• U.S. Foreign Policy
• United States
• Stephen M. Walt

Although we don’t know the details of the rumored agreement between the United States and Iran—or even if one will eventually be reached—anyone with a triple-digit IQ understands that Israel and the United States made a colossal blunder when they started the war. None of their stated goals have been achieved: The Iranian regime did not collapse, it did not surrender its nuclear stockpile, and its missile and drone capabilities are intact. It has demonstrated that it can shut down the Strait of Hormuz anytime it wants to inflict significant damage on its neighbors. All of U.S. President Donald Trump’s and U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s bragging and bluster over the past three months has been exposed as a lot of hot air.

Once a deal is reached, the Trump administration will apply buckets of lipstick to this pig and insist that it is some sort of strategic victory. Few observers will be convinced, however, and such efforts will just make the president and his coterie of sycophantic advisors look silly. There’s just no credible way to spin this debacle as a success. The more they try to do so, the more delusional they’ll appear.

Although we don’t know the details of the rumored agreement between the United States and Iran—or even if one will eventually be reached—anyone with a triple-digit IQ understands that Israel and the United States made a colossal blunder when they started the war. None of their stated goals have been achieved: The Iranian regime did not collapse, it did not surrender its nuclear stockpile, and its missile and drone capabilities are intact. It has demonstrated that it can shut down the Strait of Hormuz anytime it wants to inflict significant damage on its neighbors. All of U.S. President Donald Trump’s and U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s bragging and bluster over the past three months has been exposed as a lot of hot air.

Once a deal is reached, the Trump administration will apply buckets of lipstick to this pig and insist that it is some sort of strategic victory. Few observers will be convinced, however, and such efforts will just make the president and his coterie of sycophantic advisors look silly. There’s just no credible way to spin this debacle as a success. The more they try to do so, the more delusional they’ll appear.

That got me thinking: What if Trump just admitted that he’d made a mistake? Admitting errors has never been his forte, but he’s not alone in that regard. Politicians almost never admit errors—and certainly not about something important—even when it is obvious to nearly everyone that they’ve blundered. Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson keeps defending Brexit, for example, and former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo still insists that invading Iraq in 2003 and tearing up the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran during Trump’s first term were smart moves.

This reluctance to acknowledge obvious errors is a bit puzzling. We all know that no one is infallible, and foreign policy is an uncertain business, where even the best-laid plans can go awry. No leader gets everything right, even if they are wiser and less impulsive than Trump (admittedly a low bar). Most of us also learn that when we screw up, the best thing to do is acknowledge the error, learn from the experience, and try not to repeat it. Obviously, a leader who keeps making costly mistakes will eventually pay a price—and deservedly so—but officials who, for the most part, perform well and have the courage to admit the occasional mistake might become more popular if the public recognized they were doing their best and appreciated their honesty.

Yet few leaders seem willing to go this route. Autocrats are especially loath to admit mistakes, because their hold on power typically rests on cults of personality and sustaining the illusion that they are infallible. But even democratic leaders are reluctant to admit errors while in office, if only because they know their opponents will be ready to pounce at the slightest admission. Take the following U.S. presidents, for example: John F. Kennedy took full responsibility for the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Barack Obama owned his early decision to appoint Tom Daschle as head of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (which backfired when Daschle’s tax irregularities were exposed), and Ronald Reagan more-or-less admitted that the Iran-Contra affair was a mistake. But such moments are rare. When U.S. President George W. Bush was asked in 2004 to recall any mistakes that he had made in his first term, he couldn’t identify a single one. If you want to see politicians admit they erred, then you will usually have to wait for their memoirs to come out and even then you may be disappointed.

But Trump has been a norm-breaker throughout his political career and someone whose Teflon-like qualities eclipse even Reagan’s. Remember: This is the guy who famously said that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters, and I’m sorry to say that this boast has proven to be one of his more accurate statements. If any recent U.S. president could go in front of the cameras, admit that he’d screwed up big-time, and then move on, it’s Trump. Indeed, he’s done it before, although one might question whether his past acts of contrition were sincere.

And it might not be all that hard. Trump could start by reminding people that Iran has been a thorny problem for a long time, one that none of his predecessors had managed to solve either. He could claim that he had hoped to resolve the issue once and for all and explain that he had good reasons to think another round of bombing would work. He could point out that the regime was unpopular and that it had been forced to suppress a wave of demonstrations earlier in the year. This calculation turned out to be badly wrong, but in classic Trumpian fashion, he could remind people that nothing is ever 100 percent certain, say his job is to make tough decisions, and then blame the error on the bad advice he received from various quarters. Here, he could point the finger at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose own bellicosity has done Trump no favors and who is an increasingly unpopular figure in the United States and Israel alike. Given how toxic Netanyahu has become, tossing him under the bus might even boost Trump’s popularity at this point.

After insisting that his intentions were laudable and that his gambit seemed like a worthy gamble, Trump could then claim that he’s learned a lot from this episode and contrast it with his predecessors. I can hear him now: “Unlike sleepy Joe Biden, who never changed his mind about anything and kept making the same mistakes, I’m a very stable genius who is constantly learning and knows how to adapt.” And then, he could change the subject by talking about something else, like the White House’s controversial ballroom project.

Do I expect Trump to take this approach to the most serious blunder of his error-prone second term? To be honest, no. Although he’s occasionally acknowledged mistakes in the past (usually when he’s forced to fire one of his many incompetent appointees), I think he believes admissions of serious error would diminish his aura of power, encourage more people to openly defy him, and puncture his dream of being remembered as a great president, however unlikely that now appears. His MAGA base would probably continue supporting him, but they may be all he’s got in a few more months.

By delaying an end to the conflict, Trump’s attempt to snatch the illusion of victory from the jaws of a debacle is compounding the pain that the United States and its allies are suffering and doing additional damage to Trump’s own reputation. It would be better for everyone if he’d just admit that he screwed up and move on. But as anyone who has had to take the car keys away from an aging parent knows, stubborn old people are often unable to see what’s in their own best interest.