{"id":680,"date":"2026-06-17T18:45:29","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T18:45:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=680"},"modified":"2026-06-17T18:45:29","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T18:45:29","slug":"all-the-sad-hawks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=680","title":{"rendered":"All the Sad Hawks"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

An irony of the Iran war is that Donald Trump, whose patience for written texts and policy details is famously negligible, came to grasp the reality of the situation more quickly and clearly than his neoconservative supporters who spent years obsessing over the issue. Trump, recognizing that America has suffered a historic defeat, has abandoned his demands for unconditional surrender, and is trying to buy his way out with a memorandum of understanding that reportedly promises Tehran billions of dollars to restore the status quo ante. By contrast, the neocons, the coterie of interventionists who long ago developed a reputation as the brains of the conservative movement, have been rather slow on the uptake.<\/p>\n

Read more Trump Has Entered His Decline<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI suspect the MOU may be less awful than the administration\u2019s disastrous sales pitch,\u201d Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies posted on X yesterday. (Later he conceded the deal was not better at all but, in fact, \u201ceven worse than I assumed.\u201d) The pundit Batya Ungar-Sargon hypothesized that Trump might be \u201cin a fugue state.\u201d Marc Thiessen, a Washington Post<\/em> columnist who has tried to steer Trump toward hawkery through relentless obsequiousness, termed the MOU the \u201cVance peace deal,\u201d as if the anti-interventionist veep had staged a coup. An especially plaintive moment took place during Commentary<\/em>\u2019s podcast when Eli Lake, the hawkish foreign-policy analyst, cried \u201cWhat\u2019s going on? What’s going on?\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s going on is that the neocons misapprehended both the geopolitical situation and the president they trusted to resolve it.<\/p>\n

The defining trait of neoconservative thought is a near-boundless faith in the efficacy of U.S. military power. This faith caused the neocons to recoil in from the Obama administration\u2019s 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. A tougher president, they believed, would have used the threat of American might to make Iran accept much stricter terms.<\/p>\n

At the time, the neocons insisted that their plan would not involve actually employing force. \u201cThere is an alternative, and it isn\u2019t war,\u201d Dubowitz wrote in 2015, \u201cIt\u2019s a better deal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump tore up Barack Obama\u2019s deal, but the threat of war did not produce a better deal. So Dubowitz and his allies came to believe that military force would accomplish their ends. When Trump\u2019s 2025 bombing campaign failed to eliminate Iran\u2019s nuclear threat, they decided a more extensive military campaign would force the country to make concessions. The campaign has come, but the concessions have not. The harsh reality is that Iran\u2019s regime has a tight grip on power, does not care about suffering by their people, and buried its nuclear material and much of its conventional military power underground where air power could not easily destroy it.<\/p>\n

Another mistake the neocons made was to misjudge Trump. The president may have appeared to share their goals, given his frequently-expressed contempt for the Obama administration\u2019s handling of the issue. But the reason Trump hated Obama\u2019s nuclear deal is that it was made by Obama, a figure he regards with a pathological mix of envy and racial disgust.<\/p>\n

While the neoconservative impetus to prevent a nuclear Iran is rooted in a hatred and fear of its radical government, Trump has never held an ideological grudge against a foreign power. His geopolitical vision is personal. To the extent that a country\u2019s authoritarian character factors into his assessment, it is generally a plus.<\/p>\n

By suppressing mass protests and then outmaneuvering Trump at the negotiating table, the Iranian regime began to elevate itself into the same category as Russia, China, North Korea, and other \u201cstrong\u201d dictatorships that he admires. \u201cI never cared about regime change,\u201d he said yesterday at the G7 summit. \u201cWe\u2019re dealing with people that I think are very rational people,\u201d Trump said of the Iranian leadership. \u201cThey were nice to deal with. They were strong people, smart people.\u201d<\/p>\n

If Iran\u2019s rulers are so rational and nice, one wonders why their potential acquisition of a nuclear weapon would so concern the United States. Indeed, Trump floated the notion that seizing Iran\u2019s nuclear material no longer mattered very much. \u201cYou could make the case, why even bother?,\u201d he mused, adding, \u201cIt\u2019s not very valuable stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more The Pentagon Might Win the Lottery<\/a><\/p>\n

