the “American flag blue” shade across the pool’s concrete slabs. The second 💲1.7 million contract went to Ohio-based Greenwater Services to install devices called nanobubblers, which infuse the water with ozone to kill algae and bacteria.

On June 15, workers discovered that one or two of the four temporary nanobubblers weren’t working at any given time because of problems with generators, and that the water was turning green. By the next day, officials had noticed blue coating peeling, as well.

Representatives for Atlantic Industrial Coatings and Greenwater Services, also known as Green Water Solutions, did not respond to requests for comment.

Though Trump claimed vandals dumped fertilizer in the pool, his administration refilled it with D.C. municipal water, which is treated with phosphate to keep lead from leaching out of old pipes. But phosphate also provides nutrients for algae, as do droppings from ducks swimming in the pool.

In a post on its website on Sunday, Atlantic Industrial Coatings said that “a very small part of the massive 7-acre project” would require repairs. The company added that it would do the work under warranty.

Anthony Flett, the chief executive of U.S. Coating Specialists, a Florida-based company that specializes in waterproofing coatings, reviewed the documents at the request of The Times. He wouldn’t dismiss vandalism, but said it appeared that the sealant may be peeling off because not enough material was applied.

“I don’t want to totally blame the vandalism,” he said. “If they put more material down, maybe none of this would be an issue.”

“There’s people in the pool industry whose whole life is polyurea, and they should have been called in,” Mr. Flett said. “They should have been there to watch over the project to make sure that these failures weren’t prevalent. I think it was just done too hastily.”

The coating was made by a California-based company called Rhino Linings. Pierre Gagnon, the president and chief executive of Rhino Linings, said in an email that the peeling appeared to be “limited to isolated areas” of the pool.

Algae has bloomed frequently in the pool for decades. Its shallow, stagnant water becomes a petri dish for the aquatic organisms in the summer sun.

Experts said the algae didn’t threaten public health because the water is not intended for swimming or drinking. But, they cautioned, if left unchecked, the blooms could give rise to cyanobacteria, which could be highly toxic to any ducks, dogs or other animals that drink the water.

“Just because it’s green algae this week doesn’t mean that it isn’t going to be cyanobacteria tomorrow,” said Ashley Bair, a senior research developer at Usalco, a company that makes coagulants and other water-treatment chemicals.

Ms. Bair, who spoke to The Times from a gathering of water-treatment experts in Washington, added that the Reflecting Pool was the talk of the conference.

Donald Trump forced to sign a memorandum of surrender with Iran because Iranians will forever control the Strait of Hormuz

New York Times analysis by Neil MacFarquhar

What Changed After Almost Four Months of War❓ Analysts Say Not Much.

A painting of Iran’s first two supreme leaders in Tehran, this month. The second, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed at the start of the U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iran this year. Credit...Arash Khamooshi/Polaris for The New York Times

Neither the war nor the agreement terminated the main threats emanating from Iran, many analysts said.

In igniting a war against Iran  on February 28, 2016, Donald Trump billed the U.S. campaign as an unprecedented step toward transforming the Middle East and terminating the threat from what he called a “wicked, radical dictatorship.”

Roughly 100 days later, as the United States and Iran have reached a somewhat vague memorandum of understanding (MOU) - a.k.a. "surrender", to end the war, skeptics are expressing bafflement over what exactly was transformed.

Neither the war nor the agreement ended what U.S. and Israeli officials regard as the main threats emanating from Iran. 

Although Iran's nuclear program was apparently heavily damaged, it was not eliminated — its fate punted 🏈🦶 to future negotiation.
Moreover, the same goes for Iran's ballistic missiles, which the deal does not address. Iran’s authoritarian regime endured, albeit with new leaders. Its proxies remain a threat to the region. Israel and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia in Lebanon, persisted in attacking each other.

By Saturday, even the most significant immediate result of the deal — Iran’s reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, which Trump had identified as essential — seemed at risk. 

Iran’s military said it was closing the waterway again, because the United States had failed to stop the fighting in Lebanon. The U.S. military contested that, saying the strait remained open as the agreement stipulated.

