***. ‘..psychiatrist Prudence L. Gourgueschon, a former president of the American Psycoanalytic Association, proposed judging Trump’s fitness for office using the United States Army Field Manual on developing leaders. She distilled..five crucial qualities needed to lead: – Trust -Discipline and self-control – Judgment and critical thinking -Self-awareness – Empathy. Not one of these is part of Trump’s nature.” [Pulitzer Prize winner David Cay Johnston: “It’s Even Worse Than You Think”].

WHY did the United States go to war with Iran? What decision-making processes were conducted? WHO were the key people voicing opinions? WHO pushed for war? WHO voiced caution, and or, opposition to war?

This post presents excerpts from: “Behind The Scenes. As Trump Took U.S. To War With Iran”. [Jonathan Swan, Maggie Haberman; New York times; 4/12/26 ]: [NOTE: this might be THE article on those and other crucial questions. If YOU want to know more about WHY America is at war – then this article is a MUST read]

8] “But Trump would often seem to hear only what he wanted to hear.”

1]. “This account of how Trump took the United States into war reveals how the deliberations inside the administration highlighted the president’s instincts, his inner circle’s fractures and the way he runs the White House…And it shows how, in the end, even the more skeptical members of Trump’s war cabinet..deferred to the president’s instincts, including his abundant confidence that trhe war would be quick and decisive.”

5] “The CIA director used one word to describe the Israeli prime minister’s regime change scenarios: “farcical.” At that point, Rubio cut in. “In other words, it’s bullshit,” he said Several others jumped in, including Vance, just back from Azerbaijan, who also expressed strong skepticism about the prospect of regime change.”

*** “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.” [ Isaac Asimov ]

13] “Tucker Carlson..had come to the Oval Office several times over the previous year to warn Trump that a war with Iran would destroy his presidency…”I know you’re worried about it, but it’s going to be OK,” the president said. Carlson asked how he knew. “Because it always is,” Trump replied.”

11]. “In front of his colleagues, Vance warned Trump that a war against Iran could cause regional chaos and untold numbers of casualties…Vance raised other concerns, too. As vice president, he was aware of the scope of America’s munitions problem…that no amount of military insight could truly gauge what Iran would do in retaliation when the survival of the regime was at stake. Moreover, he thought there seemed to be little chance of building a peaceful Iran in the aftermath.”

12]. “Beyond all of this was perhaps the biggest risk of all: Iran held the advantage when it came to the Strait of Hormuz. if this narrow waterway carrying vast quantities of oil and natural gas was choked off, the domestic consequences in the United states would be severe, starting with higher gas prices.”

***. “The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears tobe one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions.” [ Robert Lynd ]

2] “Netanyahu and his team outlined conditions they portrayed as pointing to almost certain victory: Iran’s ballistic missile program could be destroyed in a few weeks. the regime would be so weakened that it could not choke off the Strait of Hormuz, and the likelihood that Iran would land blows against U.S. interests in neighboring countries was assesses as minimal….Besides…..” [read this again. it appears to have had a decisive impact on Trump – how much have real events shown this to be accurate?]

3]. “The intelligence officials had deep expertise in U.s. military capabilities, and they knew the Iranian system and its players inside out. They had broken down Netanyahu’s presentation into four parts. First was decapitation – killing the ayatollah. Second was crippling Iran’s power to project power and threaten its neighbors. third was a popular uprising inside Iran. And fourth was regime change, with a secular leader installed to govern the country. The U.S. officials assessed that the first two objectives were achievable…They assessed that the third and fourth parts of Netanyahu’s pitch…were detached from reality.”

6] “The president then turned to to Caine, “General, what do you think?” Caine replied, “sir, this is, in my experience, standard operating procedure for the Israelis. They oversell, and their plans are not always well-developed. They know they need us, and that’s why they’re hard-selling.”

