You should not be surprised

[Mahmoud Ahmadinejad]

Trump’s portrayal of the war in Iran is colliding with reality.​

Trump is trying to cast his Iran war as all but over, a done-and-dusted success.

But after years of trying to impose his own reality on the world, he has now run into a crisis that is not bending to his narrative.

“It’s a new regime,” Mr. Trump said in a Fox Business interview that aired on Wednesday, referring to Iran’s new leaders. “We find them pretty reasonable to be honest with you, by comparison pretty reasonable.”

It was the latest instance of Mr. Trump’s trying to spin a “regime change” accomplishment in Iran, even though analysts believe the war may have only increased the internal sway of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the hard-line military force that has long been a major player in Iran’s politics and economy.

The new supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, has not been seen in public since he replaced his father, who was killed at the start of the war, but his elevation as head of state has been another symbol of continuity.

“Most generously you could say there is a leadership change,” said Behnam Ben Taleblu, the senior director of the Iran program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington think tank with a hawkish stance on Iran. “It is incorrect for the proponents of the conflict to frame this as a change for the better.”

Indeed, trade through the Strait of Hormuz remains far from normal and Iran’s government is not bending to Mr. Trump’s demands on its nuclear program.

But in Mr. Trump’s telling, U.S. victory in Iran is already clear. In the Fox Business interview, reprising his frequent comments of the last two weeks, Mr. Trump asserted that Iran’s navy, air force and anti aircraft equipment had all been wiped out, along with many top officials. If Iran did not rule out nuclear weapons, Mr. Trump said, “we will be living with them for a little while, but I don’t know how much longer they can survive.”

In fact, analysts say, the 40 days of U.S.-Israeli bombardment that ended with last week’s cease-fire appear to have increased the power of the military and hard-liners in the Iranian system. Despite the widespread destruction and the killings of officials by the U.S. and Israeli militaries, the Iranian regime is emboldened, having demonstrated that it can wreak havoc in global trade and send U.S. gas prices soaring.

The result is that a president who has long relied on threats and bluster as essential foreign-policy tools seems to be groping for the leverage to bring Iran’s regime to heel.

Mona Yacoubian, a former State Department official and Middle East expert, drew a contrast in Mr. Trump’s struggle with Iran to his success in exacting concessions from U.S. allies by threatening them with tariffs.

“This is not something he has control over with the stroke of a pen,” said Ms. Yacoubian, who directs the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. “This is where the president’s approach, in my view, is not a match for the complexity, the opacity, that is the case with Iran.”

The administration has been eager to portray a groundbreaking deal with Iran as being possible.

Iran appears to have taken note of the leverage it has against Mr. Trump, given the pain of rising gas prices and Republican worries that the unpopularity of the Iran war could hurt the party in the midterm elections in November.

That means Iran could make demands of their own on matters like the future governance of the Strait of Hormuz, while still driving a hard bargain on nuclear policy, the issue that matters most to Mr. Trump.

Nate Swanson, a former U.S. official who was on the Trump negotiating team with Iran until July, said the regime in Tehran was not going to capitulate to Mr. Trump’s demands in negotiations, “just as they did not on the battlefield.” Mr. Trump was unlikely to succeed, he said, in “trying to force transformational change on a system that feels like it just won a war.”

 

[Mahmoud Ahmadinejad]

Trump’s credibility problem is now America’s​

Neither the president’s threats nor his promises nor his deals can be taken at face value.

Donald Trump has the United States stuck in a conflict with Iran, unable to win significant concessions and unwilling to back down in the face of obvious failure.

It’s possible the two sides could strike a deal, but if so, the resulting agreement is unlikely to be favorable to the U.S. and could leave Iran in a stronger position than before the war.

This problem is of Trump’s own making: In spending years demonstrating that he has no credibility, he has by extension trashed America’s credibility as well.

Credibility gives words power.

For words to change others’ behavior, listeners have to believe them. Promises don’t work if the recipients think you’ll break them; threats don’t work if the targets think you won’t follow through.

Internationally, all countries have is their word, physical capabilities and patterns of behavior.

Trump’s behavior has convinced the world that he cannot be trusted. His word is worthless.

Nowhere is that clearer than in relations between the U.S. and Iran.

Trump has been trying to get the Iranians to capitulate, especially on their nuclear program. At every step, though, he has undercut U.S. credibility.

