Donald Trump cannot fool all of the people all of the time: Donald John Trump signed an Iran surrender MOU at Versailles

Failure of Iran war reveals Trump’s inability to deal with America’s security needs.  Echo opinion published in the Philadelphia Inquirer by Trudy Rubin.

Scary❗😱 Donald Trump's ego-based foreign policy is making the U.S. more vulnerable to our enemies at home and overseas.

“You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” That maxim is often attributed to Abraham Lincoln, but it’s occasionally credited to the great American circus showman P.T. Barnum. It has special relevance when applied to Donald Trump, who has outdone Barnum in self-promotion.

Donald John Trump has had astonishing success in fooling some of the people all the time, from his foundational lie that the 2020, election was stolen through his daily blast of falsehoods about everything from the economy to the financing of his ballroom.

Yet, with his blatant efforts to bamboozle all the people about his Iran deal, Trump may have finally reached the point where most Americans realize he is (and always has been..."bone spurs"...) a fraud.

For starters, Trump’s claim that he has reached a “Great Deal [that] will bring Peace and Security to the whole Region” is flat out fraudulent. The Iran war has laid bare the incompetence of a U.S. leader who assumes that force alone produces victory.

The U.S. and Israel may have destroyed much of Iran’s military, but Tehran has denied them a geopolitical win, which all the world’s leaders (except for Trump) recognize.

And most Americans will soon see this for themselves.

Until the U.S. joined Israel in the February attack on Iran, Tehran’s religious and military leaders had never tried to close the Strait of Hormuz for fear of arousing American wrath. But after Trump openly called for regime change, they had nothing to lose.

Despite its military losses, Iran proved (as has Ukraine) that a smaller country using unconventional means (drones, mines, a willingness to absorb pain) can hold off a superpower.

Moreover, Tehran is still insisting it will charge ships fees for transiting the strait after the 60-day ceasefire extension expires, contrary to Trump’s claim that the strait will be “toll free.” And the world knows that, if pushed, Tehran can close the strait again.

Trump now looks like a chump.

Trump alienated Mideast allies, including Gulf states, which took the brunt of Iran’s military revenge. He encouraged America’s adversaries, including Russia and China, by revealing his lack of any long-term strategy.

Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping had only to watch as the U.S. military squandered huge numbers of precious missiles against Iranian drones, leaving them in such short supply that the U.S. military is exposed in the Indo-Pacific.

Moscow can only toast Trump’s blindness, as the U.S. cancels promised sales of mid- and long-range missiles to Europe for defense against Russia and to pass on to Ukraine. 

This horribly bad decision left Ukrainians defenseless against Russia’s rain of cruise missiles on civilians — and on a thousand-year center of Orthodox Christianity, the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra monastery and its golden-domed Dormition Cathedral.

Not a word of protest by Trump or MAGA’s white Christian nationalists who admire Putin’s religiosity. Instead, POTUS has bizarrely praised Putin’s help with Iran. Could he possibly be referring to Moscow’s sharing of intelligence on U.S. targets with Tehran❓

Donald John Trump signed the surrender MOU with Iran on June 17, 2026, at the Palace of Versailles in France, the same place where Germany surrendered after World War One.

But, never mind. Let’s get to the surrender MOU document Trump signed electronically* on Sunday. It was not a peace deal. Rather, it was a so-called Memorandum of Understanding — “about a page and half … a very general document,” according to Vice President JD Vance.

Contrary to Trump’s grandiose claims, this memorandum kicks all the main questions about dismantling Iran’s nuclear program down the road to future negotiations over the next 60 days.

By keeping the document secret at least until Friday, the president is relentlessly trying to frame his defeat as an astounding victory in hopes this will shape the thinking of the cult MAGA faithful.

From Trump’s own words, however, and those of his henchmen, it’s already clear he has abandoned most of the stated goals of this war.

Let’s look at what we already know.