*** “Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. but if you must be without one. Be without the strategy.” [ General Norman Schwarzkopf ]

7] “As the small team of advisors who were lopped into the plans deliberated over the following days, Caine shared with Trump and others the alarming military assessment that a major campaign against Iran would drastically deplete stockpiles of U.S. weaponry. Caine saw no clear path to quickly replenishing these stockpiles. He also flagged the enormous difficulty of securing the Strait of Hormuz and the risks of Iran blocking it. Trump had dismissed that possibility on the assumption that the regime would capitulate before it came to that. The president appeared to think it would be a very quick war.” [NOTE: read this again – WHO is correct? WHO is working from data and rational thinking – and WHO is working from assumptions and wishful thinking???]

9] “Back in office for a second term, Trump’s confidence in the U.S. military’s abilities had only grown. he was especially emboldened by the spectacular commando raid to capture Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro…Within the Cabinet, Hegseth was the biggest proponent of a military campaign against Iran…Rubio, however, did not try to talk Trump out of the operation.”

10] “Nobody in Trump’s inner circle was more worried about the prospect of war with Iran, or did more to try to stopit, than the vice president…..he had described a war with Iran as “a huge distraction of resources” and “massively expensive..”…..What the vice president pushed for was a limited, punitive strike…thought a regime change war with Iran would be a disaster. His preference was for no strikes at all.”

14]. The final situation room meeting of February 26. Read the account of this meeting, the column under “I think we need to do it.” Participants say nothing of significance against war. They leave EVERYTHING up to Trump’s judgment. Which is most unfortunate. – because numerous psychiatrists, mental health experts, historians, analysts, largely agree. – “judgment and critical thinking”. – is something Trump DOES NOT have.

[NOTE: – remember this: “…the notion, that his team is working to protect him from himself, has since become one of the defining narratives of the Trump administration…President Trump should not be shocked that wary aides and cabinet members saved his presidency..many times.” [Anonymous – a senior Trump administration official: “A Warning”. – BUT – this was in the FIRST Trump term. – NOT the second, filled with “loyalists” ]

*** “While discussing “Fear’. on television, I was asked for my bottom-line summary of Trump’s leadership. “Let’s hope to God we don’t have a crisis, I said.” [ Pulitzer Prize winner bob Woodward in “Rage” ]

*** “There’s never been a true war that wasn’t fought between two sets of people who weren’t certain they were right. The really dangerous people believe they are doing whatever they are doing solely and only because it is without question the right thing to do. And that is what makes them dangerous.” [ Neil Gaiman ]

This post is the seventh in a series examining the conduct of Donald John Trump, unfortunately president of the United States. His mental state has been questioned several times. What hasn’t been questioned in this second term is WHO he is listening to, and who he is NOT listening to. We have heard shifting reasons for HIS Iran war. Regardless – the current occupant of the White House is obviously THE anti-George Washington, THE anti-Abraham Lincoln. His STUPIDITY and INCOMPETENCE now have the world embroiled in a dubious war.

This post presents excerpts from. “‘ An Operational Success and a Huge Strategic Failure'” [Nicholas Kristof; New York Times; 4/5/26]:

14] “As I watch this war, my mind goes to an old proverb: A fool may throw a stone in a well, but 100 wise men cannot remove it.”

2] “The problem is that while President Trump could start the war, h can’t end it on his own’. Iran has a vote on that.”

6] “This war, in general terms, I think it’s an operational success but a huge strategic failure,” said Danny Citrinowicz, formerly a longtime Iran analyst for Israel’s military intelligence agency.”

9]. “As Vali Nasr, an Iran expert at Johns Hopkins University, told me: “We essentially removed all the people who were still a restraint on the system and replaced them with the most hawkish people.”

3] “Does Trump understand that [a] targeting civilian infrastructure is likely a war crime, and [b] Iran’s response to such attacks could be counterstrikes on oil and gas infrastructure and desalination plants around the region?”

***. “You can bomb the world into pieces, but you can’t bomb it into peace.” [ Michael Franti ]

1]. “Iran has gained leverage by controlling passage through the Strait of Hormuz. So one bizarre result of the war is that Iran is now earning almost twice as much per day in oil revenue as it was before the war..”

4] “After having started the war that led to the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, Trump is now framing its reopening as a task for other nations. “We’re not going to have anything to do with it,” he said..”

5] “If Trump leaves Iran controlling the Strait of Hormuz, charging hefty tolls and barring the passage of ships linked to the United States or its military partners, he will have significantly set back the global economy, weakened the United States and strengthened Iran. And American ships will remain stuck, unable to leave.”

