Jeffrey Blehar of National Review Online has little good to say about the president’s policies toward Iran.
As it happens, Monday was another big day of note: the 60-day deadline for President Trump’s memorandum of understanding with Iran. You know, the one that was supposed to buy us a window to tidily resolve that whole “self-inflicted quagmire in the Middle East” thing that Trump swore he’d avoid yet somehow managed to stumble into — again. To mark the occasion (and with no deal in sight), Trump idly responded by threatening to bomb Oman, a third party guilty primarily of being located across the Strait of Hormuz from Iran. Then he went back to grumbling about Fox News’ coverage of his “Military Complex/Ballroom site.”
Don’t worry, Trump won’t bomb Oman. He won’t do much of anything except whine on Truth Social about how strong he is. Because, in truth, Trump is a patsy, a bad businessman; an easily duped stooge currently being fleeced by Persians far more sophisticated about geopolitical realities than he is, with the patience to match. As I have only occasionally pointed out in these pages since late February — because nobody wants to read it and I don’t want to write it — the Iran war is an episode of modern American history comparable in its shame only to the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979. . . . and look at that common denominator.
Only when Trump is gone from office will the Republican Party feel comfortable to acknowledge most of this — which is why Trump’s presidential legacy will be a fraught one even for his biggest defenders, regardless of what he does or has done domestically. (The executive orders we cheered will be repealed on Day One of the next Democratic administration, alas. The undoing of the tariff regime will follow soon after that — this I’ll approve of. And as a compromise to please everyone, the scaffolding will finally come off the façade of the Kennedy Center.)
