Trump Is Trapped in His YOLO War in Iran

“It always works out,” the president assures us. But Iran is playing hardball because it sees what every American does: The war is jacking up prices and dragging down the entire Republican Party ahead of the midterm elections.

Donald Trump is not worried about Iran—at least, that’s the message he’s trying to send to panicked investors, frustrated voters, and vulnerable congressional Republicans. “We are low-keying it” on Iran, the president told Axios’s Barak Ravid on Sunday. “We are only semi-negotiating with them. We are just watching Iran with its huge inflation and the fact they have no money,” he said, noting the country was “in very bad shape” economically. “It will work out. It always works out,” he concluded. “It’s like a chess game.”

“It always works out” is never a reassuring message to receive during a crisis, especially when it comes from someone who has declared multiple bankruptcies and launched a failed coup.

Trump, of course, was elected president for the first time after those bankruptcies and won again after the failed coup (and the dozens of criminal charges that followed it). But just because he got lucky twice doesn’t mean he will again. And if the war with Iran is a “chess game,” then it’s one he and the United States are losing badly, with few available moves left on the board.

Iran announced on Monday that it would not reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the vital shipping lane that carries around a fifth of the world’s oil supply, until the U.S. agrees to its demands, which include the lifting of sanctions, the payment of reparations and the unfreezing of Iranian assets, and ending the blockade that Trump believes will ultimately lead to victory. The strait had previously been reopened in response to ceasefire agreements. Now, Iran—not Trump—is playing hardball. And there’s little reason to believe that even the economic chokehold Iran is........

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