COMMENTARY: Iran War is eating Trump’s presidency

By Rich Lowry King Features August 10, 2026 - 9:00 pm An Iran war that was supposed to be brief, and then was supposed to be over, is imposing an increasing price on Donald Trump’s presidency. We’ve seen a second term of a Republican administration go this way before. There are distinct echoes of George W. Bush’s Iraq War — the conflict that Trump has long excoriated — in the president’s predicament. Now, the Iran war is different from Iraq. There is no ground invasion, no regime change, no occupation, no counterinsurgency. The casualties are not close to the same scale, and Trump has been fighting Iran for months, whereas George W. Bush was embroiled in Iraq for years (and so were his successors). Yet, the political trajectory looks similar. Then, as now, an unpopular conflict is putting