One of these days, we might get an Iran ceasefire that actually involves a cessation of fire. Not yet, though: Iran warned this morning it will respond to last night’s U.S. attacks—which CENTCOM described as “self-defense strikes”—in southern Iran. “The nations and lands of the region,” Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei said in a statement, “will no longer serve as shields for American bases.” That peace deal is apparently all but worked out, though! Happy Tuesday.
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Trump’s War Ends With a Whimper
by William Kristol
Whoa. This past weekend, as the outlines of Donald Trump’s Iran deal became clear, not one, not two, but three Republican senators were so appalled that they did something heretofore unimaginable in the era of Trump: They told the truth.
On Friday, Senate Armed Services Chairman Roger Wicker had warned that President Trump was “being ill advised to pursue a deal that would not be worth the paper it is written on. Further pursuit of an agreement with Iran’s Islamist regime risks a perception of weakness.” On Saturday, Wicker followed up: The rumored deal “would be a disaster. Everything accomplished by Operation Epic Fury would be for naught!”
Later that day Sen. Ted Cruz joined in voicing his alarm:
I am deeply concerned about what we are hearing about an Iran “deal,” being pushed by some voices in the administration. President Trump’s decision to strike Iran was the most consequential decision of his second term. . . . If the result of all that is to be an Iranian regime—still run by Islamists who chant “death to America”—now receiving billions of dollars, being able to enrich uranium & develop nuclear weapons, and having effective control over the Strait of Hormuz, then that outcome would be a disastrous mistake.
Even Trump’s lickspittle extraordinaire, Sen. Lindsay Graham, weighed in:
If a deal is struck to end the Iranian conflict because it is believed that the Strait of Hormuz cannot be protected from Iranian terrorism and Iran still possesses the capability to destroy major Gulf oil infrastructure, then Iran will be perceived as being a dominate [sic] force requiring a diplomatic solution.
This combination of Iran being perceived as having the ability to terrorize the Strait in perpetuity and the ability to inflict massive damage to Gulf oil infrastructure is a major shift of the balance of power in the region and over time will be a nightmare for Israel.
Also, it makes one wonder why the war started to begin with if these perceptions are accurate.
Needless to say, this brief spasm of Republican truth-telling will likely prove . . . a brief spasm. Since Saturday, Wicker and Cruz seem to have fallen silent. Graham, for his part, has already reversed course. By yesterday he had fully entered fantasy-land in order to be back in Trump’s good graces:
President Trump’s most recent proposal requiring expansion of the Abraham Accords as part of a negotiated settlement to the Iran conflict is simply brilliant and would result in the most significant change in the Middle East in thousands of years.
With Saudi Arabia and others like Pakistan making peace with Israel, the region will know a level of stability never dreamed of before President Trump and will eventually lead to regional integration making the Middle East a powerhouse for economic opportunity and good instead of a powder keg.
Still, even as the truth-telling subsides, the question Graham posed will linger: “It makes one wonder why the war started to begin with.” And the answer will be hard to evade: The war started because Trump and his administration are foolish and reckless and hubristic, and those in a position to check him—like Sens. Wicker and Cruz and Graham—have utterly failed to do so.
The bad news is that since Trump is our president, the country will pay a price for his foolishness and recklessness and hubris. And the damage that’s been done is real.
Iran’s brutal and terror-sponsoring regime is in place, having withstood the fury and might of the world’s strongest military. The brave Iranian people, who were told that help was “on the way,” have been betrayed. The Iranian regime has shown it can close the Strait of Hormuz and attack its neighbors, and get away with it. More than get away with it: Iran will apparently now get sanctions relief and substantial assets unfrozen.
What’s more, the conditions under which the strait will reopen remain murky, with Iran retaining the explicit or implicit ability to exact fees or favors for its passage. The disposition of Iran’s nuclear material, and the regime’s ability to restart its nuclear program, remains uncertain.
So the Iranian regime has emerged from the past three months strengthened. The United States has emerged weakened. In addition to the failure to achieve our war aims, and on top of our losses of soldiers and weaponry, our allies, from the Gulf to Europe to Asia, have all learned that they can’t trust us. In this respect, this three-month “excursion” has been a significant moment in American decline. Trump will do his best to bluster and obfuscate. But no one should be fooled.
It is a depressing but unavoidable fact that in this instance, Trump’s defeat is also America’s. And it’s important to acknowledge that this defeat will be very difficult to reverse. But there was never going to be a painless way out of the disaster of Trump’s second term.
At least more people are telling the truth, even if only for a moment, that it is a disaster. That’s a step on the road to recovery.
AROUND THE BULWARK
Trump’s Slush Fund Is Based on a Lie… The real victims of lawfare and weaponized prosecutions aren’t the insurrectionists, observes MONA CHAREN.
Trump’s Iran Disaster Is Also a Defeat for the U.S.… On the flagship pod, BILL KRISTOL joins TIM MILLER for a holiday pod about the ‘master’ negotiator who clearly wants out.
For the First Time Since WWII, Moscow Is Under Attack… Author and journalist MARC BENNETTS joins ELIOT COHEN and ERIC EDELMAN on Shield of the Republic to discuss the state of Russia years into its war against Ukraine.
