The Weekly WTF: Iran mounts stunning come-from-behind victory

Pundits are getting the Iran war wrong, too. Plus, bad-ass algae and the presidential-library cage match.

THIS STUFF ACTUALLY HAPPENED:

Iran … won? That’s the conclusion of a wide spectrum of pundits and analysts now that President Trump has signed a “memorandum of understanding” with Iran to end the war Trump launched on February 28. Here’s a sampling:

“Iran is a bigger defeat than Vietnam” (Foreign Policy)

“Iran has Trump ‘by the balls’” (news site Zeteo)

“Trump’s MOU: Surrender on paper, spin on cable” (Economist Brad DeLong)

“Hawks lament disaster on Iran” (The Hill)

“America has lost its war with Iran” (The Independent)

“Iran wins” (former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley)

A lot of this criticism comes from Trump’s fellow Republicans, who are dismayed that Trump seems to be giving Iran a pathway to rebuild its wrecked military, maintain its nuclear weapons program, resume oil sales, and basically carry on as the same terror-sponsoring bunch of thugs they’ve been for decades.

The MOU, which is not in itself a peace deal, does the following, assuming both sides abide by it:

• Ends the fighting

• Reopens the Strait of Hormuz for 60 days

• Ends the US blockade of Iran, meaning Iranian oil exports resume

• Glides over Iran’s nuclear weapons program

• Lifts all sanctions on Iran

• Unfreezes all Iranian assets

• Establishes the possibility of a $300 billion reconstruction fund to help Iran rebuild from the war

Is this a better deal for the United States than if there had been no war at all? What an inconvenient question. Without the war, sanctions on Iran would remain, Iranian assets would still be frozen, the Strait of Hormuz never would have been closed, and there would have been no energy crisis or resurgence of inflation. Trump doesn’t want you to think about any of this because his war looks like a debacle that could end up empowering Iran without making the United States better off.

But the reality of the MOU is that it’s mostly a fig leaf allowing both sides to avert looming economic disaster, with months or years of haggling ahead. Iran’s not going to give up its nuclear weapons program, but it probably doesn’t want to endure another withering aerial attack by the United States and Israel. So the nuclear material buried under rubble will probably just stay there for a while.

Trump has to get oil and gasoline prices down before real shortages start to wreak havoc. The $300 billion reconstruction fund for Iran will probably never materialize. The 60-day deadline for an actual peace deal will probably get extended indefinitely, maybe for the rest of Trump’s presidency.

It’s an epic failure for Trump, who failed to anticipate the asymmetric leverage Iran’s overmatched theocracy could gain by closing the Strait of Hormuz. Trump looks like an idiot and so does his Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth.

But worse than Vietnam? You’ve got to be kidding me. That war killed nearly 60,000 Americans and as many as 4 million Vietnamese civilians. It wrecked American power and prestige for nearly three decades. The US-Iran war was one man’s arrogant folly, entailing 13 American deaths and probably hundreds of dead Iranian civilians. It’s a tragic screw-up, but not an enduring national nightmare for the United States.

Markets, meanwhile, are overjoyed at the end of hostilities, even if Iran will live to terrorize another day. Oil and gasoline prices are heading back toward pre-war levels and stocks are rising. Iran’s rising stature as a survivor of American bombardment could still roil the Middle East. But if gas prices drop back to $3, most Americans don’t really have to care. Trump, meanwhile, probably hopes the next president who has to deal with a belligerent Iran isn’t him.

Library smackdown. Barack Obama’s presidential library opened June 19 in Chicago, and Trump can’t stand it. He’s been trashing the library on social media after calling it a “disaster” last year, well before it opened. A presidential-library expert told the Washington Post, “a president taunting another president about his library isn’t something that has previously happened.” Another first for Trump!

The current president plans to install his library in a 47-story skyscraper in Miami, with the number of floors matching the rank of the president. Wait, sorry, 47 matches the chronological rank of Trump’s presidency, not the qualitative rank. But it might end up representing Trump’s qualitative rank, as well.

One unique feature of Trump’s library will be a hotel, so you can stay for a week or a month if you really want to bask in Trump’s presidency. When you go, make sure to allot plenty of time for the Iran war display.

Make Algae Great Again. How much do you normally think about the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC? Never? Me too. Until now. Trump decided to “fix” the pool by giving two friendly firms no-bid contracts to paint the bottom of the pool blue and get rid of algae that has been a nuisance in the stagnant water for nearly 100 years. But the algae is back, the new blue paint is already flaking off, and everybody who visits the DC monuments now checks out the pool to see how the algae is doing.

The algae is triumphant. Federal workers are still pumping fetid green water out of the pool. Imagery companies are now training satellite cameras on the pool to document how the algae flummoxes federal workers trying to scrape it off the bottom and kill it with hydrogen peroxide. Trump has blamed his predecessor Joe Biden for the “filthy” state of the reflecting pool, but the algae seem apolitical. Maybe Trump should sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the algae.

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Cartoon by Isaiah Legette

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