Neoconservatives are having a moment. After America Firsters appeared to conquer the Republican Party over the last decade, Donald Trump has swung right back to the old powers of the GOP. The war in Iran has been a dream project for the likes of Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, and Tom Cotton. John Bolton may be a critic of the president, but he found the Iran bombing campaign to his liking — if only Trump could actually finish the job and engineer actual regime change. Bolton fretted that Trump wouldn’t go far enough.

We’ll see what comes of the two-week ceasefire announced on Tuesday night, after Trump threatened to erase Iranian civilization hours earlier. But regardless, the Iran war is a booby prize for the neocons who think they’ve won the day. Rather than represent a return to the old status quo, a resurrection of Bush-style interventions abroad, it will likely result in the opposite: the death of interventionism as we know it. Making such an argument at this moment may seem laughable. This is a warmongering administration, and Trump will be president, barring death or removal from office, for another two years and eight months, plenty of time to do damage across the world. Trump has been obsessed with Iran for decades and, as the Times recently reported,........

© Daily Intelligencer