When I wrote last week that “Trump is about to get us into war in Iran,” my inbox overflowed with Republican readers accusing me of stoking an anti-Trump panic. Those emails sure stopped quickly over the weekend, though, when President Trump approved a sweeping attack on three Iranian nuclear sites.
Trump justified his bombing run as a “one-and-done” operation, but bloody experience has taught that there are no one-and-done situations in the Middle East — especially when we get involved.
Now, less than a week into America’s latest conflict, Trump is already cracking under the pressure.
The White House got a tough lesson in Middle Eastern diplomacy on Tuesday after Israel and Iran both violated the cease-fire agreement they had endorsed only hours before. It was a humiliating rejection of Trump’s “Art of the Deal” diplomacy, not least because Trump had personally negotiated the deal.
That sent Trump spiraling. In a burst of Truth Social posts spanning nearly 8 hours, he alternated between begging and threats in a failed attempt to influence Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Taken together, Trump’s Truth Social posts mark an all-time low for America’s diplomatic influence in the Middle East..
“THE CEASEFIRE IS NOW IN EFFECT. PLEASE DO NOT VIOLATE IT!” he pleaded in one early morning post.
“ISRAEL. DO NOT DROP THOSE BOMBS,” he begged in another. “IF YOU DO IT IS A MAJOR VIOLATION. BRING YOUR PILOTS HOME, NOW!”
Things took a turn on Tuesday morning, when Trump let his temper do the walking in an unscripted rant to reporters outside the White House. In an expletive-laden monologue, Trump slammed Israel and Iran for ignoring his many social media posts. To an outside observer, it looked like a mental breakdown.
“We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing,” Trump snapped. “You understand that?”
“Israel, as soon as we made the deal, they came out and they dropped a load of bombs, the likes of which I’ve never seen before. The biggest load that we’ve seen. I’m not happy with Israel,” he added.
No doubt the current mess is far from the rosy post-strike scenario Trump’s advisors and Netanyahu sold to him last week. Then, the discussion focused on the limited nature of the strike, the easy execution, the low-hanging glory waiting to be claimed when Iran quickly surrendered and gave Trump his nuclear agreement. It’s certainly a seductive fantasy.
Instead, Trump’s bungled cease-fire has created a situation where America is the only clear loser — a fact that isn’t lost on his furious America First political base. Israel and Iran have both ignored his much-hyped cease-fire agreement and sent the clear message that Trump’s orders can safely be ignored. Meanwhile, Trump is burning through his political capital at home by launching an all-out war on Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), a fellow Republican who dared to criticize the Iran strikes.
Despite what Trump’s advisors promised, the Iran strikes are also deeply unpopular among voters. A poll from CNN published this week found that 56 percent of Americans disapprove of the attack, while 58 percent said the strike made Iran more dangerous. More worrying for Trump, nearly one in five Republican voters say attacking Iran was a bad decision — a far higher number than many MAGA insiders expected.
If that wasn’t headache enough, the White House is also facing growing international criticism for its failure to track Iran’s roughly 400 kilograms of uranium — enough to make 10 bombs — in the days before and after the airstrikes. If Iran did manage to hide its nuclear stockpile before Trump’s attack, as Vice President JD Vance suggested on Monday, that would represent a huge step backwards in the global effort to monitor Iran’s nuclear program.
Trump’s “one-and-done” airstrike has brought a dozen new crises to his door, and he’s responding like a leader completely overwhelmed by events. Instead of stepping back and restrategizing, he’s spent days lashing out at everyone from Netanyahu to the Ayatollah to members of his own party. God help us if Trump ever has to command actual boots on the ground.
As Trump is learning, the rag-tag team of Fox News hosts and yes-men he’s slipped into our national security apparatus are no match for a geopolitical crisis. The American people might be thinking the same thing about their president right now. They have no choice but to watch as Trump crumbles under the heavy weight of real presidential leadership. What an avoidable disgrace.
Max Burns is a veteran Democratic strategist and founder of Third Degree Strategies.