Trump trusted Iran’s ‘rational’ new leaders. Now he says he knows better

July 9, 2026 — 3:29pm

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Washington: Only a few weeks ago, Donald Trump was praising Iran’s new and improved leadership, with whom American negotiators had just inked a “memorandum of understanding” to end the war.

“We’re dealing with people that I think are very rational people, and they were nice to deal with,” the president extolled on June 16 at the G7. “They were strong people, smart people. They’re not radicalised, and they’re looking to help their country.”

Now, Trump says the Iranian leaders are “scum” and “sick people”; violent, vicious and “a little loco”. He has talked down the prospects of reaching a deal and says it’s probably not even worth trying.

What changed? That was the exact question The New York Times’ Tyler Pager asked Trump at the NATO summit in Ankara overnight, and it drew a rare direct answer. “I got to know them,” Trump said, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio chuckled on stage behind him.

It was a pithy response, but one that highlights what most Iran experts and Middle East analysts were saying all along: that Trump and his team – JD Vance, Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner – did not really understand Iran and its leadership, and were clumsily treating the war’s resolution as just another business deal.

Of course, what materially changed is that Tehran – apparently – began flexing its muscles again in the Strait of Hormuz, the crucial shipping passage that it........

© The Sydney Morning Herald