“This is not a document the United States agreed to because the war demonstrated a new U.S. military superiority,” said Caitlin Talmadge, a professor at M.I.T. who specializes in Persian Gulf security issues. “I think it’s a document that has resulted from the fact that the United States bit off more than it could chew and doesn’t want to escalate.”

That’s a worthy goal, she said. “But it really raises the question of what was achieved here, especially in comparison to the original Iran nuclear deal, negotiated by President Barack Obama.”

For its part, the Islamic Republic is set to receive potentially substantial financial rewards. (HELLO? Like 💲300 billion❗) That is one substantive change, although certainly not one in the United States’ favor. (Ugh....ya'think❓😕😒)

For Tehran, weathering the blistering assaults from the United States and Israel, and demonstrating the ability to retaliate and inflict damage, constituted a victory for them. 

Indeed, aside from the Trump administration, the people crowing most about what transpired were core members of Iran’s regime.

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s parliament and a lead negotiator, hailed a revelation that Iran had taken from the war: that it could exert leverage by controlling the Strait of Hormuz, the crucial transit point for one-fifth of the world’s oil supply.

“This was a potential capacity that had never been activated,” Mr. Ghalibaf said in an interview Wednesday with IRIB, the Iran state broadcaster. “But our enemies — God created them fools 🃏 🤡— turned that potential into reality.”

Although the memorandum allows for free passage of ships for two months, Tehran has threatened to implement transit fees for services, a system that did not exist before the war.

The heart of the memorandum is that Iran will abandon hostility toward the United States and its regional allies, a pillar of the revolution, in exchange for sweeping, if sometimes gradual, economic benefits. They include the lifting of the American naval blockade, a 💲300 billion❗ reconstruction fund to be created by the Gulf Arab states (as if...🙄 duh...like, believe it when we 👀see it), the release of billions of dollar💲 in frozen assets and an end to all American sanctions.

The deal’s ambition, as Vice President JD Vance portrayed it to reporters, went so far as the transformation of Iran’s hostile relations with the United States and much of the region since its 1979, revolution.

“People say the Iranians will never change their behavior. Well, maybe that’s true and if so, they don’t get any of the benefits of the bargain,” said Vance. “But, isn’t it worth trying❓”

Experts on the region are skeptical. Middle Eastern wars tend to breed more radicalization, not less, said Karim Haggag, director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. “The reality is that the region in the aftermath of this conflict will be much more insecure,” he said.

Here is a look at how the memorandum left various countries:

The United States

Vance said the agreement maintained U.S. leverage over Iran and that it could turn financial rewards on and off like a spigot. Many experts were doubtful.

It’s true that Trump broke the American taboo against invading Iran, but in doing so analysts said that he squandered the most powerful tool that Washington had maintained since the Islamic Revolution: the threat of force. The United States used it, and didn’t achieve its goals — a lesson Iran is sure to internalize, analysts said.

In the initial, 12-day war last June, for example, the U.S. military managed to cast a shadow over the long-term viability of Iran’s nuclear program by dispatching long-range bombers to bury nuclear facilities under a mountain of rubble, said Ms. Talmadge of M.I.T.

The more recent war had the opposite effect, she added, since Trump backed off further escalation. “I think the U.S. in some ways undermined the leverage that it had,” Ms. Talmadge said.

At the same time, Iranian attacks on U.S. military bases in the region caused extensive damage, undermining another facet of American leverage, she said, by puncturing the sense that they were inviolable.

And the memorandum has a further stipulation: that unspecified American forces should withdraw from the “proximity” of Iran within 30 days.

“When did we ever negotiate with the Iranians about our force deployments going forward❓” asked Robert S. Ford, a former American ambassador in the region.

Iran

The war wrought widespread devastation, with a reported death toll of 1,700 civilians. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed along with dozens of senior military commanders, and its air defenses proved porous. Reconstructing military and industrial infrastructure will cost hundreds of billions of dollars. Inflation is skyrocketing, and high unemployment could fuel public unrest.

But, the government’s tenacity served to “reinvigorate Iran’s perception of its own security,” said Afshon Ostovar, author of “Wars of Ambition: The United States, Iran, and the Struggle for the Middle East.”

The idea that it will trade its hostility toward the United States and its allies for improved prosperity is a gamble, since it had almost always chosen confrontation previously, analysts said.

