Trump’s Blowing Some Crazy Smoke About Iran

Anyone buying his claims of triumph don’t know much about history. Neither his nor that of the Middle East.

It sure would be swell if June 23, 2025, winds up remembered as the day Donald Trump stopped lying through his teeth.

But let’s not hold our breaths.

In Trump’s telling, Iran was on the verge of producing a nuclear bomb any day now. But with one daring stable-genius move, he unleashed American power with such force that the nuclear threat was gone forever and Iran crawled to a peace deal in fear of his further wrath.

Achieving peace in the Middle East turned out to be as simple as posting on Truth Social. Which, by the way, is America’s official source of major diplomatic news — revealed to the world, briefing-free — in the lexicon of fifth-graders, with an occasional ALL CAPS tantrum more on the kindergarten level.

Fawning Fox News hosts can confirm that Trump just concluded the greatest peace agreement in world history. That’s pretty much it. Trump won. Iran lost. And he did it with such humility:

“And I want to just thank everybody, and, in particular, God.”

Far be it from me to question the divinity of a “15‑ton mega bunker‑buster” engineered to penetrate hundreds of feet of rock and concrete. I’m no atheist. And in the same spirit, any concern about Trump having carried this out in obvious violation of U.S. law is certainly mitigated by God’s participation. Or so we’re told.

One can’t blame Trump for wanting to cloak his rogue military excesses as some sort of holy war. None of his stated predicates can be verified as remotely moored in the truth.

Our next order of business as a nation: waiting uneasily for actual facts to emerge.

Meanwhile, it represents the best example of a Republican president getting over his skies since this moment:

Remember this?

On May 1, 2003, President George W. Bush stood aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln beneath a banner reading “Mission Accomplished.” He declared that major combat operations in Iraq had ended. What followed was a grinding, years-long insurgency that cost thousands of lives, destabilized a region, and shattered American credibility abroad.

Two decades later, Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are offering up their own version of the banner — a slick new label: “The 12-Day War.” An abundance of caution is warranted.

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🚫 Reasons to Doubt the Overnight Peace Narrative

• He’s announcing world peace on Truth Social. Seriously.
  Trump didn’t brief Congressional leaders of either party before launching the strike. Now he’s declaring victory from his boutique propaganda app. Nothing like promulgating major foreign-policy announcements in a virtual cow pasture.

• Iran's nuclear program does not appear to have been “obliterated.”
  Trump claimed the Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan nuclear facilities were “completely destroyed.” There’s no independent confirmation of that — and satellite imagery suggests otherwise. Some experts believe Iran’s nuclear assets were dispersed or hardened before the bombs dropped.

• This isn’t a peace deal — it’s a pause.
  There’s no signed agreement, no multilateral framework, no real diplomacy. It’s not Camp David. It’s not Oslo. It’s a time-out, not a treaty. And while we all should hope for a lasting peace, there’s so little substance here that it’s hard for serious journalists to know how to report whatever it is.

• Bibi Netanyahu has no incentive for lasting peace with Iran.
  Israel’s leader is under investigation, facing domestic discontent and clinging to power. Perpetual conflict is politically useful for him. Durable peace isn’t. Nothing about that changed with a bombing raid. Nor has Iran’s hatred toward the Jewish people, which Netanyahu rightfully resents.

• There’s no reason to assume Iran is just folding.
  Iran remains a powerhouse, one of the 18th largest nations in the world, in both population and geography. The U.S. attack prompted Russia’s former president Dmitry Medvedev to muse aloud about his nation and others offering Iran nukes. Underestimating the reach and tentacles of this longstanding terrorist state is stupid.

• Trump lies. About everything.
  He made more than 30,000 documented false or misleading claims during his first term. He lied about having opposed the Iraq War. He lied about the 2020 election. He lied about nations empty their prisons and asylums to launch an invasion of violent criminals into the U.S. So, who wants to trust his claims about the status of Iran’s nuclear program?

No one should root against peace. A real, durable resolution in the Middle East would represent a wonderful historic achievement.

But so far, at least, it appears more like a marketing triumph than a military one. Trump, a dodger of military service, is a master of the dark arts of con artistry.

His overnight choice to brand this as “The 12-Day War” was solid gold. One can already envision T-shirts proclaiming “Trump Kicked Ass In the 12-Day War” flying off the racks in MAGA world.

But not in the real world. Given Trump’s track record, his claims to have advanced world peace have no more credence than those “Mission Accomplished” banners celebrating U.S. victory in Iraq. And that’s not just a matter of hubris and overconfidence.

It’s because Donald Trump never stops lying.

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