We seem to be in one of those very MAGA interludes in which members of Donald Trump’s base are not so much rebelling as in a process of mourning. They are struggling to find a path to discovering that up turns out to be down, or that the things that they have always professed to care about do not matter because Trump has announced they do not matter. Lindsey Graham seems to be maybe 3/4s through the process. Ted Cruz is working on it. But some of his supporters, especially a number of those who aren’t in elective politics are having a harder time, at least for now. The dynamic, the level of shock is very straightforward. Most of MAGAworld has gone along with the premise that the war in Iran, or Trump’s management of it, has actually been going great all along. Trump is underestimated, the Lamestream media, etcetera. Wait to see the final deal. Trump won’t let Iran get away with anything.
A lot of these folks are now coming into contact with the reality of the situation, from zero to 60 in two or three seconds. It’s pretty jarring. The deal as structured, from what I can tell at least, contains more or less exactly the details that Iranian state media has been reporting for weeks and which the White House claimed was IRGC propaganda. Maybe the U.S. isn’t contributing to the $300 billion Iran rebuilding fund. But it’s overseeing and guaranteeing its creation. So it’s a fairly minor distinction. There are also some odd signals from within the White House that they might pull the plug on the whole thing. For instance, JD Vance agreed with Megyn Kelly that the deal could be scrapped if Trump’s supporters had an “utter meltdown.” Trump has hinted that he might scrap the deal too but has mainly focused on attacking those who are pointing out that the emperor has no clothes, perhaps not even an agreement.
Imagine a universe in which anyone but Trump was president and he ended a war which promised regime change, denuclearization and an end to Iran’s proxies and missile program by making a peace deal focused on Iran getting a $300 billion redevelopment grant. Multiple Trump surrogates, including Vance, are now defending the lack of limits on Iran’s missile program by arguing that Iran has a right to be able to defend itself. That’s true of course. That’s the nature of what a state is. But it’s not a very good argument for a regime you said four months ago was a danger to the world and had to cease to exist.
I’ve seen a number of foreign policy hands arguing that Trump could have had this deal without going to war at all. That is accurate as far as it goes. But it’s also an example of how D.C. foreign policy analysts can be disinclined or ill-equipped to capture the true enormity of some global pratfalls. As I noted earlier this week, my own sense is that neither the nuclear deal or the cash payments ever happen; and that both sides know this. These are just chatter to build domestic support. But if we take the deal on its face, do we think that Iran in January would have accepted a robust Marshall Plan for itself in exchange for the pre-war status quo and a de facto, if not a de jure, right to close off oil and gas shipments out of the Persian Gulf at will? Hard to imagine why they wouldn’t agree to that, right?
Trump in a way gave away the game when he said that he’s signing this deal to avoid an “economic catastrophe.” That’s at least closer to the truth: I had no choice. I had to pull the plug. Of course it’s probably an “economic” or rather a political catastrophe for him more than the country, at least in terms of how he sees it. But there you are at least getting to the heart of the matter. Of course that “catastrophe” is entirely the result of the war which he didn’t have to launch in the first place.
There’s a perfectly good chance that Trump will end up pulling the plug on this deal because of the extent of domestic opposition, especially from within the GOP. That would represent a continuation of the cycle going back to February: Trump wants out but is unwilling to undergo either the psychic or coalitional costs of doing so. More likely though is that it will go as planned: the war stops, something both sides need though for very different reasons, and most of the money and the nuclear stuff never happens.