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Trump’s Second Gamble on Iran

June 21, 2026 · 8:55 pm ET · Leave a Comment

The Atlantic: “Donald Trump’s war against Iran began with one gamble and ended with another. Initially, the president bet that he could stop Iran’s nuclear ambitions by bombing Iran’s revolutionary regime out of existence. So he spent tens of billions of dollars, and upended the global economy, only to sign a memorandum of understanding undoubtedly weaker than any deal he could have struck before the war. Embedded in this document is a new gamble: that if Iran’s revolutionaries can’t be dislodged by force, they might instead be bribed to abandon their identity.”

“The memorandum offers a bundle of American inducements so lopsided that it reads as if Tehran wrote the plan unilaterally.”

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Taegan Goddard

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Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.

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