Israel

Israel entered the war convinced that it would defang Iran for at least a generation.

Instead, Isreal found itself sidelined by its ally, the United States, in an agreement that ignored its goals, and worse, limited its freedom to attack in Lebanon. Trump has also repeatedly disparaged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, revealing rare disunity in American-Israeli relations at a fraught moment, with Israeli elections approaching.

From an Israeli standpoint, the memorandum is a catastrophe. “It is a collapse of all the strategy that we had regarding Iran,” said Danny Citrinowicz, a retired Israeli intelligence officer who specializes in Iran.

Lebanon

Lebanon is considered by analysts to be the soft underbelly of the memorandum. Hezbollah*alienated many of its mostly Shiite Muslim supporters by dragging the country into two devastating wars — one in support of Hamas in Gaza and the other when Israel attacked Iran. The violence has left thousands of people dead, including almost 4,000 civilians this year, according to the health ministry.

Lack of financial support from Iran for reconstruction augmented public anger. But Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps is working assiduously to restore Hezbollah’s military capacity,💥😔😟 analysts said, and some of the money💰 promised to Tehran for reconstruction could flow to the militia. That gives Hezbollah incentive to respect the agreement.

Both Trump and Vance acknowledged that some violence in Lebanon is likely to continue, but it is not clear how much it would take to trigger a strong American intervention.

The Gulf

The six Arab Gulf states hoped in vain to remain bystanders in the longstanding duel between Israel and Iran. Instead, Iran’s closure of the strait and attacks on their oil infrastructure brought economic turmoil.

Although American interceptors prevented the worst damage, the war has forced Gulf states to rethink their dependence on the United States for security.

Now, there is talk of a “golden bridge” to Iran: mutual investments that were impossible under sanctions. “We can benefit from one another, intertwine interests, to make the cost of returning to war higher,” said Bader Al-Saif, a historian at Kuwait University. “If I have an Iranian plant in Kuwait City, they’re going to think twice before hitting us, right❓”

Overall, though, the memorandum itself was widely seen as encompassing minimal concrete change.

“I’m skeptical that much progress will be made on the nuclear issue now that the U.S. has removed the main leverage that it has,” said Paul Salem, a Middle East analyst, speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “So in a way, this deal is a bit of a nothing burger at the end of this very long and devastating war.”

Shirin Hakim contributed reporting.

Neil MacFarquhar has been a New York Times reporter since 1995, writing about a range of topics from war to politics to the arts, both internationally and in the United States.

Maine Writer post script opinion about Hezbollah- this home grown terrorist organization will never go away and Israel is the organization's perennial enemy. Hezbollah is a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party with an active paramilitary wing. It has been banned by the Lebanese government since March 2026, amid Israel's war on Lebanon. Nevertheless, Iran continues to support the group's ongoing military campaign against Israel. Hezbollah fights Israel primarily to advance its foundational ideology to destroy the Israeli state.

Senator Susan Collins clutching her pearls in "concern" about Mr. Graham Platner but her voting record is dangerous maga

I must make a post about Mr. Graham Platner. Democrats are ☘lucky to have Mr. Platner in the Senate race running against maga Senator Susan Collins.

Echo Facebook essay by Joel Johnson: 

First of all, that stupid tattoo. I have made three films about the holocaust, looked at more than 5,000 still photographs of the Holocaust in the German national archive in Koblinz, spent two weeks in the photo archive at Yad Vashem in Israel looking at thousands of photographs, did a 90 minute PBS special about the French resistance against the Nazis, and I have an entire book about German military uniforms and I did not recognize his tattoo as an SS Totenkopf insignia when I first saw it. The actual Totenkopf insignias are small and silver, and when I saw the large black version on Platner’s chest I did not recognize it. I wish I had a dollar for every tattoo I ever saw that was a bad choice.

But really, and most important, what this guy is about is challenging the very foundations of American politics and economics, which favor the corporations and the rich and leave the working Americans behind. The same message as Bernie Sanders and AOC. This message is very threatening, not just to republicans, but to many main stream democrats as well. His genuine talent as a retail politician is truly remarkable and if American politics is going to change we need guys like this. People love him and Maine voters are going to make him their nominee, and he will probably beat Susan Collins.