1. There will be no regime change, as POTUS called for on the opening day of the war, urging the Iranians to rise up. Trump now bizarrely calls Iran’s new leadership pragmatists in a New York Times interview, labeling them “smarter” and more “rational” than those who were assassinated. Yet the Revolutionary Guard’s military commanders now running the show are more hardline and more confident about defying the U.S. president.

2. As so far revealed, the negotiating framework to end Iran’s nuclear program sounds no better than President Barack Obama’s 2015, agreement. POTUS bragged in the Times that the agreement would ensure Iran “cannot develop or purchase a nuclear weapon.” But Tehran has asserted for decades that it would not do so and made the same pledge on the first page of Obama’s deal, known as the JCPOA.

Trump Always Chickens Out

Although Trump promised to eliminate Iran’s nuclear program entirely, he appears to have backtracked significantly, (a.k.a. "TACO Trump) now saying that Iran “can never go beyond a certain amount” of enrichment that could be used for military purposes. Again, this echoes the JCPOA, which limited enrichment to 3.67%, an amount that can be used in power reactors, but not for a bomb.

As for how long Iran would have to limit enrichment, Trump hinted that he might settle for a 15-year suspension, which is the same time limit the JCPOA required❗ (But in a contradiction, he said the limit would be “forever,” although there is no sign Tehran would agree to this.)

If POTUS hadn’t pulled out of the JCPOA in 2015, the 15 years would have extended until 2030, and Iran would now have no highly enriched uranium.

The flaw in the JCPOA was the 15-year sunset, after which Iran could have restarted enrichment, but Trump seems headed toward a similar limitation.

As for the 11.5 tons of enriched uranium Iran produced since Trump junked the JCPOA — including a half ton of nearly bomb-grade nuclear fuel — the president has talked about reducing its purity level (known as downblending), possibly inside Iran. A far cry from previous demands for removing it entirely.

In the Obama deal, 97% of Iran’s stockpile was removed outside the country to Russia. No sign that Trump’s deal will do as well.

Moreover, the joint Israel/U.S. 12-day war against Iran in 2025 had buried Iran’s enriched uranium, and as Trump has recently admitted, U.S. satellites could see if the Iranians tried to remove it. Negotiations in February, mediated by Oman, were reportedly headed toward a better deal than Trump will ever achieve, if he achieves any deal at all.

Trump killed those talks by starting his choice to wage an illegal war.

So, if you parse Trump’s own admissions, there was no need for his four-month war, which has cost America 13 dead and hundreds of billions of dollars — not to mention 3,000 Iranian dead and severe damage to the global economy.

Yet the outpouring of Trump lies this week designed to disguise his failure roll on.

While the president insists that Iran will get no economic benefits until a deal is concluded, it appears that Tehran will be able to immediately restart exporting oil during negotiations. And there are reports that other Gulf states such as the United Arab Emirates or Qatar may release Iranian funds held in their banks immediately, enabling Iran to benefit economically before any nuclear deal.


Moreover, a future Trump deal doesn’t cover an end to Iran’s missile buildup, or the end of support for proxies, sins for which Trump never stops excoriating President Obama. Also, Israel and Hezbollah aren’t party to the deal and are likely to keep fighting.

When the details of Trump’s non-deal are revealed, he will try to paper over his failure with more prevarications. But as Barnum noted, “you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”

*Donald John Trump signed the surrender MOU at Versailles on June 17, 2026.  

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.

Donald Trump is illegally using naval blockades without cause but he cannot find an exit out of the Iran War

Blockades Don’t Work the Way Trump Thinks

Echo opinion essay published in The New York Times by 
By Jennifer Kavanagh,  director of military analysis at Defense Priorities.

It shouldn’t have been surprising when Donald Trump announced on April 12 that the United States would begin a blockade of Iranian ports to force Tehran to accept a peace deal.

Trump prides himself on being unpredictable. But he is a creature of habit, and blockades have quickly emerged as one of his preferred military tactics since his return to the White House. 

