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Jun 23, 2026 - World

President Donald Trump's war on Iran satisfied no one, but two foreign policy experts say its failure may provide one enduring silver lining.Hawks who cheered the initial strikes are furious he stopped short of toppling the regime, doves are furious he started a war at all and, by nearly every measure, the campaign was a failure, wrote former Iran envoy Robert Malley and historian Stephen Wertheim in a new op-ed for the New York Times."Donald Trump has done the impossible once more," Malley and Wertheim wrote. "He went where his predecessors never dared, joining with Israel in a bid to overthrow or incapacitate the regime in Tehran. Having achieved neither, he appears to have accepted worse terms than he could have obtained through diplomacy. His war was a political albatross as well, garnering, at the start, less support from the public than any other major conflict in modern U.S. history.""Everyone is worse off and no one is happy: a fitting, extraordinary finish to a Trumpian war," they added.Missile defenses and aircraft damaged more than 20 U.S. bases, the Strait of Hormuz remains under Tehran's control and they have a nuclear program that, despite the bombing, can still only be resolved through negotiation. Iran, if anything, emerged emboldened, and yet Malley and Wertheim argued those failures might be the most useful thing to come out of the war."Those opposed to yesterday’s Iran war have a stake in preventing tomorrow’s, to break the entanglement of the United States in conflicts it regrets more quickly and more intensely the more they keep happening," the duo wrote. "This mission is hardly impossible. Military defeat — which is what the United States just suffered — has repeatedly compelled Americans to re-evaluate the severity of a threat they could not eliminate."The experience was painful enough that it may be hard to repeat, they argued. Just as Vietnam taught Americans that the "dominoes" wouldn't fall and Afghanistan taught them to separate the Taliban from Al Qaeda, a humiliating defeat — not persuasion or argument — has historically been what forces Washington to reconsider whether a threat was ever as dire as advertised.A clean, low-cost victory might have only emboldened the next intervention. It's precisely because this war went so badly — drained munitions needed elsewhere, alienated Gulf allies and fractured the U.S.-Israel relationship to the point of public rebuke — that hawks now have a weaker case for trying again.Trump, the analysis suggests, may end up as an accidental peacemaker, not because he sought restraint, but because he tested the limits of force against Iran and got burned. "Iran, by all rights, should not be one of America’s top problems," Malley and Wertheim concluded. "One day, one way or another, it will cease to be. The question is when, and at how terrible a price."

Jun 22, 2026 - World

President Donald Trump appeared angered by a reporter's suggestion on Monday that his negotiation tactics with Iran may be giving the regime leverage over him. Trump held a press gaggle in the Oval Office after he signed an executive order to support America's quantum computing industry. While he was taking questions, one reporter asked Trump if he was willing to cause economic mayhem by striking Iran again, which Trump said was an option that he's considering. The back-and-forth escalated from there. "War with Iran could cause worldwide depression, as you noted, Mr. President," the reporter began. "Are you willing to risk economic catastrophe and strike Iran again?""Well, not the way I'm doing it. It won't cause depression," Trump replied. "Nuclear weapon supersedes depression. Depression is real bad. Nuclear weapons will cause depression."The reporter then asked if Trump's willingness to cause economic harm to Americans to continue fighting Iran gives the regime leverage over the Trump administration. Trump scoffed at the suggestion. "Their Navy is gone. Their Air Force is gone. Their leaders are all dead. Their country is a mess. Their economy is shot," Trump began, repeating his claims from the weekend that recent reporting from The New York Times is "all wrong" about the state of Iran. "The reason the news is doing so badly, or, put it another way, the reason why I won in a landslide even though I got 92% negative press is that nobody believes the press anymore, and they have to start believing," Trump said. "The Times and everybody else, they're grasping for straws."Trump then claimed that the U.S. economy is doing well and continues to "set records" in performance. That's despite the most recent inflation report showing that inflation hit its highest point since the COVID-19 pandemic last month. "So, when you ask a question like that," Trump said to the reporter, "it's so stupid."

