Varga, author of “ Under Chad’s Spell,” was a Foreign Service office r, serving in Dubai, Damascus, Casablanca and Toronto
Two Americans were asking for a meeting with me. They had traveled from Alabama to Washington to lobby for more assistance to Lebanon, the country from which their fathers had fled to begin lives in the United States. I was the desk officer for Lebanon at the State Department. It was a fraught time with American hostages still being held.
The 1992 election had just happened, and Bill Clinton was the new president. I welcomed them into my tiny office and offered Arabic coffee that I brewed myself.
They told me about how their families had to reconfigure in America since Lebanon’s destructive civil war had forced their fathers to flee. They said they were born in America — and had U.S. passports — but still felt an obligation to try to assist their extended families back home in Tripoli and Beirut. I asked what they wanted from the U.S. government.
“We want Lebanon to be a higher priority,” Mustapha said.
“It seems like Israel gets all the focus. The Middle East has so many countries that struggle under anti-democratic regimes. We think the U.S. can do so much more,” explained Abderrahim.
I explained that my whole focus was the bilateral relationship between the U.S. and Lebanon. I told them that I often worked long hours, even on weekends, when some new crisis developed.
“It’s good to hear that,” Mustapha said. “I’m sure the guy in this job under Bush wasn’t doing that.”
“I don’t have to remind you that our tax dollars pay your salary. We just want to know that that money is being well-managed in regard to Lebanon,” Abderrahim added. A little bit of sharper tone came with that warning.
I didn’t have the heart to tell them that as a career Foreign Service officer, I had been the desk officer under George H.W. Bush. I was continuing in the same job, even with a change in presidents. I assured them that we were doing all we could, mentioning that I had held a recent meeting with the staff of Sen. Jesse Helms. The senator had placed a hold on our ability to make available to the Lebanese army excess defense articles that the Pentagon no longer needed.
They left my office, seeming satisfied with what they had accomplished. But it left me with the feeling that so many Americans didn’t fully grasp how the career bureaucracy keeps the government operating, through every cycle of new occupants in the Oval Office.
In this year of so much polarizing discussion about how Donald Trump intends to reform the agencies of the executive branch, I think it’s important to underscore the value of what the MAGA folks malign as the “deep state.” Foreign Service officers work in embassies and consulates throughout the world. While ambassadors are often political appointees, most of the other officers are part of the career service, in place no matter which political party controls the White House or Congress. That’s a good thing.
We want continuity in our policies in determining our bilateral relationships with the nations of the world. We want institutional memory to be retained as to what has been previously agreed to in establishing these working relationships. If you have a wholesale change of these career officials, you risk having to reinvent the wheel all over again. What a waste that is.
During my first assignment as a Foreign Service officer in Dubai in 1985, I had to meet with a U.S. flag vessel’s crew in the Persian Gulf after it had been boarded and held by the Iranian Navy. I had to interview the crew about the way the Iranians had treated them. The Iran-Iraq war was keeping everyone nervous. Under a ticking clock, Washington wanted to know how serious the breach had been. Was any retaliatory action by U.S. forces warranted? Fortunately, that instance proved to be a mere skirmish in the battle for influence in the Middle East.
But as you consider these claims among politicians that bureaucrats are the devil that must be expunged, think of the career diplomats who work tirelessly in some of the most dangerous places in the world to ensure consistency in U.S. foreign policy. Yes, your tax dollars are paying their salaries. I assure you you’re getting a great return on your investment.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.