Trump Has Lost the Plot in Iran

Karim Sadjadpour: “Like many of his predecessors over the past five decades, Donald Trump risks having his presidency hijacked by Iran. The 1979 revolution and subsequent hostage crisis ended Jimmy Carter’s presidency. The Iran-Contra affair tainted Ronald Reagan’s. Iranian machinations in postwar Iraq sabotaged George W. Bush’s. The Iran nuclear deal—and the bitter partisan fight over it—consumed the second half of Barack Obama’s presidency. The October 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas, a member of Iran’s ‘Axis of Resistance,’ triggered a brutal war that subsumed Joe Biden’s. Trump may have envisioned a second term spent striking deals to resolve wars, but Iran has now sucked him in, too.”

“What Trump seems to have hoped would be a Venezuela redux—a quick decapitation of the regime followed by a swift deal with the leader’s successor—has deteriorated into a regional war. Tehran telegraphed that this would happen, but it still apparently caught Trump by surprise. Now the United States is approaching a quagmire as news reports suggest that the CIA is arming Kurdish groups inside Iran.”