Unfortunately, he already used them against Venezuela and Cuba. Now his administration has expanded the Iran embargo, and started to seize Iran-linked ships on the high seas.

But, Iran’s grip on the Strait of Hormuz was not the reason the United States started this war. Before the conflict, traffic passed freely through the narrow waterway. But Tehran’s effective closure of the strait since the United States and Israel attacked two months ago has emerged as the war’s most bedeviling problem and one Trump is desperate to fix. He hopes that by instituting a blockade of his own, he can choke Iran’s economy and force the country’s leaders to reopen the strait and accept Washington’s terms of surrender.

This is unlikely to work for the same reasons the United States finds itself facing strategic defeat by a weaker adversary: a mismatch of stakes and time horizons. While Iran has gained the upper hand in this conflict by extending and surviving what it considers an existential war, Trump wants a fast and decisive victory, something a blockade cannot deliver. A blockade may impose costs on Iran’s economy and population, but it will not deal the quick knockout blow the Trump administration seeks.


Blockades are designed to work slowly, with pressure accumulating over time. At the beginning of the American Civil War, for example, President Abraham Lincoln ordered a blockade of ports across the Confederacy, targeting some 3,500 miles of coastline. It had the desired effect, eventually cutting Southern cotton exports by as much as 90 percent and severely damaging the Southern economy. But it did not result in a rapid end to the war: Fighting between North and South continued for four years.

A similar story played out during the British naval blockade of Germany in World War I. Instituted almost immediately after the war began in 1914, it aimed to limit Germany’s access to essentials like food, medicine and materials that might support the war effort. 

The blockade imposed severe hardship on the German people, contributing to hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, and hampered military operations. But Germany did not immediately surrender. The war endured until the end of 1918.

That blockades often fail to quickly change an adversary’s behavior is something Trump and his advisers should know. 

Earlier this year, the United States started interdicting oil shipments to Cuba in an effort to force Havana to make political and economic concessions. The island is now on the brink of humanitarian collapse, but the Cuban regime has yet to yield. The U.S. blockade of Venezuela’s oil exports was similarly ineffective: Trump announced it in December 2025, part of a monthslong pressure campaign to force President Nicolás Maduro to step down. When a few weeks of blockade failed to elicit any compromise, Mr. Trump had to escalate further, seizing Mr. Maduro and his wife in a dangerous military raid.

Iran may prove even more resilient. The blockade has reduced the country’s oil revenues to a fraction of their prewar levels, but it is likely to be some time before the consequences become untenable for Iran’s regime. In the near term, Tehran will continue to receive oil revenue from shipments that left its ports weeks ago, and at least 34 tankers with links to Iran appear to have slipped through the blockade. These and any future successful exports can be sold at higher prices, which may continue to rise as the war drags on.

To prevent this, the administration has said that the U.S. military will pursue any ship helping Iran, anywhere in the world, a move that is of ambiguous legality under international law. 

To meet the legal standard, any blockade must be deemed “effective,” meaning it is carried out with enough military power to be consistently and impartially enforced; has clearly defined geographic limits; and includes provisions for humanitarian relief. The expanded U.S. blockade meets none of these requirements. It has no geographic boundaries or humanitarian provisions, and the U.S. Navy’s limited capacity to interdict container ships and tankers means it will have to choose which cargoes to intercept or focus on specific regions. It cannot, therefore, be “effective.” 

In the end, most Iranian oil shipments that are already at sea will almost certainly make it to their destinations.

At home, Iran has other ways to mitigate the effects of the blockade. Recent estimates suggest Iran has about 90 million barrels of available oil storage capacity, enough for at least two months of production, before it must make production cuts that risk permanent damage to its oil infrastructure. 

Tehran also has reserves of food and other essentials, and land-based trade routes that it can fall back on if needed for imports of some commodities and even some oil exports. Iran can likely endure the U.S. blockade for months without facing economic collapse. Even then, its leaders might choose to fight on rather than agree to American terms they perceive as a compromise of Iranian sovereignty.