Despite his boasts, Trump has never been a brilliant dealmaker. His specialty is finding ways to strip out short-term value while foisting long-term costs on others, while manipulating public opinion so that he can always find a new round of suckers. Nothing about this skill set suggested an ability or even a willingness to tackle a problem such as Iran\u2019s nuclear ambitions, especially if doing so imposed extended costs. As soon as it became clear that he would not enjoy a quick and cheap victory, Trump\u2019s calculation was always going to be that expensive gasoline is his problem, and a future nuclear-armed Iran is somebody else\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s desperation to get out of the war has been obvious for more than two months. The war supporters have had to process this reality by progressing through the K\u00fcbler-Ross stages of grief at various speeds. They all started in the denial stage. \u201cIt is astonishing to me that so many seem to have concluded that the US clearly caved to Iran\u2019s unacceptable demands (a US non-aggression guarantee, acceptance of enrichment, full sanctions relief, unfrozen Iranian assets, and a total US withdrawal from the Middle East) while Iran obviously balked at ours (no ballistic missile program, no nuke program, no proxies, hand over enriched materials),\u201d National Review<\/em>\u2019s Noah Rothman insisted in early April, dismissing as implausible the emerging contours of the deal.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would say this to the President: I personally know that you will do the right thing,\u201d the hawkish commentator Mark Levin said in early April, when the cease fire began, adding, \u201cI have complete faith in this man.\u201d A month later, the Fox News personality Jesse Watters still clung to hope. \u201cThe commander in chief must believe the Iranians are serious about surrendering,\u201d he said. \u201cThe president,\u201d Watters went on, \u201cmust know what he\u2019s doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the moment, the dominant sentiment among hawks is stage two: anger. Trump \u201chas choked, he has chickened out, he has bled himself dry,\u201d Podhoretz complained earlier this week. \u201cThe greatest superpower to ever exist brought to its knees by a few mines. Just a disaster for America,\u201d Ungar-Sargon wrote on X today.<\/p>\n

Some have progressed into the bargaining stage. \u201cSmartest thing for Trump to do is lull Iran into complacency with this deal and then let Israel do another decapitation strike,\u201d the podcaster Erick Erickson said yesterday. The conservative activist Will Chamberlain suggested, \u201cPresident Trump should renege.\u201d For those concerned about hawkish loved ones, the next stages are depression and then acceptance.<\/p>\n

Achieving this final won\u2019t come easily, though. When Trump announced the war, he warned, \u201cthe regime\u2019s conventional ballistic missile program was growing rapidly and dramatically, and this posed a very clear colossal threat to America and our forces stationed overseas.\u201d But speaking in Europe today, he said Iran had<\/em> to keep its ballistic missiles, since Saudi Arabia had its own, and mocked advisers who suggested otherwise (\u201cI don\u2019t think they\u2019re smart\u201d).<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the administration is attempting to make its supporters forget a decade of claims that Obama betrayed the country by handing \u201cpallets of cash\u201d to Iran as they permit the country to recover billions immediately, by suspending sanctions, and possibly far more in \u201creconstruction\u201d funds that Iran views, not inaccurately, as reparations. The dread pallets seen in endless Fox News clips transferred $1.7 billion to Tehran, a minuscule figure compared to the $12 billion in unfrozen assets, not to mention the potential $300 billion reparations.<\/p>\n

Obama \u201cgave them $1.7 billion in cash, green cash,\u201d Trump said Wednesday morning, in a video clip shared by his rapid response team. It is as if Trump\u2019s sole objection to the JCPOA was not the sums of money involved but the use of actual greenbacks.. After all, $300 billion worth of cash would be impractically heavy to transfer by pallet.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the hawks will realize that their preferred policy was wrong, that regime change by air power was impossible, and that Trump was unfit to lead in the first place. Or perhaps they\u2019ll appear on Fox News one day soon praising Trump\u2019s wise and generous dealmaking with our Iranian friends, in contrast to the tacky gifts from the miserly Obama.<\/p>\n

Read more Cuba Is Collapsing. Will Trump Invade?<\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Neoconservatives struggle to reconcile their hopes for Trump with the failure of his Iran war.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":679,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ideas"],"yoast_head":"\nAll the Sad Hawks - Commercial Relocation Pros<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=680\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"All the Sad Hawks - Commercial Relocation Pros\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Neoconservatives struggle to reconcile their hopes for Trump with the failure of his Iran war.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=680\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Commercial Relocation Pros\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-06-17T18:45:29+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"7 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=680#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=680\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/3a3374a445f1b5d4852b1d7c15b9fe3a\"},\"headline\":\"All the Sad Hawks\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-06-17T18:45:29+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=680\"},\"wordCount\":1433,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=680#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/f9a1d48e562811a73a603b7d98988054.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"Ideas\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=680#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=680\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=680\",\"name\":\"All the Sad Hawks - 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