Jun 22, 2026 - World

A former GOP operative argued President Donald Trump "is drowning in his own failure" in a video on Monday.Anti-Trump conservative Steve Schmidt described how Trump's failed Iran war, struggling economy and blunders around the algae-ridden reflecting pool have further damaged the United States. He suggested the next move would be the Trump cabinet meeting inside the Situation Room, and how future generations would view this "as a portal into understanding the insanity of this moment.""The economy is wrecked. The nation dishonored, the people divided," Schmidt said. "Ghislaine Maxwell sitting in minimum security. All of it a function of our national raft ride down the sewer river of Donald Trump's creation." "It may not seem like we are all of us, on a boat, together, upon that fetid pool. But trust me. We are," Schmidt said.

Jun 22, 2026 - World

Fox News host Brian Kilmeade lost it, calling for President Donald Trump to replace JD Vance as Iran negotiator — blasting his Israel criticism as "ridiculous."On Fox & Friends, Kilmeade unloaded on Vice President JD Vance after Vance warned Israeli cabinet members Thursday that Trump is "the only powerful ally" they have "anywhere left in the entire world." The remarks came as U.S. and Iranian negotiators were deep into a 60-day sprint to flesh out the memorandum of understanding the two countries signed last week."The president's gotta go on the inside," Kilmeade said, "because then the negotiators are wasting their time. No one's happy with this document. The president doesn't seem to be happy.""The fact that he hopped on Friday and started ripping Israel and said they have no friends — that is ridiculous!" Kilmeade continued. "Have you heard of the Abraham Accords? Do you understand that the Gulf States are tighter with Israel than ever before?"He then demanded Trump take over directly — and called Vance out by name."I think JD Vance, who's late to this party, doesn't understand the depth of the disagreement," Kilmeade said.MS NOW reported this week that Vance has compounded his inexperience with a series of false claims — including insisting that the deal's terms for destroying Iran's enriched uranium stockpile are "spelled out very clearly," when the memorandum of understanding includes no such provisions. Vance repeated the claim even after it was discredited.The vice president arrived Sunday at the Lake Lucerne Summit in Switzerland — where U.S. negotiators sat across from Iran's foreign minister and parliamentary speaker — but PBS reported Trump threatened to "hit Iran very hard again" on social media while talks were underway.Fox & Friends contributor Lawrence Jones, who spoke with Trump over the weekend, said the president told him privately the memorandum of understanding "was a starting point" — and that if Iran kept pushing him, "I gotta strike them."

Jun 22, 2026 - World

Amid the ongoing negotiations in Switzerland between Washington and Tehran, Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani shared a photograph of himself and Vice President JD Vance on social media, and an odd detail in the image sparked a wave of speculation among onlookers.Posted Sunday night on X, the photograph shows a seated Vance typing on a laptop beside Al Thani, who is gesturing toward the laptop screen. Standing behind them is Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and special peace envoy. What drew curiosity from onlookers, however, was what appeared to be inserted into the laptop.A card can be seen inserted into the laptop sitting in Vance’s lap that appears to be a Common Access Card (CAC), an identification card used by U.S. defense personnel. The photograph on the card, however, appears to be of a woman and not of Vance.“I would love to know the intended symbolism of Qatar’s prime minister posting a picture of JD Vance logging into a laptop using someone else’s CAC card,” wrote Caroline Orr Bueno, a journalist and social sciences scholar, in a social media post on X. “There is 100% a read-between-the-lines message being sent.”Tim Miller, host of The Bulwark Podcast and MS NOW analyst, raised questions about the extent with which Qatar – which is not a signatory to the 14-point memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran – was involved in negotiations.“Why is a Saudi agent with no security clearance representing America in this meeting?” Miller asked in a social media post on X to his more than 460,000 followers.The progressive media organization MeidasTouch simply asked “where is Marco,” referring to the notable absence of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Anusar Farooqui, a writer and geopolitical analyst, labeled the photograph as evidence of an “agency fail.”I would love to know the intended symbolism of Qatar’s prime minister posting a picture of JD Vance logging into a laptop using someone else’s CAC card. There is 100% a read-between-the-lines message being sent. https://t.co/UiyDaZm4bM— Caroline Orr Bueno, Ph.D (@RVAwonk) June 22, 2026