Monday, May 11, 2026

Six Weeks Later

According to Axios, citing senior U.S. officials, U.S. President Donald J. Trump is set to meet with his National Security Team today to discuss how to move forward with Iran. Per the report, discussions also included the possibility of resuming combat operations against Iran, something that has been reported before. Key officials, including but not limited to, U.S. Vice President JD Vance, White House Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine, and CIA director John Ratcliffe are all expected to join the meeting.
We want to...
Citing two U.S. officials, Axios is also reporting that U.S. President Donald J. Trump is mulling conducting limited strikes against Iran in an effort to coerce them to accede to nuclear talks. Per one U.S. official, “he will tune them up a bit,” while another official said “I think we all know where this is going.”

Per the report, one option on the table is to strike 25% of the targets the U.S. has marked out but hasn’t hit yet.
...but we don’t want to. After all, pulling troops and missiles from Taiwan and elsewhere has worked out so well for us thus far. Surely a little more bombing after weeks of ceasefire will convince Iran to negotiate in good faith.

Although so far, publicly at least, the negotiations have been nothing more than swapping lists of demands, rejecting whatever the other side submitted out of hand. Oh and, at least on the American side, constantly moving the goalposts.Remember “regime change”? Remember “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” And what’s happening right now?
The president, five aides and outside advisers told me, is convinced that he can sell any sort of agreement as a win. But at least for now, the man who wrote The Art of the Deal can’t even get Iran to the negotiating table. Today, Washington is still waiting for Iran to respond to the latest offering, a one-page memorandum of understanding that is far more of an extension of the cease-fire than a treaty to end the conflict.
Typical Lemire, tbh. Trump didn’t write The Art of the Deal, he didn’t even come up with the title. But he’s dined out on it ever since. I’ve been involved in enough negotiations to know Trump can’t negotiate the purchase of a stick of gum, much less make a “deal.” And his ignorance about negotiating peace in a war he started proves it. Mostly because he never expected to have to negotiate anything.But the irony of Mr. “Art of the Deal” being unable to make a deal, is always worth noticing.
Trump never thought it would turn out like this. After the impressive military operation to snatch Nicolás Maduro from Caracas, the president set his eyes on Iran, telling confidants that it would “be another Venezuela,” a pair of outside advisers told me. They, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal strategy. Trump believed that the U.S. military was unstoppable, and that he had a chance to topple Tehran’s theocracy, a prize that had eluded his predecessors. He was redrawing the world’s maps and expected a victory to come in days, a week or two at most. The initial U.S.-Israel onslaught killed Iran’s supreme leader and included waves of bombings that reportedly obliterated much of the country’s missile capabilities. But Tehran did not capitulate, and instead attacked its Persian Gulf neighbors and seized control of the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of the world’s oil passes. With a mix of mines, small attack boats, and drones, Iran effectively closed the waterway. Energy prices soared. The conflict settled into a stalemate and then a fragile cease-fire. One high-profile, official round of negotiations failed. No more are scheduled.
Trump was (is) profoundly ignorant, in other words. He was never more than a little child playing “war.” The Venezuela bit is old news. The more damaging bit now is that the U.S. military has not been “unstoppable” since Vietnam. The Gulf War and Iraq notwithstanding, we finally walked away from Afghanistan because everyone has walked away from Afghanistan. But we’ve known since WWII that bombs don’t break resolves and win wars. We relearned that lesson in Vietnam, too. Or we should have.

We have yet to learn the lesson that the more expensive the hardware, the less likely it will overwhelm our enemies. But we are once again learning the lesson of Vietnam: that our military does not make us the Master of the Universe. And that lesson means we need allies. 

We learned that lesson in World War II. And we followed it for 70 years. Then we decided we didn’t need history anymore.

So it goes.


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