For Trump, this timeline is likely to be unacceptable. His impatience with the war is evident in his increasingly erratic Truth Social posts and near-constant crazy assertions that the war is already over.

His sense of urgency is understandable. Not only is the war deeply unpopular in the United States, but its effects on the American and global economies are real — and likely to grow. The longer the impasse lasts, the more severe fuel and fertilizer shortages will become across East Asia and Europe, and the more Gulf state oil exporters will suffer. A prolonged blockade will also push global oil prices higher, increasing U.S. inflation and torpedoing Trump’s affordability pitch in the upcoming midterm elections.

Instead of stripping Iran of its most important source of leverage — control of the Strait of Hormuz — Trump’s blockade may play into the Islamic republic’s hands. The blockade harms Iran’s economic future, but may lead to a longer, costlier war for the United States, severe and lasting damage to U.S. and global markets and further domestic political damage for Trump.

In a test of wills, Tehran has the advantage and a higher pain tolerance. With their survival on the line, Iran’s leaders can afford to be patient.

Donald Trump gave a failed April Fool's speech. It was no joke. Obviously Trump is lost and cannot find a way out of the mess he created,

Maybe Trump Should Not Have Given This Speech. His messed up "speech" raised more questions than it answered about the war in Iran. By Tom Nichols. Americans have been waiting for Donald Trump to address the nation and explain why the country is at war. 

Echo opinion about Donald Trump's failed April Fool's Day stupidity speech about Iran. 

Published by Tom Nichols in The Atlantic magazine. 

For weeks, Donald Trump offered only snippets and sound bites about his decision to lead the United States into another conflict in the Middle East; his prime-time address on April 1, 2026, might as well have been a sick April Fool's joke, His (so called) speech was, one assumes, aimed at informing and reassuring the American public.

Maybe he’d have been better off not trying. (IOW, Trump was a "Fool", for trying when he is not capable of explaining anything, much less trying to describe a reason to go to war.)

Trump’s critics (including me) castigated him for refusing to go on television and provide a comprehensive explanation about the war to the American people. But, given his April Fool's performance  his address did not come across as a wartime speech but instead was a disjointed series of complaints, brags, and exaggerations (along with a few outright lies) delivered by a man who looked and sounded tired. After his 19 minutes on the air—brisk by Trump’s standards—Americans could be forgiven for being even more concerned now than they were only a few days ago.

A speech that should have been a clear explanation about why the United States is fighting a nation of 92 million people began, instead, in shambolic style. He discussed the operation that captured the president of Venezuela, perhaps hoping to make listeners believe that the Iran war will be a similarly short operation. 

Trump then said that Iran has taken losses never seen “in the history of warfare”—as if the destruction of, say, the Axis in World War II had never happened.

Trump offered little that was new, instead repeating the same lines from a short video presentation the night that he ordered attacks on the Islamic Republic, more than one month ago. He listed—rightly and correctly—the various offenses that the fanatical Iranian regime has perpetrated against the United States and other countries for nearly a half century. 

Nevertheless, he couldn’t help himself: He patted himself on the back for killing the Iranian terror mastermind Qassem Soleimani in his first term, and for canceling the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by Barack Obama. (“Barack Hussein Obama,” of course.) The United States, Trump claimed in a strange moment, had emptied out all the banks in Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia as part of that deal—“all the cash they had”—to send that “green, green” currency to Iran.

But, back to the war Trump illegally launched: What is America fighting for❓ Trump insisted that Iran must never be allowed to get a nuclear weapon. Almost no one would disagree with this general point—certainly I don’t—but Trump presented no evidence that Iran was nearing the nuclear threshold. 

Instead, Trump simply asserted that the Iranian mullahs were going to get a nuclear weapon and that the United States had to stop them: In other words, he admitted to launching a preventive war based on something that might happen one day.

Trump, however, then undercut his own point by assuring the country that Iran’s “nuclear dust” was buried under mountains of rubble, inaccessible since the great success of last June’s joint Israeli-American strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. The Iranians would never be allowed to excavate any of it, he said.

