The Iran War Isn’t Only Trump’s to End

A U.S. official told Axios that on Monday that Donald Trump read Benjamin Netanyahu the riot act for wanting to launch strikes on Beirut, which could collapse American negotiations with Iran. The message, the official said, was “You’re fucking crazy. You’d be in prison if it weren’t for me. I’m saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this.” Later that evening, the official White House account posted “TRUST IN TRUMP. ‘Just sit back and relax, it will all work out well in the end—It always does!’”The spectacular bust-up, which Trump confirmed today, reveals a deeper problem. With a nuclear deal with Iran out of reach, Trump seems content to defer the problems he faces instead of squaring up to them. There may be an end to violence, but any peace will be temporary and inherently unstable. The war will likely resume at intervals over the next few years, with grave consequences for all concerned. Trump clearly does not want to go back to all-out war at the moment. According to the Washington Examiner, a senior administration official has attested to Trump’s belief that the only way to secure meaningful change in Iran is through substantial escalation. This presumably means ground operations, which could result in considerable American casualties, or infrastructure strikes, which could lead Iran to retaliate against similar targets in the Gulf.“You could, of course, exert more pain,” the official said, but the question is whether this would yield anything worth the cost. He argued that the Iranian regime has experienced “significant” change, and that pragmatists “have more influence than they did before.”But one of those supposed pragmatists, Iran’s top negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, posted on X: “We seize concessions not through dialogue, but with missiles; in negotiations, we merely make them understand.” He added, “The winner of any agreement is the one who is better prepared for war from the day after.”In other words, Tehran