Donald Trump is being drawn into the kind of proxy war with Russia that his predecessors have been trying to avoid since the Bay of Pigs.

Vladimir Putin has outthought and outfought his so-called friend since the day they met. But Wednesday’s revelation that Russia is actively helping Tehran to target American assets should strike fear into us all.

The botched 1961 invasion of Cuba was a huge embarrassment to JFK and set the stage for the missile crisis the following year that nearly pitched the United States and the Soviet Union into World War Three.

Kennedy’s attempt to hide U.S. involvement by using anti-Castro Cuban exiles was quickly exposed, and for 13 days in October of 1962, nuclear obliteration was a very real possibility.

JFK and Trump are unlikely bedfellows, but fast forward 64 years, and the 47th president is finding himself in the same kind of dangerous pickle that the 35th managed to extricate us from.

The difference is that America could trust Kennedy (even if Jackie couldn’t). The same cannot be said of Trump.

With the Bay of Pigs, JFK would argue that it was hatched by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and he was trying to make the best of it.

The Iran War is all Trump’s doing. As much as he would like to, he can’t blame Joe Biden.

And the specter of Vladimir Putin is looming larger as Tehran’s confidence grows that it has withstood the worst of America’s initial........

© The Daily Beast