So, then, perhaps the war was about regime change, which would be the surest way to stop every evil plan gestating in Tehran, including nuclear weapons and terrorist plots. Well, no, it turns out, the war is not about that either. 🙄Trump explicitly denied that the goal was to bring down the Iranian theocracy—a staggering claim given his exhortations to the Iranian people on the first night of the war that their hour of liberation was at hand. 

After denying that the U.S. goal was regime change, he then claimed that regime change had now already happened because so many Iranian leaders have been killed.

In addition to ending Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Trump laid out three other goals that he said were now within reach: neutralizing Iran’s ability to project power anywhere through terrorism, destroying the Iranian navy, and eliminating Iran’s missile stocks and production capabilities. As with so many other Trump promises, he said that  these goals would be accomplished in two to three weeks. 

How he will do all of this was left unclear, other than that he will hit Iran “extremely hard.”

Meanwhile, Tehran still controls the important Strait of Hormuz. Trump said only that other nations should go in, clear the strait, and take Iran’s oil. He chided Americans for their impatience; the two world wars, and conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq took longer than the current war, he said. (BTW, the outcomes of all three of those wars were disasters. Korea war is still not settled, Vietnam collapsed, Iraq was based on a lie, to destroy "weapons of mass destruction" that did not exist.)

Trump He also lied when he waved away any economic concerns. Everything will get better, he promised, telling viewers that only a year ago America was a “dead and crippled country” that he personally rescued. 

Oddly, Trump claimed that the United States has never been more economically prepared for a conflict—the “little journey,” as he called it—like the one he has led against Iran.

Trump also said things that might come back to haunt him. He vowed not to let Israel or America’s friends in the Persian Gulf “get hurt or fail in any way, shape, or form,” as if Iran were not already inflicting damage on them. 

And, Trump assured Americans that gas prices would come down. (They might, but not anytime soon.) He threatened, yet again, to bomb all of Iran’s electrical plants, a likely war crime if carried out with the completeness that Trump promised, should Iran refuse to … well, do whatever it is he thinks they should do. “We are unstoppable,” he said, noting that U.S. forces were in combat against “one of the most powerful countries.” (This, too, is nonsense: It takes nothing away from U.S.-military valor to admit that Iran was at best a second-tier power even before the war.) 

America might be unstoppable, but Donald Trump is obviously at loose ends now that the Iranians have a chokehold on a major part of the world’s energy supply.

Maybe the only bright spots in the speech were in the things the president did not say. He did not, as many observers expected, prepare Americans for the introduction of ground forces into Iran. (If he now goes ahead with such an operation, he will have betrayed the public by misleading them about the course of the war.) And he did not eviscerate

NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and threaten to pull out of the alliance, as some expected him to do because of his ongoing anger at major European powers’ unwillingness to join a war they did not start.

If Donald Trump meant to be reassuring, however, he missed the mark. The reality, as best we can tell, is that Trump fully expected the Iranian regime to collapse in a matter of days or weeks, and he is now flummoxed to find out that a major war is a lot more complicated than he—or (the failed) Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth—realized. The president’s delivery tonight was hardly a confidence-building exercise. He was, as he himself might say, low energy—mumbling and lapsing into the repetitive phrases that come out when he’s riffing on a point instead of reading the speech in front of him. (I lost count of how many times he said “like nobody’s ever seen” and “decimated” and “never before.”)

Donald Trump is looking like he is lost and downtrodden. Perhaps he should have stayed off the podium for a bit longer, rather than display how adrift he is to the American public and the world.

Donald Trump violates the Constitution yet again launches illegal war against Iran but Republicans have their fingers up their asses

Donald Trump’s Attack on Iran Is Reckless

Echo editorial published in The New York Times editorial:

In his 2024, presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised voters that he would end wars, not start them. Over the past year, he has instead ordered military strikes in seven nations. His appetite for military intervention grows with the eating.

