The practically universal reaction to the MOU across the political spectrum is that it represents something between a serious and catastrophic defeat for American foreign policy and global influence. Despite the farcical and frantic efforts of administration lickspittles like JD Vance and Pete Hegseth to deny the obvious, there’s little doubt that even someone as delusional and demented as Donald Trump realizes that he has suffered an utter humiliation on the world stage.
Which raises the question of what this malignant narcissist with increasingly poor impulse control is going to do, in an attempt to deal with such a severe instance of narcissistic injury.
Options include:
(1) Launch another war in a desperate attempt to put this calamity in the rearview mirror. This would most likely mean attacking Cuba, which would please Marco Rubio immensely of course (Rubio is the one person in the administration who seems to have done the most adept job of steering as far clear as possible of the Iran fiasco, despite his job title).
(2) Relaunch the war with Iran after the 60-day negotiation period inevitably fails.
(3) Engage in occasional episodic bombings and the like of Iranian targets, without any kind of full re-engagement, as a kind of symbolic flex.
(4) Just forget about it, and count on the very short attention span of the American public to largely forget about this fiasco between now and November, while talking a lot about how this tremendous victory has lowered gas prices to the lowest level ever, and eliminated Iran’s nuclear ambitions permanently, thus requiring the Nobel committee to finally recognize him as the greatest peacemaker in history.