As for the piece in the New York Times, whose shocking reveal is that ex-girlfriends are not always the best character references—especially if they are republican operatives—I just think it is shabby journalism. Not a word about his policies, which are the entire reason the guy is running and why Mainers are supporting him, no matter what bullshit is thrown at him. If you got about a thousand men together in a stadium somewhere and asked them “Have any of you ever been an asshole in your life?” I am afraid, everybody who was honest would say “yes”.

So let’s just keep our eye on the ball. If you are a liberal democrat, or better yet, a progressive democrat, you should be grateful that this guy and his long suffering wife are willing to stand out in the force 10 shitstorm being directed at them in order to make America a better place for working people.

And for all the “liberals” clutching their pearls in horror over this guy’s behavior or background, just ask yourself whether you want to have a democratic senator in Maine (and maybe a democratic senate) and a new force in American politics that is less worried about what Yale graduates think and more worried about what the majority of Americans thinks. We are lucky ☘to have this guy in the race.

Hantavirus status report: This virus will continue to mutate and the incubation period is too long to provide rapid response

Report published in the New York Magazine Intelligencer by Nia Prater and Chas Danner.

Julie note- Although I am not a virology expert, my experience preparing for viral epidemics in hospital planning sessions is that viruses mutate.  So, I am not convinced about some of what is reported about what is happening with the Hantavirus today, because, by tomorrow the virus could replicate. That is what viruses do. Nevertheless, the article is a good status report.

An outbreak of the rare and dangerous hantavirus aboard the Dutch-flagged cruise ship MV Hondius has left three passengers dead, forced the medical evacuation of several others, and triggered an international health scare. While the unsettling news has prompted concerns of another widespread virus outbreak akin to COVID-19 or avian flu, the World Health Organization has stressed that the overall public-health risk from the Hondius outbreak is low. Here’s what we know so far.

How did the outbreak start? In a bulletin on Monday, the WHO said that it was first contacted about a “cluster of severe acute respiratory illness” aboard the Hondius on May 2, including two deaths and one passenger who was critically ill. Per the organization, the ship left Ushuaia, Argentina, on April 1 and made numerous stops including mainland Antarctica, Tristan da Cunha, Saint Helena, South Georgia, Nightingale Island, as well as Ascension Island in the South Atlantic Ocean.

In the days since, the number of deaths has risen to three. According to the WHO, the first case was a man presenting with a fever, mild diarrhea, and a headache on April 6; he died on April 11 after developing respiratory distress. The second was a woman who left the ship from Saint Helena on April 24 while reportedly experiencing gastrointestinal symptoms. Her condition worsened while traveling on an April 25 flight to Johannesburg, South Africa, and she passed away after arriving at a hospital on April 26. 

In the third case, a woman died on May 2 after presenting with symptoms on April 28.
The New York Times reports that the first two deaths from the outbreak were a couple, a 70-year-old man from the Netherlands and his 69-year old wife, and the pair had reportedly traveled in South America, specifically Argentina, prior to boarding the ship. PCR testing later confirmed hantavirus infection in the wife’s case. The third fatal case is reported to be a German woman.

According to the Associated Press, Argentina’s Ministry of Health has been tracing the travel of the Dutch couple, who had been on a South American road trip, and the authorities are investigating the possibility that the couple was exposed to hantavirus during a bird-watching trip to a landfill in the southern town of Ushuaia, which is also where they boarded the Hondius.

What is hantavirus? According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, hantaviruses are a family of viruses that humans can contract following contact with rodents, which frequently carry the virus, typically by breathing in particles from their dried saliva, urine, and droppings, like when sweeping a shed where rodents have been living.

Hantavirus infections are typically rare, with an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 cases per year globally, but they can result in severe illness and death. Hantaviruses found in the Americas, also known as New World hantaviruses, can cause hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, which presents with common symptoms like fever, fatigue, and muscle aches before progressing to more severe effects such as shortness of breath and fluid in the lungs. HPS has a fatality rate of 12 to 45 percent depending on the strain.

For variants more common in Europe and Asia, also known as Old World hantaviruses, patients can develop hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome, which can cause kidney failure and has a fatality rate of one to 15 percent.

