The whiplash is jarring.President Trump exulted over every bomb that dropped on Iran, every naval interdiction, and every joint U.S.-Israeli operation. Before that, he spent years preaching a policy of “maximum pressure” sanctions on the Islamic Republic. And before that, he harshly disparaged the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the Iran nuclear deal reached by Barack Obama, from which Trump withdrew the United States in 2018.And now? With a misguided war going poorly, with global economic chaos spreading, with Iran handed maximum leverage by its closure of the Strait of Hormuz, in an instant, Trump has upended every pillar of his approach to a still-dangerous Iran.Let’s count the ways.Nuclear: A core goal of the war was to ensure that Iran’s nuclear program could never produce a nuclear weapon. Israeli and U.S. strikes in June 2025 advanced that goal by destroying key nuclear facilities and burying Iran’s enriched uranium, setting back the program significantly.[Jonathan Lemire: Trump in defeat]But little had changed in the nuclear program by the time this war was launched in February 2026, and little has changed since. Now, in exchange for an oft-repeated pinky promise that Iran will never acquire a nuclear weapon, Trump agreed to delay negotiations on the key goals of removing Iran’s enriched uranium, banning further enrichment, and the verification measures needed to guarantee those commitments are upheld. These talks are punted to a second phase that may never arrive or never end.Sanctions: Trump long advocated maximum-pressure sanctions, and beat his chest during the war about the cost to Iran of the U.S. naval blockade.But now we will pay for reopening the Strait of Hormuz—simply, at best, restoring the prewar status quo—by approving the release of tens of billions of dollars of Iranian foreign assets and waiving sanctions to permit Iranian oil sales. More goodies are in store for the regime, in the form of fees paid by ships transiting the strait and a shockingly large $300 billion reconstruction fund. (The latter, supposedly to be funded by Gulf states, recalls the worst of former Secretary of State John Kerry’s post-JCPOA diplomacy, when he sought to drum up investment in the corrupt economy of a still-adversarial regime.)With no change in the regime’s character or ideological outlook, they are being rewarded with a shift from maximum pressure to maximum windfall. There is no reason to think the money will flow to schools and hospitals or provide any benefit to the Iranian people that the regime still suppresses. It will, instead, almost certainly fund more missiles, drones, and support for terrorists at home and abroad—threats about which the MOU is silent.Lebanon and Hezbollah: The war, misguided though it was, represented the zenith of U.S.-Israeli military cooperation, with unprecedented combined operations and ample praise by Trump for the partnership. Trump voiced recognition of the genuine threats Iran posed to Israel, not least from its network of terrorist proxies.But Israelis have been aghast at the speed of Trump’s turnabout. Israeli officials were excluded from negotiations on the MOU, and were not even given the opportunity to review the text. Meanwhile, as U.S. and Israeli interests diverged, Trump barked expletives at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and adopted the Iranian demand to impose restrictions on Israeli operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon—even as the militia continues to attack northern Israeli communities—as part and parcel of the broader cease-fire.Regime: Trump had also long correctly identified the Iranian regime as uniquely dangerous and evil, with the blood of many Americans, Israelis, Arabs, and its own citizens on its hands. Israel’s decapitation strike enabled by Trump on the war’s opening day gave clear expression to that understanding. One did not need to endorse this war—I opposed it—to recognize the imperative of containing and weakening the regime of the mullahs and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps until such time as the Iranian people could overthrow it.But in a flash, Trump and his weirdly credulous vice president have discovered the putative moderation, reasonableness, and, dare we say, decency of what is, if anything, an even more hard-line crop of Iranian leaders. Most states in the region, and soon in Europe, see which way the wind is blowing and are moving to improve their relations with Iran. Regime leaders must be chortling over their surprising and unearned new international legitimacy.To those at home and abroad whose necks are snapping and whose heads are spinning, I have to ask an obvious but uncomfortable question: What did you expect?This debacle is, at the end of the day, classic Donald Trump.In multiple ways, we are seeing Trump’s essential characteristics playing out on a national-security matter of the highest stakes.First, he is utterly assured that he can do anything, that he can will any reality into being, despite all evidence and expertise to the contrary. Seduced by the overnight success of the removal of President Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela, he convinced himself that he could bring about the rapid collapse of the Iranian regime. His own intelligence experts and Cabinet officials counseled otherwise. Yet he pressed ahead.Second, he deepened his self-deception through his childish belief in the invincibility of U.S. military power. A testosterone-infused operation name—Epic Fury—and a daily video diet of buildings going boom reinforced his delusion. The members of the United States military are fearsome and highly professional, and they carried out their assigned tasks with precision and effectiveness, degrading various Iranian capabilities. But Trump was incapable of aligning those operations with achievable strategic objectives. His mind doesn’t work that way.Third, when the going got tough, Trump started to flail. One day he threatened to wipe out Iranian civilization, the next (and the next and the next) he promised that a deal was just around the corner. Never a detail man (for policy, anyway; he goes deep on architectural trimmings), he confessed to being bored with the war. And as when his business ventures veered toward bankruptcy, with better off-ramps in the rearview mirror, he grasped for any way out, damn the costs to U.S. credibility, alliances, and influence.Fourth, he was susceptible to flattery, especially from strongmen. Remember his fruitless exchange of love letters with Kim Jong Un? They produced no breakthrough in nuclear diplomacy with North Korea. Somehow, without even an 80th-birthday card from Iran, Trump flattered himself into believing that he was the leader who could recognize, and cultivate, a new spirit of cooperation coming from the “very rational” and “not radicalized” leaders now in charge in Tehran.Fifth, as always, Trump is out for Trump. He stumbled by entering a war that Americans broadly opposed, and their opposition increased as they felt it in their pocketbooks at the pump and the grocery store. But it soon became clear, with a midterm-election disaster looming, that Trump would pull the plug. Again, ending the war was necessary; giving away the store while doing so was panic-induced self-preservation.[Laura Secor: The betrayal of the Iranian people]Finally, Trump swaggered into the war, and will skulk out of it, with total confidence in the slavish support of his political base. His faith will probably be justified. Remember their discovery of the absolutely essential national-security imperative that we grab Greenland? (Wait for it: Cuba is next.) The hurrahs for Trump the conqueror will soon transform into oohs and aahs toasting Donald the diplomat. A few lonely, honest critics of the JCPOA—a flawed but workable deal that verifiably set back Iran’s nuclear program—will resist the demand to tie themselves into pretzels, and instead acknowledge that Trump’s deal makes the JCPOA look ironclad.No doubt, Trump’s visibly advancing age has also played a role. As with all of us, time intensifies his most fundamental personality traits: ego, vanity, self-delusion, impatience, panic under pressure.And so here we are. A war that should not have been fought. An enemy that was hit hard but remains unrelentingly hostile and is now reaping unexpected strategic gains. The credibility of the U.S. in tatters and its military readiness compromised. Alliances and partnerships under stress. The global economic in tumult, inflicting financial pain on American citizens that will linger even as oil prices decline. A fine and avoidable mess all around.Indeed, what did anyone expect?