Now he has ordered a new attack against the Islamic Republic of Iran, in cooperation with Israel, and Trump said it would be much more extensive than the targeted bombing of nuclear facilities in June. Yet, he started this war without explaining to the American people and the world why he was doing so. 

Nor has he involved Congress, which the Constitution grants the sole power to declare war. He instead posted a video at 2:30 a.m. Eastern on Saturday, shortly after bombing began, in which he said that Iran presented “imminent threats” and called for the overthrow of its government. His rationale is dubious, and making his case by video in the middle of the night is unacceptable.

Among his justifications is the elimination of Iran’s nuclear program, which is a worthy goal. But Mr. Trump declared that program “obliterated” by the strike in June, a claim belied by both U.S. intelligence and this new attack. The contradiction underscores how little regard he has for his duty to tell the truth when committing American armed forces to battle. It also shows how little faith American citizens should place in his assurances about the goals and results of his growing list of military adventures.

Trump’s approach to Iran is reckless. His goals are ill-defined. Trump failed to line up the international and domestic support that would be necessary to maximize the chances of a successful outcome. He disregarded both domestic and international law for warfare.

The Iranian regime, to be clear, deserves no sympathy. It has wrought misery since its revolution 47 years ago — on its own people, on its neighbors and around the world. It massacred thousands of protesters this year. It imprisons and executes political dissidents. It oppresses women, L.G.B.T.Q. people and religious minorities. Its leaders have impoverished their own citizens while corruptly enriching themselves. They have proclaimed “Death to America” since coming to power and killed hundreds of U.S. service members in the region, as well as bankrolled terrorism that has killed civilians in the Middle East and as far away as Argentina.

Iran’s government presents a distinct threat because it combines this murderous ideology with nuclear ambitions. Iran repeatedly defied international inspectors over the years. Since the June attack, the government has shown signs of restarting its pursuit of nuclear weapons technology. American presidents of both parties have rightly made a commitment to prevent Tehran from getting a bomb.

We recognize that fulfilling this commitment could justify military action at some point. For one thing, the consequences of allowing Iran to follow the path of North Korea — and acquire nuclear weapons after years of exploiting international patience — are too great. For another, the costs of confronting Iran over its nuclear program look less imposing than they once did.

Iran, as David Sanger of The Times recently explained, “is going through a period of remarkable military, economic and political weakness.” Since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, Israel has reduced the threats from Hamas and Hezbollah (two of Iran’s terrorist proxies), attacked Iran directly and, with help from allies, mostly repelled its response. The new recognition of Iran’s limitations helped give rebels in Syria the confidence to march on Damascus and oust the horrific Assad regime, a longtime Iranian ally. Iran’s government did almost nothing to intervene. This recent history demonstrates that military action, for all its awful costs, can have positive consequences.

A responsible American president could make a plausible argument for further action against Iran. The core of this argument would need to be a clear explanation about the strategy, as well as the justification for attacking now, even though Iran does not appear close to having a nuclear weapon. This strategy would involve a promise to seek approval from Congress and to collaborate with international allies.

Trump is not even attempting this (professionally responsible) approach. Instead, Trump is telling the American people and the world that he expects their blind trust. He has not earned that trust.

He instead treats allies with disdain. He lies constantly, including about the results of the June attack on Iran. He has failed to live up to his own promises for solving other crises in Ukraine, Gaza and Venezuela. He has fired senior military leaders for failing to show fealty to his political whims. When his appointees make outrageous mistakes — such as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth 🤢 sharing advanced details of a military attack on the Houthis, an Iranian-backed group, on an unsecured group chat — Trump shields them from accountability. His administration appears to have violated international law by, among other things, disguising a military plane as a civilian plane and shooting two defenseless sailors who survived an initial attack.

A responsible approach would also involve a detailed conversation with the American people about the risks. Iran remains a heavily militarized country. Its medium-range missiles may have failed to do much damage to Israel last year, but it maintains many short-range missiles that could overwhelm any defense system and hit Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other nearby countries. Mr. Trump did acknowledge this in his overnight video, saying, “The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost and we may have casualties.”