To begin with, Trump hasn’t made a consistent ask. At various times he’s called for regime change, unconditional surrender, a total end to Iran’s nuclear program, curtailing Iran’s missile program, changing Iran’s stance toward Israel, ending Iran’s support for regional proxies and more.

Even if Iran is open to making concessions, it can’t be sure which ones will appease Trump.

Trump made the U.S. less credible by reneging on the 2015 deal that restricted Iran’s nuclear program, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, even though Iran was following the agreement.

The U.S. bombed Iranian nuclear sites in 2025, and Trump claimed the country’s nuclear program was “totally and completely obliterated.”

Yet within a year, Trump said Iran was on the verge of multiple nuclear weapons.

Iran can’t trust that Trump will base future decisions on factual reality.

Trump bounced from genocidal threats — “a whole civilization will die tonight” — to agreeing to negotiate on Iran’s terms, to reneging by having U.S. representatives demand unrealistic concessions.

Iran knows his warnings are often empty bluster, but can’t know which ones. It’s possible that even the president doesn’t know.

neither Trump’s threats nor his promises nor his deals are credible. He has neither made clear demands nor offered a face-saving off-ramp. How can Iran — or any foreign government — deal with this administration with any confidence?

Trump’s lack of credibility can be seen in Europe, too. The president, furious at NATO member countries for not joining the war with Iran, has tried to coerce them into helping by threatening to withdraw from NATO. Unsurprisingly, that hasn’t convinced the Europeans. The president has long threatened to leave NATO, miscasting the defense pact as a protection racket.

He’s demanded territory from NATO allies — namely Greenland from Denmark — and repeatedly lies that they never do anything for the U.S., even though the only time NATO invoked the mutual protection clause of Article V was after the Sept. 11 attacks. Hundreds of troops from NATO allies lost their lives fighting alongside U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

The real fallout from Trump’s anger at NATO is the undermining of its deterrent against Russia.

Who believes that the Trump administration would honor America’s commitment to NATO in the event of a Russian attack? If a menaced country asks NATO for help, would Trump express support and deploy U.S. forces? Or would he say Russian President Vladimir Putin has a point, ape Russian propaganda, blame Moscow’s target and decline to send troops?

Trump defenders say his erratic approach to negotiating is a deliberate technique to keep others guessing. He throws others off, yes. But even if we generously assume it’s strategic — and not, say, the temperamental narcissism of a rich egotist who’s used to getting away with bullying — what has it gained for the U.S. that a more traditional approach could not? Despite being more than a year into his second term, he has shockingly few deals for a leader who touts himself as a dealmaker.

As Trump grasps for a way to end the Iran war, his torching of the country’s credibility has come to a head

 

[Mahmoud Ahmadinejad]

Senate GOP divided over Trump push for Iran war funding​

Senate Republicans are deeply divided over how to handle an expected request from President Trump to fund the military conflict with Iran, which some GOP lawmakers worry has no end in sight.

Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) said the White House needs to fulfill a “long list” of requirements before he votes to authorize the war beyond the window established by the War Powers Act.

Curtis said he wants to know more about the administration’s “goals, objectives and strategies” for conducting and eventually ending the conflict.

And he warned that deploying a large contingent of ground troops to Iran — aside from operations to rescue downed pilots — would be a mistake.

“As far as a large force, that would not be a place I would want to go,” he said.

Curtis on Monday said “everybody is worried” about the conflict dragging on indefinitely and argued Congress needs to act if it stretches beyond three months.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said he’s “getting close” to the internal discussion about the need for Congress to vote on a war powers resolution to authorize an extended conflict with Iran.

“We’re past the 45-day mark, now we have got to start talking about an authorization for the use of military force,” Tillis said. “The White House has to have a very well-articulated plan for exiting.”

Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said he needs to see more from the White House about where the conflict is headed before voting to provide more money to the Pentagon.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) expressed hope the conflict will end before the 90-day deadline set by the War Powers Act.

The push within the Senate GOP conference for a vote to approve continued military action against Iran beyond the end of May poses a significant obstacle to passing a defense supplemental funding package.

The White House initially floated a $200 billion defense supplemental funding request but has since scaled that down to between $80 billion and $100 billion.

Some Republicans are voicing frustrations over the war’s impact on fuel and fertilizer prices, which have hit farmers especially hard.

there is rising concern within the conference about how much longer the war will last.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who traveled across his home state during the two-week Easter recess, heard complaints from constituents about rising energy prices.

“Diesel over $6, urea for nitrogen for corn, things like that,” he said.