Monday, June 8, 2026

Trump should lose on Iran. He won't

On Monday, Israel and Iran announced that they would pause attacks after President Donald Trump pleaded with the two nations to stop firing at each other. The hostilities came after Iran launched missiles into Israel after Israel fired into the outskirts of Beirut.

Trump issued a stern warning to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, telling Axios, “If Bibi strikes them back it’s just gonna keep going like the last 47 years, or the last 3,000 years.”

It’s just the latest sign of how much damage to regional stability Trump's war in Iran has inflicted.. Ostensibly, a ceasefire has been in place between the United States and Iran since April. But the president has broadened the definition of the ceasefire to allow “shooting in a moderate manner,” as he told reporters last week.

And Americans are getting sick of this game of chicken with Iran.

An Economist/YouGov poll showed that 64 percent of Americans disapprove of the war in Iran. The same poll showed that 55 percent of Americans said that going to war with Iran was the wrong choice from the start.

So, the laws of political gravity should mean that Republicans — with only 217 seats in the House of Representatives and 53 seats in the Senate — would break away from the president and an unpopular war.

That hasn’t been the case, even as Trump has declared war on disloyal Republicans. 

Rather, GOP lawmakers, despite their vocal objections, have continued to give the president carte blanche.

Read more here. 

By Eric Garcia

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