Donald Trump’s racist, misogynist, xenophobic view of the world has undermined the USA’s global standing. He has surrounded himself with cabinet officials who believe that competence is determined not by expertise, training, education and experience but with factors perceived to be far more important like, whether they are white, male and retain a feudal sense of subservience, other criteria he values include girth, facial hair and his very subjective perception of attractiveness.
Trump’s attack on wokeness and diversity, equity and inclusion mean that his administration is left without a diversity of knowledge , cultural understanding and empathy which means his negotiators for the Iran War cannot appreciate the history of the region, the cultural nuances, the languages, the political tensions, the emotional impact of their actions or the thinking of the current leadership. Being woke means understanding a variety of perspectives and having empathy for others, something this administration sorely lacks. They represent the total opposite of Kissinger, Brzezinski, Albright and Rice who were lifelong experts on their diplomatic counterparts.
In February Donald Trump accused the leaders of the Iranian regime of being a “vicious group of very hard terrible people” . In June he showered compliments on the Iranian leadership. In addition, his about face, and the President’s assurances that the Iranian leaders can be trusted, come after he has killed several family members of the current Supreme Leader.
Had the President not fired the Middle East experts in the State Department, he would have known that Iran is, like much of Central Asia, comprised of people who have survived a variety of empires ranging through several millennia, including but not limited to the Achaemenid/Persian, Ottoman & Mongolian empires. While Trump diverts the 250th anniversary of U.S. Independence from England, to a personal partisan event, MAGA pretends that 250 years is a long time, while they seeks to eradicate the 40,000 years of Native American history. In other words, suggesting that the President thinks in terms of 250-year increments is gratuitous, it is more appropriate to suggest that he thinks, as far ahead as the next campaign season and more likely he barely thinks beyond tomorrow’s news cycle.
I was once working with a lawyer from a neighboring country to Iran and she suggested that “you American lawyers want to get from A to B and you want to get there as fast as possible. I am Byzantine,” she said…”I do not think that way.” The point is, that Iranian leadership does not think the same way the president does. In my opinion they are not interested in money to the same extent that the president is. They do not need to respond to a Congress or an electorate. They have the luxury to think in terms of 2500 years. Their memories are long and while Donald Trump has most likely not given a second thought to the death of the Supreme Leader’s family, the Supreme Leader is unlikely to ever forget or for that matter forgive, nor are the Iranian people likely to forget the massacre of children at the Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School.
It is within this context that Donald Trump an inveterate liar suggests that the Iranian leadership is now trustworthy and that he has achieved significant progress with a gentlemen’s agreement. Iranians are less likely to bestow such trust on the USA or its leadership. Trump’s so-called MOU is woefully unspecific. Any diplomat will tell you that strategic ambiguity may be essential to closing a multilateral agreement, but where there is ambiguity, the diplomat must presume that the gaps will be aggressively interpreted against their interests.
The JCPOA was a major achievement because it was not bi-lateral it was multilateral. It included China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States and was endorsed by the UN Security Council. The inclusion of Russia, and China meant that two of Iran’s leading potential allies were bound to the agreement. Such action would forbid Iran’s allies from assisting Iran to undermine or violate the agreement in any material way. The endorsement of France, Germany the United Kingdom and the UN provided gravitas to the agreement which meant that failure to adhere would bring condemnation on the world stage.
The JCPOA was a 159-page document which outlined explicit terms addressing the limits on Iran’s use of Uranium, its enrichment, stockpiling, research and development, reactor facilities with extensive monitoring and verification by international bodies for up to 25 years. It also outlined a considered approach to sanctions by the UN, the EU and the US.
The current MOU addresses none of these issues. The Israeli’s (who to my understanding are not at the table) have rejected the proposal and regardless of what one thinks of President Netanyahu, it is hard to imagine Israel waiving its right to defend itself. Donald Trump has alienated NATO, and wholly unnecessarily, leaders of the UK , France, Germany & Italy.
In addition to exposing US Allies of Oman, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar, the failure of the administration to clearly secure a victory against Iran has exposed weaknesses in the military capabilities of the USA. Since World War II the goal of the US Military has been to fight under a two-theatre war model. In essence it was intended to be capable of engaging in two major conflicts, essentially one in Europe or the Middle East and one in Asia at the same time.
The Trump administration has demonstrated that there is a serious argument that the US is neither competent nor capable of mounting such efforts. The feeble military action in Iran has provided credible evidence that with the failure to cooperate with NATO and the allocation of resources to the Middle East, that the US’s ability to defend against China for the purposes of fulfilling its historical commitments to Taiwan or against a Putin expansion into Europe have been seriously compromised.
The president has complained that the US has lost respect on a global stage, but he alone has overseen the country’s greatest deconstruction of military, diplomatic and intelligence capabilities since prior to WWI and the utter destruction of the respect and reputation of the USA amongst allies and enemies alike.
Walter H. White, Jr is a director of Lawyers Defending American Democracy and served as a director & chair of the Central Asian American Enterprise Fund during the Clinton & Bush administrations.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.