The problem with this guy is that he only has a plan A, he's totally incapable of improvising, he cannot dance on his feet, and if plan A is not working then he fails. He still hasn't really come to terms with the fact that both Iran and Isreal have outplayed him at every turn, and that he has absolutely no understanding of the Iranian mindset, which is a very dangerous place to be in when dealing with an adversary. Mr. Trump may be the president who “has least understood Iran’s leadership,” said Kenneth Pollack, a former C.I.A. analyst and National Security Council official who has studied Iran for decades. “In many ways, Trump represents the epitome of America’s frustrations with Iran,” Mr. Pollack said. “He has been both the most desirous of making a deal with Iran, and the one who used the most force against it. He has found that neither got him what he wanted.” Mr. Trump considers himself a master of sizing up and exploiting his adversaries. But Iran’s leaders have baffled him. “All they do is make me angry,” he told reporters last week. “They just make me angry.” There are few signs that Mr. Trump’s months of dealing with Iran’s regime have given him a clearer understanding of it. Over the course of the conflict, Mr. Trump has constantly revised his assessment of Mr. Khamenei and his deputies. He has branded them “lunatics,” “reasonable,” “crazy bastards,” “very smart” and “stone cold crazy.” Dennis Ross, a veteran of Middle East diplomacy who served presidents of both parties, said that “the Iranians seem to understand us better than we understand them.” Only Mr. Obama has pulled off a major diplomatic agreement with Iran, in the form of the 2015 nuclear deal that placed limits on Iran’s atomic program lasting up to 15 years in exchange for relief from economic sanctions. Iranian suspicions that the U.S. could not be trusted were soon affirmed. In 2018, Mr. Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal and imposed even harsher economic sanctions than had been in place before the agreement. “They tend to read our sense of urgency as a form of leverage,” Mr. Ross said. “We always seem in a hurry to get things done. They operate under the premise that time serves their interests more than ours.” https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/04/us/politics/trump-iran.html?smid=nytcore-android-share Now he has backed them into a corner, and it appears this may become a forever war, with oil hovering between $80 and $150 a barrel into the near future. A recession? Or worse? For a guy who claimed that he was going to fight inflation and not start any new wars, this is not looking good for him. Good job mucking things up Don. Iran’s state broadcaster published the statement by the council’s secretary, Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, who is also a commander in the powerful Revolutionary Guard. The U.S. must never threaten Iran again, the statement said, and must permanently end the war with Iran and its armed allies in the region. The U.S. must lift the naval blockade of Iranian ports and withdraw its military from the area. It also must “completely compensate” Iran for war damage, lift sanctions and “unconditionally” release frozen assets. https://apnews.com/article/yemen-houthis-turkey-kurdish-peace-mideast-roundup-aug-8-2026-feb75871fb82c44b3f7fd0ee02bb24b4?utm_source=app&utm_medium=android_share&utm_campaign=copy_link
