The golden chariot of fate has often carried President Donald Trump to safer shores when financial, business, political or legal failures trapped him in a corner. But he has hit a wall with his war against Iran, stymied by his inability to secure the “unconditional Iranian surrender”  he promised at the outset of the campaign.

Was the war worth the cost? Thirteen American soldiers lost their lives; 3,375 Iranians were killed, including 175 people, mostly children, who died in a US Tomahawk missile strike on a girls’ school. And it cost the American taxpayers $132 billion­­—twice the cost of all of Obamacare! Trump has little to show for it. The initial agreement between the United States and Iran, mediated primarily by Pakistan, offers Iran sanctions relief, a promise of reconstruction funds, and the potential to collect tolls on the Strait of Hormuz.

In our new book, Trump’s Ten Commandments, we reveal the rhetorical weapons Trump deploys to deflect blame and escape responsibility for a military campaign that, by most measures, failed well short of its stated objectives. The signing of the initial agreement between Washington and Tehran by Trump left unaddressed the massive arsenal of intact Iranian missile launchers, permitted the continued Iranian possession of enriched uranium, granted Iran the right to levy passage fees in the Strait of Hormuz.

The agreement did nothing to stop Iran from continuing funding its proxy terrorists—Hamas, the Houthis and Hezbollah—while promising to work with regional partners to raise reconstruction funds of $300 billion for Iran. And Trump left the repressive, militarist theocratic Iranian regime intact, a combination widely seen as a stunning American capitulation. However, Trump invariably denies all setbacks from bankruptcies and election losses to failures in courtrooms and on battlefields.

President Trump has received widespread scorn from not just Democratic Congressional leaders such as Hakim Jefferies, Jack Reed, and Seth Moulton, but also from a wide array of Republican Senate leaders, from Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz to Roger Wicker, Bill Cassidy, and John Thune. 

This bipartisan American condemnation mirrored a rare consensus across Israel’s political spectrum. From the far-right flanks of Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition to the leadership of........

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