Trump Is at Odds With His Own Administration—And With Reality
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A memorandum of understanding between Iran and the United States, reached in June and intended to provide breathing room to end the conflict between the two countries, expired today.
The agreement will be little missed: A cease-fire had effectively ended within about three weeks of its signing, and the MOU had failed to produce fruitful negotiations or a real opening of the Strait of Hormuz.
The president’s actions in the days leading up to the deadline demonstrate that his approach to the world, always contingent and improvisational, has lost its last shred of coherence.
The White House cannot agree on the goals of the Iran war, much less on how to achieve them.
The president is clashing with long-standing allies, in conflict with his vice president on the aims of the war, and publicly at odds with uniformed commanders over conditions for American troops stationed abroad.
Trump on Friday called on Americans to accept higher gasoline prices as the cost of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
He posted this morning that the “number one Goal is, and always will be, that Iran cannot have, in any way, shape, or form, a Nuclear Weapon”—even though his administration assessed before the war that Iran was not actively building weapons, even though the White House hasn’t offered any explanation for how the war will prevent the regime from restarting its weapons program, and even though the war may make Iran’s desire for a nuclear arsenal only more urgent.
Meanwhile, Vice President Vance says that lowering fuel prices is actually now “goal No.
1” of the war .
In practice, the real aim of any diplomatic or military action now is resuming ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran seized early in the conflict—a risk foreseen by many analysts but not by Trump.
For weeks now, Trump’s basic choice has been clear: Either launch a much larger military operation, including ground troops, or else surrender de facto control of the strait permanently.
The president refuses to accept this.
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