The strain of hantavirus linked to the cruise ship appears to be what’s known as the Andes strain, which, per the CDC, is common in South America and has been linked to human-to-human transmission. However, transmitting the hantavirus person-to-person is rare and typically requires close contact in an enclosed space. The Washington Post reports that Argentina, which appears to have a connection to this recent outbreak, has seen an increase of hantavirus cases in recent years and is frequently ranked by the WHO as the nation with the highest rate of the virus in Latin America.

Hantavirus also has a long incubation period with symptoms typically appearing a few weeks after infection but sometimes as many as eight weeks after. On Thursday, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO, said during a briefing that it is “possible” more cases could be reported down the line.
There is currently no cure nor widely available vaccine for hantavirus — surviving severe illness caused by the infection requires prompt medical intervention and ICU treatment.
One of the most prominent cases of hantavirus emerged last year after Betsy Arakawa, the wife of renowned actor Gene Hackman, was found to have contracted hantavirus pulmonary syndrome after the pair were found dead in their New Mexico home. Per the New York Times, it’s believed that Arakawa was likely infected from exposure to deer mice, which typically carry the virus in the state. In 2025, three people in Mammoth Lakes, California, died after contracting hantavirus.

For even more information about hantavirus, infectious-disease expert and doctor Céline Gounder has written an excellent explainer here.

On Thursday, Dutch officials confirmed that approximately 40 people from at least 12 different countries departed the ship at St. Helena to return home on April 24 without contract tracing, per the AP. Oceanwide Expeditions has put the figure at around 30 passengers, six of whom are Americans. Ghebreyesus said the organization has notified the 12 different nations, which, in addition to the U.S., are Canada, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, Turky, and the United Kingdom.

Public-health authorities have been working to track the passengers down and perform contact tracing. Two British citizens who left the ship beforehand and returned to the U.K. are self-isolating, as are a small number of their close contacts. Citing Dutch officials, the Dutch news outlet RTL reported that a flight attendant who was aboard the same Johannesburg flight as the cruise passenger who later died from hantavirus is currently experiencing mild symptoms and is being tested at a hospital. France24 reports that a French national is being monitored after traveling on the same flight.
U.S. health officials in Georgia, California, and Arizona confirmed that American passengers from the Hondius are being monitored in their states for infection since returning to the United States, per the New York Times. The Washington Post reports that passengers in Texas and Virginia are also being observed. So far, none of the passengers have shown any symptoms. In a statement, the CDC said it’s “closely monitoring the situation” and that the State Department is “leading a coordinated, whole-of-government response including direct contact with passengers, diplomatic coordination, and engagement with domestic and international health authorities.”
“At this time, the risk to the American public is extremely low,” the statement said.
What is the current status of the ship?
On Monday, Oceanwide Expeditions said there were 149 people onboard the Hondius representing 23 different nationalities. Of the three people who were medically evacuated Wednesday, two were crewmembers who presented with “acute respiratory symptoms” while the third is an asymptomatic individual with a connection to the passenger who passed away on May 2.
On Thursday, the operator shared updated figures regarding the number of passengers at the start of the voyage, saying 114 guests were on board on April 1 when the Hondius left Ushuaia, Argentina.

On April 15, six more guests boarded at Tristan da Cunha, bringing the total to 120 including the one deceased passenger.

