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Trump has done unfathomable harm to the US rule of law and democracy at home, but the damage he has done internationally is even more consequential and perhaps longer-lasting. Iran is our Ukraine, and Taiwan is our Saudi Arabia (chips instead of oil). In less than two years, Trump has destroyed the reputation of the United States in the rest of the world and significantly increased the risks of world war.
To this end, Trump has made four massive, essential geopolitical mistakes in the first year of his second term: the ridiculous trade war/tariff war with China, that Trump lost; his abandoning of Ukraine in favor of Putin, only to have Ukraine emerge as a legitimate winner in that conflict; his alienating of our allies in Canada, Mexico, Latin America, and Europe and breaking NATO; and now his botched war on Iran, which has strengthened the hardline regime there and released the remaining controls on Iran’s nuclear program. Now he’s set to blow it on Taiwan, giving China free rein to annex Taiwan under authoritarian rule, and to control the world’s access to computer chips. Trump’s Art of the Deal was always an advertising sham, but his catastrophic failures in deal making internationally do seem pre-determined, as if he is being directly controlled by enemy foreign agents to sell out the US.
Trump took the US to war in Iran because Bibi Netanyahu convinced him that it would be easy, and the initial bombing campaign was easy. But Trump’s demand for unconditional surrender by the Iranian regime fell on deaf ears, and his repeated pronouncements of total and complete victory looked increasingly ridiculous. He threatens and threatens . . . and then backs off. He’s all show and no go. Every time Trump says we’re close to a deal and then backs off, the terms get better for the Iranians. Before Trump started the war, the Strait of Hormuz was open, the regime was under intense pressure at home, and their nuclear program was mostly on hold. Now they control the Strait of Hormuz and can close it anytime they want, the regime has been reinvigorated, and their nuclear program is no longer subject to inspections or monitoring by anyone. Trump has effectively rescued the oppressive theocracy of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The relation between Israel and the US has never been worse, because there is a man without character or honor in charge of each country. Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are made for each other: two self-serving criminal con men playing each other and both trying to stay out of prison. Not since Jeffrey Epstein has Trump found someone so well suited to him in depravity and self-interest.
Trump’s pattern in Iran over the last 100+ days is nauseatingly consistent. Threaten massive military strikes, back down, and announce an imminent deal. Then there is no deal, and he does the whole thing over again: thirty-nine times and counting.
Iran says the “Memorandum of Understanding” they’re considering now, an agreement to a 60-day ceasefire just to discuss a deal, includes a US payment of $300 billion in “reconstruction” money to the Islamic Republic, and another $24 billion in cash, with half of that paid in advance, before the “agreement” is even signed. That is 812 times more cash than Obama gave Iran in January 2016 (releasing frozen Iranian assets in return for the release of US hostages) that presidential nominee Donald Trump decried, saying the money was going to go “toward terrorism.” There is no provision in the current MOU for the curtailment of Iran’s support of international terrorism, and no plan for interfering with their nuclear weapons program. Rather, the $324 billion Trump is offering Iran now is straight-ahead ransom money to get out of this disastrous forever war, and a virtual slush fund for international terrorism.
Iran has weaponized geography, in the Strait. They don’t even need to mine the Strait, because of advanced inexpensive drones. And all they need to do is intimidate the insurance companies to extract tolls and fees.
There isn’t much left to bomb in Iran. That’s why we’re hearing about targets that would clearly constitute widespread war crimes. If Trump is stupid enough to bomb energy infrastructure in Iran, Iran will hit the energy grid in neighboring countries, creating havoc. At this point, Trump has no good options. As he put it to President Zelensky in 2025, he “has no cards.” There is virtually no chance that he will get any nuclear agreement with Iran now that begins to approach the agreement Obama had put in place with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which had 150+ pages of inspection protocols for monitoring and verification. Trump tore up that deal in May 2018.
On the world stage, the US is much weaker now than it was when Trump came to power. Trump has largely dismantled the network of strategic alliances that have served the US well since the end of the second World War, and the world is rapidly changing in relation to that new reality. Germany is rearming to confront threats from Russia and Japan is rearming to confront threats from China, while Trump cozies up to the autocratic leaders of Russia and China. The US now looks like just another insecure and inept lone imperialist nation anxious to take over any foreign state it can for the benefit of its corrupt authoritarian leader and his oligarchs.
The people that control Trump plan to turn the reins of this criminal enterprise over to JD Vance when Trump is out of office, but that is dependent on getting out of the Trump term without Trump being held to account for some of his worst crimes, and the November mid-term elections are the last chance to make that impossible. We need a functioning Congress to turn the tide and begin to rebuild democracy in America. But even then, it will take a long time.
Meanwhile, the Epstein Files stalk Trump like a hungry cat.
New Yorkers know Trump well, and know that he has always been a toxic fool. That is how they greeted him in Madison Square Garden on June 8. James Dolan, the idiot owner of the Knicks, invited his friend Trump to share his luxury box at game three of the NBA Finals, and when Trump’s picture was projected during the national anthem, the arena erupted in boos and catcalls. With his malevolent dreaming during the game, I think Trump caused the Knicks to lose game three, spoiling the sweep, but luckily he didn’t return for game 4.
When asked after the game how it felt to be so roundly booed in the Garden, the Delusional Don said, “It was, I think, mainly cheers.”
David Levi Strauss is the author of Co-illusion: Dispatches from the End of Communication (The MIT Press, 2020), Photography & Belief (David Zwirner Books, 2020), Words Not Spent Today Buy Smaller Images Tomorrow (Aperture, 2014), From Head to Hand: Art and the Manual (Oxford University Press, 2010), Between the Eyes: Essays on Photography and Politics, with an introduction by John Berger (Aperture 2003, and in a new edition, 2012), and Between Dog & Wolf: Essays on Art and Politics (Autonomedia 1999, and a new edition, 2010). In Case Something Different Happens in the Future: Joseph Beuys and 9/11 was published by Documenta 13, and To Dare Imagining: Rojava Revolution, edited by Strauss, Michael Taussig, Peter Lamborn Wilson, and Dilar Dirik, was published by Autonomedia in 2016, and in an Italian edition in 2017. The Critique of the Image Is the Defense of the Imagination, edited by Strauss, Taussig, and Wilson, was published by Autonomedia in 2020. He is Chair Emeritus of the graduate program in Art Writing at the School of Visual Arts in New York, which he directed from 2007-2021.