How Washington Lost the Plot on Iran

Watching the latest developments from Israel this week, I couldn’t shake the feeling that somewhere along the way, the entire U.S. administration lost the plot.

This war was supposed to be about stopping the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, degrading its military capabilities and dismantling the terror network it has spent decades building across the Middle East. Instead, we’re now negotiating over shipping lanes, sanctions relief and who gets to administer the Strait of Hormuz.

This week, Reuters reported that the Trump administration removed sanctions on three entities previously designated for supporting the IRGC’s Quds Force. Treasury says those entities no longer met the legal standard for designation (spare me). We all know what these moves are about — the stench of appeasement from the Trump Administration desperately trying to make a deal… and no, not over the nuclear issue, but over the Strait of Hormuz.

According to officials familiar with the talks, Tehran is demanding sanctions relief in exchange for allowing commercial shipping to pass through the Strait of Hormuz without charging tolls. Before this war, and before the Islamic Republic started threatening international shipping, nobody needed its permission to transit Hormuz. The regime successfully manufactured a crisis and is now trying to cash in by offering to stop creating it.

As if that weren’t enough, Iranian negotiators are reportedly pushing to keep American naval vessels out of the Strait while giving the Islamic Republic a central role in securing commercial traffic. The same regime that mined shipping lanes, seized tankers and repeatedly threatened to shut Hormuz now wants to be treated as the guarantor of freedom of navigation. You really couldn’t make this up.

Meanwhile this week the same regime continued attacks through its proxy terror network while Washington largely refrained from responding militarily at all. From Tehran’s perspective, the strategy is clearly working. Even after the Islamic Republic openly threatened to assassinate the American president, Washington continues allowing Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and even Pakistan to pressure it away from decisive military action. That should be unthinkable. Instead, it has become policy... and a new historic low for any president.

From where I sit in Tel Aviv, the defining pattern of 2026 is exactly what we are seeing play out with the Islamic republic. President Trump is attempting to do the same thing in Gaza as well — the difference is Israelis won’t be played by Trump’s absurd proclamations of “peace deals” with Islamist terrorists sworn to our destruction.

There is a new American standard of intentionally losing wars by shifting the goal towards “making a deal” every time they get close to fundamentally changing the strategic balance. Even worse in the current administration, the President’s grandiose threats without follow through have tremendously undermined American military deterrence in the field. We have the President who cried wolf.

If where this ends is where it’s headed now, the Islamic Republic won’t just have survived another confrontation… It will have succeeded in redefining the conflict on its own terms.

5 Stories You Shouldn’t Miss

1. Abdul El-Sayed: The Islamist Rebrand

S.O.S. Michigan Democrats officially voted in Abdul El-Sayed as their U.S. Senate candidate.

This is the same Abdul El-Sayed who falsely claimed to be a doctor and accepts support from CAIR — a terrorist organization in the states of Texas and Florida — while simultaneously making AIPAC the villain of his campaign. This is also the same El Sayed who labeled Israel’s war against Hamas a “genocide”, campaigned repeatedly with Hasan Piker, and couldn’t bring himself to be happy about the death of mass murdering Ali Khamenei because some of Abdul’s constituents were “sad.” El Sayed has publicly said he opposes defensive funding for the iron dome — repestwdly arguing that such funding comes at the expense of American schools (a blatantly false claim as over a trillion dollars is spent on U.S. education and roughly $110 million was spent in Iron Dome). This is the El-Sayed who, in response to criticism over his antisemitic views, came out saying he wants to “break bread on Passover with Jews”. Really? Bread? On Passover?

And like clockwork, after he won the primary election one of his first comments to the media was calling Jews “bloodthirsty”. Michigan is in big trouble.

2. Is City Hall running Mamdani’s Online Fan Club?

One of the biggest stories this week came out of New York. An exclusive investigation found that dozens, and potentially hundreds, of suspected X bot accounts promoting New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani back to IP infrastructure associated with City Hall. Some of the accounts reportedly posted more than 900 times a day and existed almost entirely to amplify Mamdani, official City Hall accounts and his political allies. The Jerusalem Post also consulted the cyber experts independently, who said they were “100% sure” the IP addresses originated from City Hall.

If that’s true, this isn’t just another social media story. It raises questions about whether government infrastructure was used to manufacture support for one of America’s most anti-Israel politicians while making it appear organic. New York’s Department of Investigation should determine exactly who was behind the operation, whether public resources were used and whether taxpayers unknowingly funded an online propaganda campaign.

3. Oops… The UN’s Own Data Debunks the Famine Libel

For nearly two years, the world has been bombarded with claims that Israel is deliberately starving Gaza. The famine libel became conventional wisdom, thanks to millions of ill-informed sheep on social media along with support from the international media. Now comes the awkward part.

A UNICEF-led UN nutrition survey released this week found child malnutrition rates dramatically lower than the figures used to fuel the famine narrative, seriously undermining one of the biggest anti-Israel talking points of the war. Funny how the UN’s own data suddenly becomes less interesting when it contradicts the preferred narrative. Don’t expect to see this on the front page of the New York Times!

4. Hamas Finds a New Home

Hamas may be leaving Qatar, but don’t mistake that for progress. According to Palestinian sources, the terrorist group is moving much of its covert operational infrastructure to Turkey while keeping its political leadership in Doha. That tells you two things. First, Qatar’s role as Hamas’s patron is hardly over. Second, Turkey is becoming an even bigger problem.

President Erdoğan has spent years embracing Hamas while pretending it isn’t a terrorist organization. Now, if these reports are accurate, a NATO member is poised to become the group’s primary operational hub outside Gaza.

5. Ireland’s Boycott Hits… Ireland

This one almost writes itself. The Irish government reportedly ordered a €53 million government jet without an Israeli navigation system because they wanted to boycott Israel. The result? Reports the aircraft now is unable to land safely due to poor visibility. Turns out boycotting Israeli technology doesn’t hurt Israel nearly as much as it hurts the people trying to boycott it.

What’s Next

Washington looks increasingly desperate for a deal while Tehran grows more confident by the day. That’s a dangerous combination for everyone in the region. Meanwhile in Gaza, Israel has made clear it isn’t interested in another agreement that leaves Hamas standing, regardless of what promises President Trump makes. I suspect the same logic increasingly applies to the Islamic Republic itself. Israelis have spent decades living with wars that end before the people who started them are defeated. We’ve seen how that movie ends. I don’t think many Israelis are interested in watching it again.