Bulwark Book Club for June: If I Don’t Return: A Father’s Wartime Journal... Leave a question and then join the discussion with MONA and MARK on Monday, June 8 at 7 p.m. Eastern time.
Danielle Crittenden on Losing Her Daughter… On The Mona Charen Show, DANIELLE CRITTENDEN joins MONA CHAREN for a raw conversation about what Danielle calls the “alternative universe of grief” after the death of her child.
Quick Hits
GABBARD GONE: Donald Trump’s cabinet is down another woman. On Friday, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced she would resign from the Trump administration, citing her husband’s bone-cancer diagnosis.
This wasn’t the only factor. Reuters, citing a source familiar, reported Friday that Gabbard had been quietly pushed out by the White House. Whatever the reason—and it’s plausible that it was a combination of both—her exit comes after two months of war in Iran, which has been pure political pain for Gabbard. After all, she was the longtime anti-war Democrat who jumped ship to the GOP one month before the 2024 election, ostensibly on the conviction that Republicans were more serious about keeping America out of pointless wars. That she stayed as long as she did was notable: She had reportedly been frozen out of the planning for major military operations, had been publicly contradicted on intelligence questions by Trump himself, and had seen top aides like National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent head for the hills earlier in the conflict with Iran.
Even as Gabbard found herself more and more crosswise of the president’s plans abroad, she long kept him happy with her zealous pursuit of a shared agenda here at home: using America’s intelligence agencies to target the “deep state” and other supposed domestic enemies of Trump. She issued reports disparaging the early days of the Russiagate investigation, accused Barack Obama of “treasonous conspiracy” against Trump, and was on scene when the government seized ballots in Georgia and directed the seizure of voting machines in Puerto Rico to advance Trump’s undying claims that the 2020 election had been stolen from him.
Gabbard becomes the fourth woman—after Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi, and Lori Chavez-DeRemer—to experience an unscheduled rapid departure from Trump’s cabinet. Linda McMahon, Kelly Loeffler, and Brooke Rollins better keep their heads on a swivel.
THE POPE VS. THE MACHINE GOD: Pope Leo XIV yesterday sounded the alarm about the threats posed by the “anti-human vision” of artificial intelligence, writing in a papal encyclical that the technology risks reducing humans “to mere cogs in a system driven toward ever-greater efficiency.” Here’s the Wall Street Journal:
Leo used two biblical images to describe the choice humanity faces.
“The primary choice is not between a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to technology, but rather between constructing Babel or rebuilding Jerusalem,” he wrote.
In the Bible, the Tower of Babel symbolizes a top-down, grandiose project where decisions are driven by pride, profit and a push for homogenization, the pope suggested in his text. In the rebuilding of Jerusalem, diverse people worked together to rebuild the ruined walls and established a fraternal coexistence within them, he added. . . .
“Artificial intelligence needs to be disarmed, freed from the logic that turned it into an instrument of domination, exclusion and death,” he said. “It must be at the service of all, and of the common good.”
Leo stopped short of condemning AI technology as inherently evil, instead focusing on the dangers of its haphazard and profit- and conflict-driven development and of the risks of concentrating power over it in the hands of a few all-powerful companies. Read the whole thing.
ADVENTURES IN SYCOPHANCY: If you’ve ever watched a Trump cabinet meeting, you know how viscerally unpleasant they are, with each member of the president’s retinue squirming and squeeing to squeeze in as many over-the-top compliments to their boss as possible. Now, the New York Times’s Ashley Cai has the analysis we didn’t know we needed, breaking down the adulation by official and by type. “On average, at least one of every six sentences either flattered Mr. Trump, gave him credit, or criticized his political opponents,” Cai writes. (That few?) Some other chestnuts:
Secretary of State Marco Rubio “both spoke and flattered the president the most.”
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth “said three times that Mr. Trump would have prevented conflicts from occurring.”
Vice President J.D. Vance “insulted political opponents the most. On average, one of six sentences was an insult.”
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick “said Mr. Trump achieved what nobody believed was possible five times.”
Environmental Protection Administrator Lee Zeldin “repeatedly said Mr. Trump was ‘willing to take a bullet for this country.’”
Cheap Shots
“January 6th child molesters” is what every Democrat should refer to when talking about what the slush fund is for. Focus on gas prices (and a nonsense Middle East War) and focus on releasing and paying off 1/6 child molesters…link it to the Epstein Files.
It’s simple and we’ve seen it work. No stupid poll testing. Just put out the ads like the Republicans do make them as trollish as possible and bring to light the shame of the Republican Congress members that have retconned 1/6 into no big deal which is pretty much all of them at this point.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick “said Mr. Trump achieved what nobody believed was possible five times.”
Gotta agree with Mr. Nutlick on this one. Not sure anyone else could manage to destroy a growing thriving economy in such a short time and then fix his one good metric of gas prices by engaging in a war that wasn’t a war and surrendering to try and free the Strait of Hormuz which was already free until the war that isn’t a war started.