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.

There’s no question that Trump’s Iran War has been a disaster for the United States. There’s no way around that. The U.S. can absorb the cash costs of the conflict without too much difficulty. But along with everything else Trump has done over the last 18 months, it has given the U.S. the reputation of what amounts to a rogue state. Rebuilding trust in U.S. actions and intentions at best will be a very long process. The conflict has also redounded massively to the benefit of China, the only real peer competitor to the U.S. on the global stage.

But I wanted to point out two impacts of the war which are some versions of positives even if they are secondary effects of a disastrous adventure that never should have happened.

We are still, bizarrely, having to make sense of the Iran-U.S. “deal” on the basis of two or three different texts which are circulating on an unofficial basis. Meanwhile, the U.S., at least, refuses to release the text of the so-called “memorandum of understanding.” The Iranians are being somewhat more forthcoming, at least through their quasi-official state news agencies. But President Trump being a pathological liar shouldn’t obscure the fact that the Iranian regime is rather less than a reliable narrator. There’s surprisingly little public discussion in the United States about what conceivable good rationale there is for keeping the agreement secret while the White House is at least nominally trying to build public support for it. How can you know whether the deal is a good deal if you don’t know what the deal is? This is not a rhetorical question.

We again have a possible ceasefire agreement between the U.S. and Iran presented by President Trump as a deal to end the war he started back in February. It is a great victory, he claims. What we really have is a replay of a core feature of the spring and summer of 2026, as commentators and countries try to strip away the packaging and relentless razzmatazz from the White House and see what is really included in this deal. How much skepticism will the White House face since observers have been through maybe 1o or 20 cycles of this over the last four months?

And what’s in the deal this time?