This column is cursed. Four months ago I predicted a less than holly jolly Christmas in Caracas for “St. Nick” Maduro. In the next issue I said that Trump had already made up his mind to go to war in Iran. As feats of prognostication go, these printed guesses of mine were not very impressive. But I wish I had been wrong.

More to the point, I pray that I will be wrong this time. But rather than share my actual surmises about what the next two months have in store for us in the Middle East, I will attempt to use the occult power of the back page for good by offering a negative foreign policy prediction for once: In 2026, we will not attempt regime change in Cuba, no matter how hard Lil Marco is gunning for it.

I am writing this five weeks in, on day one of the “ceasefire,” which in practice so far has meant that Israel is allowed to continue Eternal Darkness (not the title of a black metal CD but the name of an actual military operation) as long as it is restricted to Lebanon while the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps turns the Strait of Hormuz into the Delaware Memorial Bridge. (I don’t think they are accepting EZ-Pass.) The would-be temporary peace was announced only a day after Trump threatened that “a whole civilization will die” if the Iranians did not agree to his demands. What exactly these demands are remains unclear; like the original rationale for the war, they have changed more times than anyone can count. The administration has more lines than Disney World and at least an equal number of sex weirdos.

In the months and years to come, thousands of articles and dozens of books will be written about Trump’s Iranian farce. It is the greatest political betrayal in modern American history—not just of a campaign promise but of the whole ethos of a candidate. You don’t have to take my word for it. Here is an excerpt from the DNC platform in 2024:

All of this stands in sharp contrast to Trump’s fecklessness and weakness in the face of Iranian aggression during his presidency. In 2018, when Iranian-backed militias repeatedly attacked the U.S. consulate in Basra, Iraq Trump’s only response was to close our diplomatic facility. In June 2019, when Iran shot down a U.S. surveillance aircraft operating in international airspace above the Straits of Hormuz, Trump responded by tweet and then abruptly called off any actual retaliation, causing confusion and concern among his own national security team. In September 2019, when Iranian-backed groups threatened global energy markets by attacking Saudi oil infrastructure, Trump failed to respond against Iran or its proxies. In January 2020, when Iran, for the first and only time in its history, directly launched ballistic missiles against U.S. troops in western Iraq, Trump mocked the resulting Traumatic Brain Injuries suffered by dozens of American servicemembers as mere “headaches”—and again, took no action.

Subscribe Today

Get daily emails in your inbox

Email Address:

This war is the ultimate indictment of the worldview implicitly represented by the phrase “We can just do things.” There is no sphere of human activity in which this has ever been true. We cannot “just do things” for the very simple reason that most things are very hard to do. And this is true especially of the things that are most worth doing. There is nothing conservative about blithe overconfidence in our abilities or the reliability of our perceptions. Conservatives take a dim view of human nature, and of human capability: “Our powers of prediction are slight, our command over results infinitesimal.” (Guess the author.)

The saddest thing is that there are people in this administration who know better. In order to spare their feelings, I have chosen to admonish them pseudonymously. “Lepont Suisse,” an honorable man, should resign and walk barefoot to Rome. “Thoma Bravo” should go back to selling Lord of the Rings–themed A.I. tools for his old mentor “Linus Cyan” (that is, assuming Hungary won’t take him). “Basil Gebhardt” should run for a House seat as a member of her old party and introduce articles of impeachment. As for “Paul F. Kennelly,” probably he knows best what his energy levels are these days, but if a peyote-fueled vision quest is not in the works, maybe he can just start writing liner notes for the Grateful Dead’s proprietary bootleg label.

Speaking of energy, has anyone else noticed that utility companies have started sending marketing emails? Earlier this week Indiana Michigan Power informed me that we use “30 percent of [our] energy between 6 a.m. and noon.” What am I supposed to do with this information? Even worse are the messages I receive on a more or less weekly basis from TuffShed, a company that sells prefabricated garages and barns. A sample: “Forget the flowers and get them what they really want this Valentine’s Day—more space!” Who, exactly, does “them” refer to here? But my wife’s favorite is the Valvoline commercial we saw over and over during the 2025 NFL season: “The first and only motor oil that removes up to 100 percent of deposits.” Up to 100 percent, meaning not more but perhaps less than? The mind reels.