Read the tea leaves. Americans are going into debt with credit cards as inflation bites. Car loans are being defaulted upon at a rising rate. Even the price of ground beef is up. Donald Trump calls this “short term pain.” Define short term and pain. Is short term two, three, five years, what? Is pain having to declare bankruptcy — for what good it will do? Here’s John Bolton kicking in his two cents as to the futility of it all.
Bolton: I think we're on the verge of something that ultimately history will decide was a catastrophic loss for the United States pic.twitter.com/nKRxSBjbEN
— Acyn (@Acyn) May 25, 2026
What would be comical about this, if it wasn’t tragic, is that Iran’s nuclear program has not been affected at all. Trump originally blew up a mountain where nuclear activities may or may not have been taking place, but he did not eradicate Iran’s nuclear program.
He keeps demanding the “nuclear dust” — in Truth Social posts. Negotiating with Iran via Truth Social is a total joke and everyone knows it. So likely Bolton is right that when all is said and done this “war” of Trump’s will be seen as a tragic waste of $150 billion and 13 American lives.
On some level Trump knows this but as Bolton (and others) point out, Trump is dying for a situation where he can declare a win with Iran and if at all possible some kind of a rebuke of Obama. Those are his goals. And he’ll probably find some weak argument that will allow him to weasal out of this conflagration in the Middle East that he started, but he won’t get what he stupidly and naively set out to get.
Trump has never understood Iran. He doesn’t understand Iran now. And he has cut bait with those officials within the U.S. who did understand and sent in his son-in-law and another real estate guy to negotiate. Bolton is right in his use of the word “catastrophe.”
