For the past three or four days Trump has been teasing a new “deal” that would end the Iran War he started. Since there was silence from Tehran I wasn’t taking it seriously. Today Iran is saying no deal is ‘imminent,’ which I take to mean Tehran has no interest in making any concessions.

Instead of an arc de triomphe, Trump should be building an arche de la défaite. (I do want to talk to whoever is in charge of French as to why “defeat” is a feminine noun but “triumph” is masculine.)

Last week  Robert Kagan published a piece in The Atlantic headlined Trump’s Endgame Is Surrender. It begins:

The outlines of President Trump’s endgame in the Iran war are now emerging. In a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday, Trump reportedly explained that the United States was negotiating a “letter of intent” with Iran that would “formally end the war and launch a 30-day period of negotiations” on Iran’s nuclear program and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. The purpose and effect of such an agreement should be clear: The United States is walking away from the crisis. Trump may launch another limited strike to look tough and satisfy the demands of the war’s supporters, but it would be a performative gesture. Endgame in this case is a euphemism for “surrender.”

And then a it later he writes,

Trump’s repeated threats to resume attacks since then have proved to be bluffs. The leaders in Tehran have been calculating for two months that Trump would not launch another attack, and for this reason they have made no concessions despite the damage they suffered from 37 days of relentless strikes. On the contrary, their terms for a settlement are those of a victor: They demand war reparations, no limits on uranium enrichment, recognized control of the strait, and an end to sanctions.

For Trump to respond to this defiance by now calling for another 30 days of cease-fire and talks is a tacit admission of defeat. If he does launch a performative attack in the next few days, the Iranians will understand it for what it is. No one believes that he is going to resume a full-scale war a month from now. Among other reasons, with 30 more days to heal, rearm, and fill its coffers with tolls, Iran will be a more formidable adversary.

Kagan goes on to say that Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz is already becoming “normalized,” and several nations are negotiating with Iran about how they can get their ships safely through the strait. And I’d already read this before Trump started teasing that there was about to be a deal, so I was more interested in what Tehran did. And it’s no deal. They are telling Trump those are our terms, take it or leave it.

A couple of days ago Trump was posting that “An Agreement has been largely negotiated.” Just hours later he said he would not “rush into a deal.” Obviously, there was no deal. And today we know there’s no Agreement, capitalized or not. Marco Rubio said a deal is still possible. Trump is threatening fire and brimstone if a deal doesn’t happen soon. I take it Tehran didn’t give him something he could call a “win.”  Talks are continuing, however,but it may be the only “win” Trump can get is an agreement to keep talks about Iran’s nuclear capabilities open a bit longer. No agreement, mind, just talking.

Yesterday David Sanger and Tyler Pager wrote in the New York Times,

The temporary agreement that the Trump administration announced with Iran this weekend isn’t a peace deal. It isn’t a nuclear deal. It isn’t a missile deal.

Those may yet come — perhaps in a few months, though a senior United States official said there was no agreed time limit for nuclear talks, or perhaps far longer if the history of negotiations with Iran holds. But for now, Mr. Trump has described an arrangement that could extend a cease-fire and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, relieving the greatest energy disruption in modern times.

And it’s being said Bibi Netanyahu’s hair is on fire at the thought the U.S. might withdraw. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like we’re quite there yet.

There are some in the Republican party and among Trump supporters (example) who still think Trump can “win” if he drops more bombs, or something. And he’s getting an earful from some of those people now. Tom Nichols, one of my favorites at The Atlantic, writes Trump’s War Is Staggering to an Incoherent Defeat. He describes what the war hawks are saying.

Many of those most alarmed about what Trump might end up accepting to get out of this dead-end conflict in Iran are not his critics, but his supporters. Trump’s enablers may not have access to the details of an agreement, but they’re clearly worried: Senators Lindsey Graham, Roger Wicker, and Ted Cruz were all posting expressions of shock and dismay on social media. Graham said that any deal that caves to Iran “makes one wonder why the war started to begin with”; Wicker said that a possible 60-day cease-fire would be a “disaster.” Cruz gently suggested that the tsar does not know what his devious boyars are up to, describing the deal as “being pushed by some voices in the administration.”

Even Michael Flynn, the disgraced former national security adviser, posted a long screed warning Trump not to make a deal. “I know you want to get out of this mess,” he said. He then counseled the president to “give it some thought.” Trump’s former Secretary of State and CIA Director Mike Pompeo weighed in as well, comparing the possible outline of a deal to the kind of thing Barack Obama’s team might have come up when designing the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and warning that it could mean that America would end up paying “the IRGC to build a WMD program and terrorize the world.” 

So Trump is being pulled in two different directions now. But there’s more. There’s so much more. There are “Trump Loses War” commentaries bursting out all over the Web. See, for example, Phillips O’Brien, There Is Only One Remaining Question–How Badly Has The USA Lost This War?

How did we get here? Well, other than giving in to Iran, Trump’s only options were, first, to either wait a long time for the US blockade to do so much damage to the Iranian economy that the Iranian government would soften its demands or, second, to escalate dramatically by returning to the direct use of military force.

The problem is that neither of these options were likely to achieve anything better. The Iranian government seemed more than set to outlast the blockade, knowing that upcoming US elections were going to force Trump’s hand and as for the military option—that had already failed had revealed how desperate Trump was not to use ground troops.

The bottom line is that Trump has no viable options to force Tehran to give him anything. He never did. My only question now is — does he get that yet? David Frum, in Why Trump Lost, points mostly to Trump’s many character and other flaws — his arrogance, his recklessness, his gullibility. Paul Krugman is not a military guy, but in Donald Trump’s Ego-Driven “Excursion” Has Crashed Into Reality he makes much the same case. It was an unwinnable war. What career military are left in the Pentagon knew that, but Trump and his people didn’t believe them. “And it’s reasonable to infer that any officers who tried to warn of the dangers were treated as defeatists and silenced,” Krugman writes. Arrogance, recklessness, etc. Krugman continues,

Finally, success in modern war depends crucially on out-thinking one’s enemies. But MAGA is all about deprecating hard thinking and valorizing belligerent ignorance.

On Saturday Hegseth addressed the graduating class at West Point. In war, he declared, “you can’t throw your pronouns at the enemy.” He congratulated the cadets on being “fit, not fat.” Despite humiliating failure, Hegseth still has his job — and is still asserting that eliminating DEI wins wars and that bulging biceps can beat drones.

Somebody should put posters up at the Pentagon saying THINK FIRST. FLEX LATER.

There may be a few more twists and turns in this plot before we get to the dénouement — maybe we can erect an arch for that — but at this point IMO a big humiliation for Trump is inevitable. I’ll let David Frum have the last word.

Trump’s vision of the presidency is authoritarian and kleptocratic: Issue orders, grab money, luxuriate in flattery, erect monuments to oneself. That’s no way to lead a nation through the hazards and difficulties of war. Now the war is ending on disadvantageous terms for the United States. Trump’s old methods will be turned to a new task: trying to deceive the American people and the world into believing that the war he lost was really a big win, the biggest ever, so big you cannot believe it. He’s likely to discover that, indeed, nobody does believe it.

Tuesday update: As Robert Kagan predicted (see above), Trump has initiated some performative strikes in Iran to try to shake the regime loose from its position. It won’t work.