Trump’s latest Iran backtrack deepens his political crisis in the United States

Among the most recurring themes in Donald Trump’s prolific output on his social network, Truth, his attacks on the press stand out. Rare is the day when the president of the United States doesn’t go after one outlet or another journalist. Not all of those barbs are as harsh, however, as the one he fired on Tuesday at Elliot Kaufman — a “MORON,” he wrote to attack the member of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board. Trump also accused the newspaper — which is owned by his friend Rupert Murdoch — of “losing his way.”

The reason? An opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal titled Iranians Take Trump for a Sucker. In it, Kaufman writes: “Twice [Trump] has announced the opening of the Strait of Hormuz, and twice he has given up U.S. leverage in exchange. Yet the strait remains closed, as Iran’s regime demands more.”

Trump posted his message about four hours after announcing — also on Truth Social — that he was extending, without saying for how long, the two‑week deadline he had given Iran to accept a deal favorable to U.S. interests. The Journal’s article was published on Monday. That means that, however offensive the president may have found it — in his attack, he leaned on the same talking points he often uses to sell a wartime “success” few share (the enemy navy and air force are destroyed, its nuclear program “obliterated”...) — its author didn’t even take into account the president’s latest unfulfilled threat.

Trump justified his decision to postpone the ultimatum — which, as has become routine, he issued and then withdrew himself — by saying he wanted to give Iran time to respond to U.S. demands. This time, the ceasefire will last as long as it takes until “discussions are concluded, one way or another.”

After announcing the decision, he spent the rest of the day — which had begun with the promise that Vice President J.D. Vance would be in the Pakistan capital, Islamabad, negotiating with the Iranians — trying on Truth Social to sell the idea that what had plainly happened had not in fact happened: that the United States had given in, apparently, getting anything in return.

According to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, the Iranians needed only an unusual weapon: silence — the result of internal disagreements within the regime. Leavitt also said that it will be Trump, and Trump alone, who decides when the ceasefire extension ends, and that the White House does not consider Wednesday’s Iranian attack on two container ships in the Strait of Hormuz to be a violation of that ceasefire, since the vessels were neither American nor Israeli.

For days, Trump had been issuing dire threats if no agreement was reached, including the commission of war crimes such as blowing up every bridge in Iran, even those used by civilians. And he did so after weeks of clinging to a narrative that could be described as a Schrödinger’s‑war scenario. In this telling, Trump has already won the war and yet cannot find a way to end it. Meanwhile, the internal crisis is escalating, fueled by a conflict he entered alone, alongside Israel, with a litany of objectives, one of which has ultimately prevailed: to dismantle the enemy’s nuclear program and the regime’s aspiration to possess the nuclear bomb.

For his critics, Tuesday was another “Taco Tuesday,” an ironic play on words combining the association of that day of the week in the United States with eating the popular Mexican snack with the acronym for “Trump Always Chickens Out.” It was, certainly, another demonstration that his intimidation‑based diplomacy is not working as well with Iran as it did in the past. Meanwhile, U.S. allies have refused to join a military adventure that Washington did not consult them on beforehand. The temptation also proved too strong to play with the title of Trump’s first and most famous book, The Art of the Deal — the foundation of his supposed legend as a negotiator — and turn it into The Art of the Delay.

Trump’s erratic handling of the war and his back‑and‑forth over a crisis of his own making — which he rushed to declare resolved last Friday — are taking a toll on his approval rating, which has hit record lows across all polls. The latest survey, from NBC, shows his approval rating has fallen to its lowest point since he returned to the White House 458 days ago.

Sixty‑three percent disapprove of his performance for multiple reasons, but above all for two: the state of the economy and the Iran war. And the two issues are linked. The instability in the Middle East and the standoff between Washington and Tehran — which has kept the Strait of Hormuz doubly closed, affecting a key route through which one‑fifth of the world’s hydrocarbons flow — is having a direct impact on Americans’ wallets.

With West Texas crude trading around $93 a barrel on Wednesday, gasoline — now costing more than $4 a gallon — has for weeks been one of Americans’ top concerns, given how dependent they are on car travel. Meanwhile, United Airlines, the country’s largest carrier by fleet size, has announced that it plans to pass the rise in jet‑fuel prices on to passengers through fare increases of between 15% and 20%.

Rising fuel prices

Energy Secretary Chris Wright was unable last Sunday to guarantee that gasoline prices would fall before the end of the year, and that candor earned him a reprimand from Trump, who was either more optimistic or more reluctant to accept reality, depending on one’s perspective. It was also enough to propel Wright’s name up the rankings on the Polymarket prediction site, which allows bets on which Cabinet member will be the next to leave, following the string of departures: Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who resigned amid scandal.

Several Washington outlets have also reported in recent days, citing anonymous sources, that the White House is looking for a replacement for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. He has been the public face of the Iran war, approaching it with a level of belligerence and aggression rarely seen, and has insisted on framing it as a “holy war.”

With the November midterms drawing closer, the pressure over gasoline prices has intensified. Republicans are fighting to retain control of Congress, and Trump is fighting for the viability of the rest of his second term — a dynamic that has encouraged a few timidly critical voices within his own party on Capitol Hill. They join the far louder chorus of MAGA‑world figures who have been at odds with Trump since the start of the war. Tucker Carlson, the most prominent among them, went further than anyone else on his podcast on Tuesday, saying he regretted having helped elect Trump. “We’ll be tormented by it for a long time. I will be. And I want to say I’m sorry for misleading people,” he said.

Given his cynical track record, it’s entirely possible Carlson will change his mind before the next presidential election and, in 2028, once again back a Trump‑aligned candidate. That could be Vice President Vance, chosen by Trump to lead the negotiations to end a war he had firmly opposed in the past. It’s a familiar exercise in intellectual contortion among Trump’s allies. And in Vance’s case, a cruel paradox as well: his chances of becoming the Republican nominee for the White House will depend on the success or failure of those talks in Islamabad, which, Trump told the New York Post on Wednesday, could resume next Friday.

No one in Washington is sure of that. Nor, given recent history, is anyone confident that the new deadline will be met.

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