Robert Malley and Stephen Wertheim write:

With Iran, Donald Trump has done the impossible once more. In attacking that country in February, he went where his predecessors never dared, joining with Israel in a bid to overthrow or incapacitate the regime in Tehran. Having achieved neither, he appears to have accepted worse terms than he could have obtained through diplomacy. His war was a political albatross as well, garnering, at the start, less support from the public than any other major conflict in modern U.S. history.

Now the hawks who were exhilarated by Operation Epic Fury are apoplectic at Mr. Trump for ending the conflict. The doves won’t forgive him for starting it. Everyone is worse off and no one is happy: a fitting, extraordinary finish to a Trumpian war.

In its broad contours, however, the result is familiar, verging on routine. True to form, the United States launched a regime-change war in the Middle East. It targeted an adversary that members of both parties have long treated as a near-existential threat. And again, only faster this time, the effort came to grief. The question now is whether the cycle of ineffectual American intervention has been broken, or simply taken another turn. If the serial disasters of previous wars didn’t keep this one from happening, why would even the conspicuous failure of this one prevent the next?

It very well may not; the risk of renewed conflict looms. But in important respects this war is unlike any other, starting with the person who launched it. Mr. Trump was the hard-liners’ best hope. He took his best shot at Tehran and came up short.

The unnecessary, unjustified and unlawful war that followed convulsed the region, battered the global economy and exasperated the American public. And yet it may bequeath an accidental gift: a lasting aversion to military conflict with Iran and a chance to replace decades of failed policy with serious diplomacy. [Continue reading…]