He should have had the courage to say so in his State of the Union address on Tuesday, among other settings. When a president asks American troops and diplomats to risk their lives, he should not be coy about it.

Recognizing Trump’s irresponsibility, some members of Congress have taken steps to constrain him on Iran. In the House, Representatives Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, and Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, have proposed a resolution meant to prevent Trump from starting a war without congressional approval. The resolution makes clear that Congress has not authorized an attack on Iran and demands the withdrawal of American troops within 60 days. 

Senator Tim Kaine, 😇Democrat of Virginia, and Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, are sponsoring a similar measure in their chamber. The start of hostilities should not dissuade legislators from passing these bills. A robust assertion of authority by Congress is the best way to constrain Donald Trump.  #ImpeachTrumpNOW 

Obituary - Argo: The Canadian who helped Americans escape Iran

Published in The Week, Ocboer 30, 2015 and elsewhere:

Ken Taylor (1934-2015) the former Canadian ambassador known for his role in the Iran hostage crisis, died.

Belatedly, I learned about this important Canadian's contribution to the safety of our American embassy personnel when we saw the wonderful movie "Argo".  

Ambassador Ken Taylor (1934-2015)

Taylor played a key part in what became known as the "Canadian Caper," a covert operation by the Canadian government and the CIA to rescue six American diplomats who eluded capture during the 1979 seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

The episode was made famous again by the release of the 2012 hit movie "Argo," loosely based on the real-life drama.
Ken Taylor 1934-2015

When Islamist radicals stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979, nobody could have guesssed that Canada's ambassador  to Iran would become a hero of the ensuing crisis. He was a 45 year old diplomat, on his first ambassadorial posting who had spent much of his career as a trade commissioner, negotiating grain deals. But, when Taylor learned about six Americans who had fled the embassy phoned him and asked for help, he didn't hesitate. As portrayed in the 2012, film Argo, Taylor and his deputy secretly harbored the four U.S. officials plus two of their wives in their diplomatic residences for almost three months, while arranging a daring operation to spirit them out of the contry. He was, as fellow Canadian diplomat Roger Lucy put it, "the right man in the wrong place at the right time."

Born in Calgary, Alberta, Taylor joined the Canadian Foreign Service in 1959, "and had postings in Karachi, Pakistan, and London before going to Tehran," said The Washington Post.  When the Iranian students overran the U.S. Embassy and took more than 60 Americans hostage, they didn't realize that six others were missing and moving from one hiding spot to another in Tehran.  

After considering various ways of sneaking the American out of the country, Taylor eventually agreed to the CIA's (Central Intelligence Agency's) bold plan. As told in the movie, they used false passports. The fugitives managed to leave Iran by pretending to be location scouts for a science fiction movie called Argo.  In fact, Taylor played a much bigger role in the "Canadian Caper" than Ben Affleck's film suggested, said the Toronto Globe and Mail.  He pushed his government to provide the Americans with false Canadian passports and sent his staff to test airport security. "We received some help from the CIA," taylor said. "But quite honestly, it was a Canadian-based and Canadian-executed operation."

The plan went off without a hitch, and the same day the Americans left, "Taylor and his remaining staff quickly closed the embassy and fled Iran themselves," said The Ottowa Citizen.  

Ambassador Taylor retired from diplomacy in 1984, and moved to the U.S., where strangers oftn shook his hand to thank him.  "I enjoy that, of course," Taylor said.  "It is a sense of saying to Canad: This is what you did.".

His son said, "He always liked to say that anybody else would have done exactly what he had done. On the other hand, he did it," Taylor's son, Douglas Taylor, told CBC News. "And I don't think it was just simply a fact of his being there. It was, you know, a reflection of his character, and how he was able to handle an extremely difficult situation."

Thank you Ambassador Taylor.  May you rest in peace.