Mr. Trump’s self-attested and fealty-driven narrative that he is the world’s best negotiator once again crashed and burned in the face of a determined adversary. As we related just three weeks ago, Mr. Trump can make a deal when he is in the win-win scenario of business, but it is entirely different when it is a win-lose, zero-sum negotiation. What Mr. Trump is very effective at during negotiations is using his leverage to maximum advantage. But when you have no leverage, you lose. And the Iranians knew that Mr. Trump was unwilling to resume conflict, and they knew he (and/or allies in the middle east) would not want this conflict to continue. And since the alternative for the Iranian regime was death and the loss of their messianic vision, they had more will to fight than did the United States. It is as simple as that. Sad. But simple.

I haven’t read the MOU, but most of the analyses I’ve seen from sources I trust are discouraging. Whether Mr. Trump did better or worse than Mr. Obama in the JCPOA is irrelevant. In both cases the U.S. did not achieve its objectives because at the end of the day it will depend on regime compliance. They will not comply. Ever. They will gladly lie and feign compliance, but never comply–it’s what they do. I supported Mr. Trump (as I would any American president) in conflict with Iran because they are our enemy and are committed to our destruction and our key ally Israel. But as we’ve said, regime change was always the only path to the better tomorrow that we could have had, and Mr. Trump was not willing to pay that price.

Was it all for naught? I think the harshest criticisms of Mr. Trump and what we’ve done are misguided, and it remains to be seen what the end state will be. But a couple of notes. Iran has been decimated. Even if they get sanctions relief, even if we get a bad deal, it will be years before they’ll want to tango again. They will immediately resume covertly funding their proxies and causing Israel much pain, but there is not much doubt in my mind we’ve bought ourselves more time with respect to a nuclear Iran than we had before. Secondly, this will hopefully challenge future presidents about the necessity of gaining the American people’s backing for a conflict. Sustaining public will in a constitutional republic is much more difficult than with autocrats, and war is always going to be costly in terms of blood and treasure, but to refuse to garner public support (and yes, including the opposition) severely limits your options.

Finally, regarding American standing in the world, this doesn’t remotely compare in my mind to what Mr. Biden did in Afghanistan. I regret the way Mr. Trump has handled this. I utterly condemn what Mr. Biden did. Mr. Biden’s retreat directly emboldened Russia to invade Ukraine. I am quite confident that after what happened to Iran, no nation is going to want to pick a fight with the U.S.. They’ll be emboldened to try to fight and survive with asymmetric conflict if we attack them, but they won’t want to instigate a conflict. We’ll survive this president’s mistakes too.