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In the lead-up to his State of the Union address, President Donald Trump has been hitting more roadblocks than he’s used to.

Last week the usually pliant Supreme Court ruled that his emergency tariffs are illegal. Around the same time, we have since learned, his top general warned him that attacking Iran would be fraught with huge risks. Meanwhile, polls show his ratings have tanked to an all-time low, with 60 percent of the country dissatisfied with his performance, leaving some Republican lawmakers skittish about locking their own fates so firmly to his.

The military warning—first reported in the Washington Post, then confirmed in the New York Times—must be particularly rankling. According to the reports, in a recent White House meeting with many top officials present, Gen. Dan Caine—whom Trump selected, and has since highly lauded, as chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—said that a shortage of munitions and the absence of any allies would make a prolonged war with Iran very difficult. (In previous conflicts with Iran, some Gulf allies in the region have actively assisted; this time, they say they won’t even allow U.S. or Israeli planes or missiles to fly over their territory.)

It is unusual for Trump’s advisers to dampen his fantasies of easy wins, and it is less common still for high-level discussions of military plans to be leaked. The fact that Caine confronted Trump on this plan, and that someone spilled this to the public, suggests a growing concern among some inside players that the president’s increasingly casual adventurism could engulf the armed........

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