7]. “Perhaps the most apt description of Trump’s policy toward Iran is an “incoherent maze” – a phrase Pete Hegseth applied in 2016 to Barack Obama’s foreign policy.”

***. “Power is okay, and stupidity is usually harmless. Power and stupidity together are dangerous.”
[ Patrick Rothfuss ]

8] “One fundamental misstep may have been a strategy of killing the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a deeply unpopular octogenarian, along with a top security aide…their replacements appear more aggressive.”

10] “THe new leadership is weighted toward the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, so we may see Iran evolving in an even more militaristic direction. That’s my fear: We’ve put Iran on a path to become another North Korea.”

11] “American intelligence officials assessed last year that the previous supreme leader supported uranium enrichment but did not authorize taking the next step by making nuclear weaponas. That’s apparently because he wanted to avoid the sanctions and isolation that North Korea had suffered.”

12]. “..some of those same American intelligence officials also concluded last year that “Iranian leaders were likely to shift toward producing a bomb if the American military attacked the Iranian uranium enrichment site Fordo or if Israel killed Iran’s supreme leader”…Trump and his Israeli counterpart, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, did both.”

13] “Perhaps the biggest losers are ordinary Iranians. It was their pro-democracy protests in January, and the massacres that followed, that indirectly led to this crisis. – and they now endure greater oppression in a bombed-out country as they mourn innocent war victims who include school girls and soccer players.”

*** “If there is one lesson for U.S. foreign policy from the past 10 years, it is surely †hat military intervention can seem simple…but is in fact a complex affair with the potential for unintended consequences.” [ Fareed Zakaria ]

***. “Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war, but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.” [ George Orwell ]

This post is the 6th in a series examining the conduct of Donald John Trump, unfortunately president of the United States. There has been serious discussion, including a book written, a study of his speech patterns, warnings by peple from his first term – stating opinions that Trump is “unfit for office. We have yet to see serious examination of the influence of the Rasputins around him, of of foreign leaders he respects. Regardless, it is obvious Trump is THE anti-George Washington, THE anti-Abraham Lincoln. He now has America, the Middle East, the world economy embroiled in a dubious war – one for which his own first term actions laid the grounwork.

This post presents excerpts from: “NoneOf Trump’s Options In Iran look Good”. [ Ali Vaez; New York Times; 4/5/26 ]:

6] “Mr. Trump was right when he said on Wednesday that the United states has won every tactical exchange against Iran. What he did not admit to is that as commander in chief, he still managed to lose control of events.”

1]. “But the central question in this war was never whether Iran could be hurt. It was whether pain would translate into submission. So afr, it has not.”

2 ]. “Perhaps most significantly, the Iranians have managed to subdue traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, responding in the one arena where weaker nations have often found leverage against stronger ones; not by matching force with force, but by changing the terms of the contest. [NOTE: read these 3 statements again. – lost command of events; the central question; his weaker opponent changed the terms of the war. Has Trump already lost??? If control of the Strait of Hormuz was THE #1 issue – why didn’t Trump plan for this?????]

***. “In public affairs, stupidity is more dangerous than knavery.” [ Woodrow Wilson; 28th U.S. President ]

3] “..Iran…can still prolong the conflict, widen its costs, disrupt the global economy and make the exercise of American and Israel power more expensive than its architects anticipated.”

4]. “…a regime built to endure, its leadership infused with a culture of martyrdom and resistance and bereft of mercy, can continue to repress and remain in power…has enabled Iran’s leaders to recast themselves as guardians of a besieged nation, rather than its tormentors.”

5]. “Mr. Trump now has three options. He can escalate….just keep degrading Iran”s capabilities at a steady pace for a longer period of time and then walk away..disastrous for the Gulf States and the rest of the world….The final option is a deal..the only path that addresses the actual stakes..”

***. “We can pursue peaceful diplomacy with the Iranian regime while also continuing our maximum economic pressure campaign, while also defending ourselves…To say that war with Iran or nothing is just a fundamental misunderstanding of how foreign policy actually works.” [ Morgan Ortacus ]