As of Wednesday, the Hondius has departed Cape Verde, where it was moored off the coast following the detection of the outbreak, en route to Spain’s Canary Islands, which Oceanwide Expeditions estimates it will reach following three to four days of travel. On Thursday, the operator estimated that the Hondius would reach the port of Granadilla, Tenerife, early Sunday.
The remaining people aboard the ship are currently asymptomatic and are reportedly taking precautions like wearing masks and practicing social distancing.
The WHO confirmed Thursday that one of its experts boarded the ship in Cabo Verde and was later joined by two doctors from the Netherlands and an expert from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. The four will assess all the remaining people on board and will stay on board the vessel until it reaches the Canary Islands.
What are experts saying? On Wednesday, Ghebreyesus signaled that the outbreak doesn’t pose any wider risk so far. “At this stage, the overall public-health risk remains low,” he said.
Maria Van Kerkhove, a top infectious-disease epidemiologist at the WHO, echoed that sentiment on Tuesday. “This is not the next COVID, but it is a serious infectious disease,” she said, per the Associated Press. “Most people will never be exposed to this.”In an interview with STAT News, Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Diseases Research and Policy, put it simply. “It’s not the next pandemic,” he said.
Osterholm continued, “This is one where everyone should just take a breath and know that we are going to bring this to resolution. With adequate respiratory protection, [they could] very well stop all transmission from this point forward.”
Stanford infectious-disease doctor and epidemiologist Abraar Karan also emphasized in an X thread that this poses nothing close to a COVID-like threat, though this particular hantavirus outbreak may be worse than others:
The hantavirus outbreak won’t be anything like COVID — I think that is the wrong comparison. But it can be worse (or at least more complicated) than the usual local outbreaks that occur in Argentina.
First, I suspect there could be a few more generations of infection. Those who left the ship before the outbreak was detected pose the key risk because they may have exposed others unknowingly via close contact. Case 2 who flew on the plane to Johannesburg and the Switzerland case seem to be the only reported ones thus far. Close contact is the key point here.
So it’s likely that more cases will be detected, but there is no reason for any kind of widespread panic. 

"Vaccinate your children against measles. The shots work and are safe and nobody needs to die from this disease," Dr. Paul Offit

"To some extent, vaccines have been a victim of their own success. They made many disease outbreaks a thing of the past, and people have forgotten how terrible those outbreaks were. We are at growing risk of experiencing that misery again." 

New York Times Editorial Board

Measles Is Back❗

The resurgence of measles — a terrible disease that can swell the brain and cause permanent disabilities or death — is alarming enough on its own. There have been more than 1,700 cases reported in the United States already this year, up from about 70 per year in the early 2000s. Three children died last year.

The rise of measles may also be a harbinger of something even worse, public officials say.

 “Measles is basically a canary in the coal mine for our entire system,” says Dr. Scott Harris, the state health officer in Alabama’s Department of Public Health. “When it surges like this, it signals that our vaccination programs are starting to fail, and that other diseases won’t be far behind.” Already, cases of whooping cough have surged, too. And after two Florida children died of Hib, a bacterial infection, epidemiologists worry that disease is resurgent.

The most maddening aspect of this situation is that it was almost certainly avoidable. It stems in large part from a yearslong scare campaign by vaccine conspiracists including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who now serves as President Trump’s secretary of health and human services. Since taking office, Mr. Kennedy has turned his damaging ideas into federal policy. He has downplayed the seriousness of measles outbreaks; promoted dubious treatments and prevention strategies; replaced an expert panel that shaped federal vaccine recommendations with people who share his views but, for the most part, lack relevant experience or expertise; and made substantial changes to the childhood vaccine schedule without even convening that same group.

There is some reason to hope that the political climate is shifting against RFKjr, the vaccine conspiracy theorist with no medical experience who is the Secretary of Health and Human Services. 

In March, a federal judge blocked his changes to the childhood vaccine schedule, calling them arbitrary, capricious and most likely illegal, and the Trump administration has not yet appealed. Last week, Donald Trump announced the nomination of Dr. Erica Schwartz, a well-qualified Navy officer who supports vaccines, to run the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

Kennedy, appearing at several congressional hearings over the past week, tried to soft-pedal his views at times and even acknowledged that his department “has advised every child” to get the measles shot.

But, unfortunately Kennedy does not appear to have changed his actual views, and the threat to vaccines remains substantial. 

The military recently eliminated its flu vaccine requirement, for example. And the C.D.C. disingenuously canceled the publication of a study documenting large, continuing benefits from the Covid-19 vaccines.

Reversing vaccine skepticism will require a dedicated effort. State officials and members of Congress, especially Republicans, should speak up. So should doctors, nurses, religious leaders and corporate leaders. Protecting Americans from deadly, preventable diseases should not be a partisan issue, despite the attempts by opportunists like Kennedy to make it one.

