Whatever short-term gain the president thinks he is getting by lying about the war in Iran is far exceeded by the cost, for him, the country and the world. (Rebecca Chew/The New York Times) By THE EDITORIAL BOARD From his first announcement of the attack on Iran on Feb. 28, President Donald Trump has issued a stream of falsehoods about the war. He has said Iran wants to engage in negotiations, though its government shows no sign of it. He has claimed that the United States “d

President Donald Trump disembarks from Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, Md., after attending a dignified transfer ceremony at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, Wednesday, March 18, 2026. (Eric Lee/The New York Times) By NICHOLAS KRISTOF The ongoing debate about whether the Iran war will become a quagmire misses the point. President Donald Trump and America are already in one. Yes, Trump can stop bombing Iran, but Iran might continue to block oil from passing through the S

Children prepare to bed down for the night in an underground parking garage that serves as a bomb shelter in Tel Aviv on Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (Avishag Shaar-Yashuv/The New York Times) By BRET STEPHENS For most of the postwar era, the United States has gone to war with partners whose military contributions ranged from moderately helpful to mainly symbolic. Britain in Afghanistan and Iraq comes to mind in the first case. Germany in the 1999 Kosovo war comes to mind in the s

A couple stands in the ruins of their apartment after an airstrike in Tehran, Iran, March 15, 2026. “President Donald Trump went to war against Iran without explaining his strategy to the American people or the world. It now appears that he may not have had much of a strategy at all,” writes the Times editorial board. (Arash Khamooshi/The New York Times) By THE EDITORIAL BOARD President Donald Trump went to war against Iran without explaining his strategy to the American peop

President Donald Trump disembarks from Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Sunday, March 15, 2026, after a trip to Palm Beach, Fla. (Eric Lee/The New York Times) By NICHOLAS KRISTOF Suppose Iran dispatched operatives to Mexico, where, from the Texas border, they fired a missile at an American base and, unintentionally but carelessly, demolished a nearby American school, killing 175 people. What if they then blew up fuel depots, showering a chemical

Plumes of smoke rise from an oil storage facility after overnight strikes by U.S. and Israeli forces in Tehran, Iran, March 8, 2026. “However incapable the [Iranian] regime may be of defending its airspace, it remains terrifyingly capable of killing its people,” Times columnist Bret Stephens writes. (Arash Khamooshi/The New York Times) By BRET STEPHENS The most famous query in the history of modern warfare came from David Petraeus, then a major general, in an interview with R

A detail of Justice and History, a sculpture in the Senate wing of the Capitol, on Jan. 30, 2026. (Aleksey Kondratyev/The New York Times) By THE EDITORIAL BOARD The four law firms that last year chose to fight President Donald Trump’s illegal intimidation campaign won at least temporary vindication this week. Federal judges had already struck down Trump’s executive orders trying to punish the firms for representing or employing people he considered to be his political enemies

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem stands as President Donald Trump calls her name at an event in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington, April 2, 2025. (Damon Winter/The New York Times) By MICHELLE COTTLE As I looked at Kristi Noem’s MAGA-fied visage plastered across the media on Thursday, along with the news that President Donald Trump had fired her, I couldn’t help thinking: This was always going to end in tears. Not because the defenestrated secretary of

Over the past several days, after President Donald Trump plunged the United States into a war with Iran, his fantasy of omnipotence has come crashing into reality, writes the New York Times columnist Lydia Polgreen. (Photo illustration by Damon Winter/The New York Times) By LYDIA POLGREEN In Donald Trump’s fantasy world, America is invincible and impregnable. Its military is so advanced and skillful that it can pluck a sitting head of state from a hostile country and deposit

By ROSS DOUTHAT The best essay for understanding right-wing support for Donald Trump’s war against Iran was published in National Review in 2023, at the 20th anniversary of the Iraq invasion. Written by Tanner Greer, a conservative writer and China analyst, it argued that the official populist repudiation of George W. Bush and neoconservatism masked a deep continuity between the Iraq-era conservative mainstream and the Trump-era new right. Both the Bush-era hawks and the Trum