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Donald Trump arrived in France yesterday for the G7 summit this morning and immediately confirmed the allegiance of the United States to Iran. Instead of simply repeating the outline of what appears to be a poor peace deal, however, Trump made a series of statements so extraordinary, even by his normal standards, that they raise the question of whether the president still understands the words coming out of his own mouth.
The president began with a typical Trumpian move, daring his audience to forget today what they knew yesterday. Just this winter, Trump had promised the people of Iran that the tyrants who ruled them would disappear. But now? “I have never cared about regime change,” he told reporters, waving off his failure to achieve a major strategic goal by denying that he had ever been a goal at all.
Things got even weirder, however, when he described the Iranians who have stepped in to replace regime leaders killed in US strikes: “We’re dealing with people who I think are sane people. And they were good to deal with.”
“They were strong people, intelligent people,” he added. And then he dismissed this surprising claim: “They are not radical, and, you know, they are looking to help their country.”
This non-radical group that Trump seems to favor includes the new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei (whose father, wife and son were killed by US airstrikes), and the still-standing Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, all of whom have shown no concern about attacking each other in any way during Trump’s “ceasefire,” a pretense he stood in the war.
Trump’s description of the current regime in Tehran as a mob was delivered in a difficult mood of wishful thinking. It is an extreme version of Trump’s habit, when he is outgunned by powerful enemies, to describe his opponents as sane. (He has done the same for many years with dictators and rulers in North KoreaRussia, and China, among other countries.) This is his way of assuring the public that he was not sent to the cleaners—because, of course, his friendly allies never would.
Trump failed to address Iran’s nuclear program. Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium exists largely because Trump ended U.S. participation in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, a 2015 agreement that was intended to prevent Iran from enriching uranium beyond a minimum level for civilian use. After the US and Israeli attacks last year, and even more so during Operation Epic Fury, the uranium remains underground, whether hidden in stockpiles or buried under tons of rubble; some of it can be recovered and enriched for military use. Trump has said, repeatedlythat Iran must hand it over.
Until today.
“I call it nuclear dust, their improvised material, right?” Trump said. (Why he calls this is still a mystery.) Is the US still insisting on its withdrawal from Iran? Well, maybe.
“The whole mountain is down. We have cameras on it,” Trump said. “You might say ‘Why do you even bother?’ because it is absolutely worthless. It’s, you know, probably worth half a million dollars. They are not very valuable things, but I think psychologically we want to get them.”
The U.S. and Israel appeared to be at war with Iran last summer over the Tehran regime’s hopes of developing a bomb, and that same threat is reportedly at the center of the largest U.S. military operation in decades—but now isn’t highly enriched uranium so valuable? The president wants for “psychological” reasons? (This is reminiscent of his opinion that America should seize Greenland because it was “psychologically” important to him.) Does the commander in chief understand what he is saying? More importantly, will Iran keep tons of highly enriched uranium under this new deal or not?
“The biggest thing,” Trump said today, is that “Iran will not have a nuclear weapon.” That’s fine, except that it didn’t have one before, either, and now it has an even greater incentive to get one. But nuclear issues are very complicated and technical, so let’s move on to Trump’s comments on something less complicated: Middle East politics.
Once again, the president seemed unable to understand the situation or his own words. No one outside the Trump administration has yet seen the final deal Trump and the Iranians have signed, at least of all, according to other reports. Israelis. If the summary of the plan is accompanied by arguments of the administration itselfis likely to cause a major upheaval in Jerusalem: The terms reportedly require an end to hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, a difficult situation given that Israel was not part of the talks. Perhaps this is why Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu he announced yesterday that Israel will maintain its presence in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria for “as long as possible.”
Trump, in other words, is trying to waive Israel’s right to self-defense, treating it less as a sovereign state and more as a sort of 51st US state run by a troublesome governor who needs to get along with the deal. But what if Iran’s proxy Hezbollah attacks Israel? According to the president, the Israelis need to calm down, and he dismissed Hezbollah as “a little pin out there that always raises its head.”
Besides, Trump has an answer to Hezbollah’s problem: Offer his withdrawal to Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa. Trump said that he suggested to Israel “let Syria take care of Hezbollah, because to be honest with you, I think they do a better job of doing it.”