Studies have suggested that only a small share of parents are hardened anti-vaxxers who refuse all shots. Many more are merely anxious and looking for trusted guides or good information. The key is to meet these families where they are. Health workers can listen empathetically and provide easily understandable information. They can be careful to avoid using too many statistics and jargon and instead tell human stories. Hearing about even one child who died from a preventable disease can sometimes be persuasive.

Skepticism about vaccinations began to grow in the early 2000s, in both the United States and some other wealthy countries. It sprang partly from a 1998, study that linked vaccines to autism and has since been discredited. 

In fact, the unfounded worries have been part of a broader rise in conspiratorial politics, fueled by a combination of partisan polarization, social media and other factors.

The Covid pandemic once seemed as if it might reinstall confidence. The virus was a new and terrifying pathogen for which scientists developed a safe, highly effective vaccine in record time. It offered a case study in the power of vaccination. But sadly Covid, too, soon became subject to political polarization.

Many conservatives questioned the vaccine in irrational and self-defeating ways. Liberals rightly embraced the vaccine but sometimes went so far as to be alienating — insisting that children needed annual boosters (which most countries did not), calling for the firing of unvaccinated people and more. The combination played into many Americans’ pre-existing uncertainty about how much to trust public health experts. In the years since, vaccination rates for other diseases have slipped further.

A vast majority of American children — more than 90 percent by most estimates — are still vaccinated for measles. 

Nevertheless, it takes a threshold of 95 percent to stop the illness from spreading, and in too many communities, the rates are lower than that already, or falling fast. In Idaho, just 78.5 percent of kindergartners were vaccinated for measles last school year. Nationwide vaccination rates for several other diseases, including flu, hepatitis B, rotavirus, Hib, polio and whooping cough, are also down.

A policy known as “shared clinical decision making,” which Mr. Kennedy put in place for some shots in January and remains in effect, has proved pernicious. The practice sounds innocuous. It involves doctors discussing options with their patients and then allowing the patients to decide which course to pursue. But doctors normally reserve it for cases in which a treatment’s benefits are unclear, which is not the case with standard childhood vaccines. “It implies that either decision, to take it or not to take it, is equally OK, and that’s not the case with vaccines,” Dr. Harris said.

Doctors now must spend more time rebutting misinformation and making the case for vaccines. Doctors report that hesitancy is spreading from vaccines to other medical staples. Last year, for instance, at least three infants died after their parents opted out of a routine vitamin K injection meant to prevent internal bleeding.

The fallout from declining vaccination rates will not be confined to those who choose not to get vaccinated. For one thing, newborns cannot be vaccinated against most diseases and rely on the rest of society to provide herd immunity. For another thing, no vaccine is perfect: About 3 percent of people vaccinated against measles remain vulnerable to infection, often without realizing it.

Immunocompromised people, like those on chemotherapy, can also be vulnerable. They, too, rely on herd immunity. A return of vaccine-preventable diseases would also strain hospitals and doctors’ offices and require quarantines, school closures and other disruptive safety protocols.

What can be done? So long as Kennedy remains health secretary and insists on making up his own facts, the options will be limited. The country needs vaccine policies based on scientific consensus and federal investments in both vaccine distribution and disease treatment.

Nonetheless, other leaders can step forward to mitigate the damage. Governors and members of Congress from both parties can issue clear messages about the benefits of vaccines. As Dr. Paul Offit of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia puts it: “Vaccinate your children against measles. The shots work, and are safe and nobody needs to die from this disease.”

States and local governments can also adopt helpful policies that counteract the RFKjr's pseudoscience. 

One tangible step would be to make vaccines easier to obtain by opening more pop-up clinics in schools and community centers. It would also be useful to tighten the requirements for vaccine exemptions. Several states require families to receive information about vaccines before they can receive nonmedical exemptions, and more should follow. Families should also have to apply individually for any exemption, rather than being able to receive a blanket exemption covering all shots.

The arguments against vaccines have been circulating for more than a century, even if social media has allowed them to spread more easily. The claims can seem compelling but can be debunked. Vaccines prevent three million to five million deaths globally each year. They are not toxic and they do not cause autism, full stop.

To some extent, vaccines have been a victim of their own success. They made many disease outbreaks a thing of the past, and people have forgotten how terrible those outbreaks were. We are at growing risk of experiencing that misery again.