Why Trump Lost
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/05/why-trump-lost-iran/687291/?utm_source=reddit&utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_medium=social&utm_content=edit-promo
Why Trump Lost
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/05/why-trump-lost-iran/687291/?utm_source=reddit&utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_medium=social&utm_content=edit-promo
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David Frum: “The first surprising thing about President Trump’s impending defeat in the 2026 Iran War is that he already fought and won a successful war against Iran last year. In August 2025, U.S. and Israeli airstrikes badly damaged the Iranian nuclear program in 12 days of bombardment. Exactly how badly remains controversial. But they didn’t do nothing. If Trump had quit while ahead, he could have banked his gains from last August as a solid if imperfect win.
“The second surprising thing about Trump’s impending defeat is that he does not seem to have cared at all about the only evident reason to resume fighting in 2026: the Iranian people’s rebellion against their brutal oppressors. Trump has never given any evidence of caring about Iranian democracy or human rights. He promised the Iranian people “Help is on the way” on January 13, but military operations did not commence until thousands were dead and the rebellion was already effectively crushed. During military operations, Trump made clear that he sought a deal with the existing regime. He made no effort to support or cooperate with Iranian dissidents before, during, or after the uprising.
“The third surprising thing about Trump’s impending defeat is that even he himself seems never to have understood why he went back to war against Iran. What exactly did he think he would achieve? He kept saying that he wanted to ensure that Iran never developed a nuclear weapon. He also insisted that he had effectively prevented it from doing so in August. He seemed genuinely to believe that claim. If so, why resume the fighting? If, however, those words were wrong, then why not simply hit the nuclear sites again? Why the need for this bigger war?
“Trump started the February 28 war for reasons of personality, not strategy. He is on his way to losing the war for the same reasons of personality…
Read more: [https://theatln.tc/sJRDR25A](https://theatln.tc/sJRDR25A)
I’m of many minds about this, but here’s on hypothesis
Even if the agreement is something like the JCPOA, It’s still a win. There’s some “Only Nixon could go to China” with Trump and Iran. Where the only long term viable agreement is one the GOP, not Dems, own it as it’s unlikely Dem administrations will throw away an agreement to start a war.
David Frum is the genius who has written that he’d still support an invasion of Iraq today as he did in 2003.
It didn’t bode well for him with his appearances on the Bill Maher’s show. Majority of panelists are hardcore neocon zionists.
The problem is that he will never realise it or even accept it
He was told by Netanyahu and Hegseth that AI-enabled murder can achieve anything and that previous models of conflict have been obsoleted. Just get the prosecutors and legal advisors and signed conventions out of the way.
He quickly went from murdering leaders to threatening to murder the wider population. What started out as continued demonstration (Maduro raid, Hezbollah decapitation) that AI-enabled precision can empower America and Israel to rule the world at 19th century British cost ended up becoming every other 20th century genocidal total war in a month.
This is definitely not over as evidenced by the Israeli push toward capturing American social media and the Andruil, Palantir and LLM nexus that’s forming. Expect more trials but maybe closer to home after this one concludes.
Trump didn’t lose. He’s winning and achieving his goals of “owning the libs”, making his Epstein-class billionaire buddies richer while getting away SA, creating a $1.8 billion slush fund paid by taxpayers for the treasonous insurrectionists or whoever he wants, making overt racism socially acceptable, making a mockery of the EPA and degrading environmental protections so that some billionaires can get richer, allowing his buddy and fellow grifter/racist Musk to shut down offices that were investigating his companies and USAID which will starve children in the world of food that is just going to rot, cutting the NIH and allowing DOH and CDC to be run by conspiracy theorists not doctors or scientists. So he’s achieving his lofty goals of making the US a backward latin-American style banana republic while he has the perennial support of his base who just blames Biden and DEI for everything.
Epstein
Lost? Opinion pieces are aweful(and you are gonna agree when I am done)…He won by simply having captain opinion piece shape a narrative ,where Trump is trying to do anything other than enrich himself and cronies…That money is already in the bank, whatever new revenue streams he can blackmail(oops meant leverage the US military/populatoin) other countries/industries into giving is just the private island cherry, on top of the already private island Sunday.
Trump Lost? I cant tell if the owners of The Atlantic, which hand pick all the opinion pieces put in thier propaganda/monitary vehicle , are playing 4d chess with the population..Lost? when someones goal is to enrich themselves(not the country) at every opportunity and they enrich themselves in this one too, did he lose anything? Some of you people might even be playing 1d chess or even 2d checkers, not even sure you can see the board for what it is at this point.
I thought it was the decapitation of the regime as the reason to strike in that moment for trump. Assuming it would go just like Venezuela