I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”
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Today’s read: 7 minutes
My favorite journalists, writers, and thinkers all have a few key qualities:
- They admit when they are wrong.
- They are open to having their minds changed.
- They learn from their mistakes.
I also try to embody these qualities. One way to maintain that kind of mental flexibility is to analyze my past writing, ideas, or predictions and then reflect on how accurate they were. While that exercise by itself has inherent value, if I don’t actually own — and explain — some of the things I got wrong, then it has no value for you.
To that end, I’ve made a habit of periodically looking back at my writing and owning up to the things I’ve gotten wrong — in yearly round-ups and in occasional Friday editions. In today’s world, where media trust is at an all-time low, polarization is high, and no one seems willing to change their minds, this exercise is all the more valuable.
So today, I’d like to tackle five things I think I’ve gotten wrong about President Donald Trump’s administration through the first six months of his second term. Of course, the book isn’t closed on all these stories, and I remain open to having my mind changed again in the future.
#1: I thought the repercussions from the Iran strikes would be a lot worse.
When I saw the news that the U.S. had struck Iran’s nuclear facilities, all my alarm bells went off.
In “my take” on the strikes, I laid out the possible ways that the attacks could go well — but my instinct was that the decision was incredibly risky, potentially disastrous, and would create a fresh Middle East engagement for the U.S. I didn’t reach Tucker Carlson levels of hysteria, but I saw a near future where oil supply was disrupted, proxies across the Middle East were killing U.S. soldiers, Iran carried out crippling cyber attacks on U.S. infrastructure, and retaliation from Iran in Israel led to a never-ending cycle of violence. I worried aloud about whether Trump could exercise restraint if (or when) Iran retaliated; I surmised that the nuclear negotiations with Iran were officially dead; and I thought that we were entering a new, protracted war in the Middle East.
And, perhaps most to the point, I was very skeptical the strikes could do lasting damage to Iran’s nuclear facilities, and I wondered how Israel or the U.S. could achieve its goals without a ground invasion.
Pretty much all of that was totally wrong.
Instead, the strikes devastated nuclear facilities. While CNN published a report calling into question the severity of that damage, an authoritative International Atomic Energy Agency report indicated that the mission crippled Iran’s nuclear program and that its facilities would need months to become operational again, while the Pentagon assessed it would take years. Basically, the U.S. succeeded in setting back Iran’s nuclear program; one could even say they “destroyed it,” even if Iran could one day rebuild it.
Iran did respond, but meekly — with a warning that inflicted very little structural damage and did not harm a single American soldier. Once those strikes were complete, Trump not only exercised restraint, he embraced peace. He immediately negotiated a ceasefire between Iran and Israel, then became incensed when the terms of that ceasefire were violated, drawing both nations to heel and creating a relative calm that has continued since.
Oil exports from gulf states have not been choked off. There were no devastating cyberattacks. No U.S. soldiers died. There was no major escalation of any kind. None of Iran’s friends joined the fray — even Hezbollah sat things out. Iran may even come back to the nuclear negotiating table, a sign it recognizes the weakness of the position it's in.
In sum: Trump appears to have crushed Iran’s capacity to pursue a nuclear weapon without sparking a new war, dragging any U.S. soldiers in, or suffering any real consequences of any kind. It is, actually, a version of the best-case scenario I floated — the only thing missing is some kind of peaceful end to the current regime in Iran, which was always a bit fantastical.
#2: I thought the deportation effort would be smaller and less horrific.
