Unpacking Trump's Capitulation to Iran
And why today was a special day
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Today was an auspicious day for light. It was Father’s Day in the United States and dozens of foreign countries, and I want to celebrate all fathers in the Lucid community and beyond who are shining examples for their children and those around them.
Today was the summer solstice, meaning it was the longest day of the year and the day of maximum hours of sunlight. The solstice is celebrated in Stonehenge and other places with rituals that incorporate ancestral and indigenous traditions.
And today was International Yoga Day, which was established by the United Nations in 2015. My work on tyranny requires me to access states of darkness, to understand how they can take hold in societies and how they can be reversed and defeated. Yoga channels the light, building physical strength, equanimity, calm, and perspective. My practice keeps me steady and optimistic.
Wherever you are located, I hope you have enjoyed today’s extended brightness, and I send you a “Namaste”: the light in me honors the light in you.
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"A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social on April 7, embodying those forces of darkness. “I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.”
The casual mention of annihilating over 90 million people does not merit inclusion in a timeline of the war’s “key moments and attacks” published by the New York Times, but it is significant. It is a reminder not only of Trump’s megalomania but also his narcissistic personality: he cares little about human lives other than his own.
As I argue here, the spectacular incompetence shown throughout this war is insufficient explanation for the many failings of the Memorandum of Agreement, which empowers Iran to be even more of a threat to the United States, alone and in tandem with its autocratic allies, whose leaders Trump greatly admires.
When Trump threatened Iran with extinction, the war waged by the United States and Israel had been going on for over a month. Thirteen American service members had been killed. They include Air Force Major John “Alex” Klinner, 33, who will not be celebrating Father’s Day with his three children —a 2 year old and 7-month old twins.
“Military lives are not expendable. The people who decide when and where we go to war answer to us,” wrote Major Klinner’s wise aunt in a Facebook post.
We know that the way wars start influences their trajectories and outcomes. and we also know that authoritarian leaders who do not consider themselves to be accountable to the public can make calculations without regard for human casualties.
On MS NOW, retired Rear Admiral John Kirby spoke with Alicia Menendez about the “strategic incompetence” of the Trump administration, which started a war without sufficient planning or a clear endgame. That, plus underestimating the adversary, places lives at risk, Kirby continued, including the lives of United States armed forces known for “operational excellence.”
Three months ago, I analyzed the war as a “developing case study of the flawed decision-making typical of autocratic governance”:
Plenty of people in the United States military and national security apparatus could have enlightened the White House regarding the scope and modalities of possible Iranian retaliations. Yet others’ opinions are no match for your own when you live in a bubble of delusions and believe you are omnipotent and “always right”…[Trump] went to war to feel more powerful, but the war exposed his weaknesses and deficiencies to the world.
Since then, we have witnessed the counter-productive actions of fanatics such as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who believes that it is acceptable “we negotiate with bombs,” the use of real estate executives (Witkoff and Kushner) rather than seasoned diplomats and Middle East experts for sensitive negotiations with Iran, and Trump’s own malfeasance as a head of state and Commander in Chief, most evidently through his signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that appeases and empowers Iran.
Jennifer Rubin is among many who observed that this non-binding “agreement” reads “like a near total capitulation — but not by the Iranian regime.” It fulfills none of the administration’s stated objectives, and makes Iran a potentially more powerful adversary.
Overall, the agreement is a huge gift to a regime that has become far more hardline since the ascension of the new Supreme Leader, who is more extremist and repressive than his father. Mass arrests and executions of Iranians are surging, as Human Rights Watch has documented, and the regime has smartly leaned into nationalist sentiment against the foreign aggressor, staging huge pro-government rallies.
The lifting of U.S. sanctions on Iran foreseen by the MOU has brought criticism from across the political spectrum, as has the idea of a $300 billion “reconstruction” fund for Iran. This would be financed by other Gulf powers, rather than by Iran’s own frozen assets, as was the case with the deal President Barack Obama reached with Iran in 2015. So Iran will have its assets unfrozen and available for some other use - perhaps building up its arsenal and further enhancing hybrid warfare capabilities used against the United States for years?
Trump is a famously ungenerous person, so the way he talks here about Iran’s right to have ballistic missiles deserves our attention:
If other countries have them, it’s a little bit unfair for them not to have some. If Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and they all have some, I would say that in relative proportion, I think it’s okay.
The frame of Trump’s incompetence does not apply here. His words reflect his internalization of a mentality that aims to make the world safe for autocracies, as well as his own attraction to authoritarian regimes. Making agreements with such regimes and taking actions that benefit them is now one of his hallmarks as a president, whether it is paying regimes to accept third-country deportees, bailing them out financially, abolishing checks on the circulation of their influence in America, or other anti-democratic “deals.”
Iran’s major allies are Russia, China, and North Korea. These are the same countries Trump singled out in this fateful campaign speech in 2024: “If you have a smart president, they’re not enemies. You’ll make them do great,” he said. With this MOU, it seems that Iran may join them.
Although Iran will be more hostile and dangerous for America than ever, he wants it to have the same weapons as America’s allies. That is not incompetence, but rather a calculation made by an individual who is a de facto partner of Putin. Iran has status for him as a Russian ally and on that basis should be treated fairly.
Even if we see intermittent hostilities in the future between the United States and Iran, that will not change Trump’s attitude of respect for dictatorships, and his impulse to strike deals that benefit them, no matter the cost to American security and prosperity.
Ruth: “Military lives are not expendable”….RBGh. This short sentence from your post tonight brought me back 30 yrs ago when I was an officer in the medical corp of the US Army serving at the end of the Vietnam War. The army language switched calling the soldiers
‘troops’. Non of us serving at the time liked it. We believed it took the human being out of soldier and placed them into this expendable thing called a troop. We fought hard against it in the med/ nursing corps but no one listened to us. Some officers were warned with demotion if they didn’t shut up. I got out in 1985 rather then use the term.
No pension
Excellent analysis, Ruth. Trump is not a tribune of America's democratic republic but rather its Trojan Horse traitor. But more exigently and ominously, he is a clinical psychopath who will certainly deploy nuclear weapons if he feels backed into a corner, even one of his own making. (How else would he make good on his threat -- “You close the strait and you won’t have a country. You won’t even make it back to your f****** country, we’ll take over the rest of the country” -- without the threat and/or actual use of nuclear weapons?).
There is no greater urgency and act of patriotism and self-preservation than to remove him from office pronto, by whatever nonviolent means necessary. Those who fail to do so, along with those who become its victims, will be lucky if they survive long enough to rue the day that psychotic malignant narcissist Trump was invested with power.