Trump can still win the Iran war

As the war in Iran enters its fifth month, President Trump is growing increasingly frustrated. He sees few good options to end the war and talks of “lunatics” and “revenge mode”. As I write, he is meeting Netanyahu to add credibility to his implicit threat to the Revolutionary Guards, who now run Tehran very much as the SS did once Hitler died, with no plan other than to keep fighting, and a readiness to hang anyone who disagrees. (On Sunday they publicly hanged 18-year old Erfan Esfandiari in Isfahan, an exemplary victim precisely because of his youth and innocence.) But there is a way. And to discover how, it is important to recall how this latest bout of warfare started: with June’s botched “Memorandum of Understanding”. This was hurriedly negotiated in chronically treacherous Pakistan