It is true that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the organization that is now in power in Syria, has enough experience fight with Hizbullah. But Syria, a government that is still trying to get its feet under it, is not going to go along with appeasing Lebanon – especially not with Israel occupying parts of Syria.
Trump has never shown much concern about the conduct of Israeli military operations anywhere (including the war in Gaza, which has been viewed primarily as a public relations problem). But now that he needs to rule Jerusalem at the behest of Tehran, he has taken the position that the Israelis are wreaking havoc in Lebanon. And in a startling reminder that Trump’s cooperation is only beneficial, he began praising al-Sharaa and criticizing Israel, saying that if Israel “can’t work without killing everybody else, it will work.”
This kind of flip-flop reflects Trump’s view of international politics: Nations are just a stack of playing cards that he can rearrange at will, which makes watching him talk about foreign policy this way like watching someone cheat at solitaire. Even now, after many years as president, he is often confused to know how little power he has when other nations refuse to give up their interests and do as he orders.
Trump’s remarks about the Middle East may not make any sense, but one thing that has come through in 4K clarity is that the only world leader who breathed worse than Trump in all of this was Netanyahu. No one should feel sorry for Israel’s prime minister: He brought this situation about on himself and his nation. Netanyahu, as well Iran’s war hawks in America, he somehow thought he could be smart or suave or influential enough to avoid the inevitable burnout that comes with trusting Donald Trump. Netanyahu refused to see that Trump, when it comes to self-interest, is as predictable as the dawn: When something he’s involved in goes wrong, he walks away and leaves others to suffer the chaos he created.
In the past, Trump tried to mix the new situation by talking loudly and experimenting wishing them to be there. His tired outfit in France, however, is something different. It suggests that Trump, more than ever, is unable to understand what is happening in the world around him and has been reduced to turning all his previous statements upside down: The administration that was once the epitome of evil is now a wise ally; nuclear material that once represented a threat to America’s existence may now remain in Iran forever; Syria and Iran and Israel and Lebanon will now do things they will never do, just because he wants them to do.
None of this makes any sense, except as desperate arguments from someone who cannot face reality and accept defeat. Trump has always had a bad relationship with the truth, but evidence is mounting that on the most important questions of war and peace, the US president seems to be losing his grip on the truth itself.
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Today’s news
- Five people were charged after the FBI stopped it alleged plan to attack the Ultimate Fighting Championship event at the White House on Sunday, according to the Justice Department.
- The Trump administration announced that several core jobs of two major agencies in the Department of EducationThe Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services and the Office of Civil Rights, will be moved to the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Justice, respectively.
- The Department of Justice was released charges against 15 people in Minneapolis who were accused of conspiring to “obstruct or harm federal officials” during a federal immigration enforcement crackdown in the state earlier this year.
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Evening Read
There is a name for the people who get rid of you
By Olga Khazan
One of the oft-repeated truths in social science research is: “The No. 1 factor for your well-being is your relationships.” Despite using this line myself many times, I have nevertheless questioned its unity. Who hasn’t nodded in recognition while listening to a story about a nightmare roommate, or had a bad-tempered relative who makes everything about themselves? Subreddit r/Friendship Advice It would be a ghost town if everyone’s relationships were improving the quality of their lives.
An emerging body of research confirms my feelings that this is not the case all of them social relationships are beneficial. Relationships with people who are demeaning, critical, or otherwise difficult can endanger our mental and physical health. Shira Offer, a sociologist at Bar-Ilan University, in Israel, who has studied so-called negative social relationships, told me, “For a long time, social scientists have focused on the positive aspects of relationships.
Researchers have come up with a word for people who bore us: troublemakers.
Cultural Breakdown
Get ready. Washington boyThe new biopic in theaters July 3 is a pre-Revolutionary War film about George Washington that says something interesting about American national identity, James Parker writes.
Look closely. Frederic Church, famous painter its vast, immersive landscapehis work coincided with a paradigm shift in the visual arts—a shift in not just the meaning of images but how that meaning is conveyed, Susan Tallman argues.
Stephanie Bai contributed to this journal.
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