A few years ago, when giving a talk in London, I accused Iran of destabilising its neighbour, Iraq, by backing Shia militias there. “Oh, no,” objected an Iraqi official in the audience; those militias are a force for peace. Really? At the time, someone had just tried to assassinate the Iraqi prime minister in his home with drones, and everyone assumed the pro-Iran militias were behind it. My first thought was that the Iraqi official was a stooge, but she came up to me afterwards and explained. She completely agreed with me, she said, but was so scared of the militias that she felt obliged to praise them in public. 

The Iranian regime is a menace. Donald Trump is right about that. However, it is a complex, many-tentacled menace that cannot simply be flattened with a few days’ bombing. It has spent decades building a network of proxies across the Middle East and years honing its drone technology. So when Mr Trump says that “nobody expected” Iran to hit its Gulf neighbours when attacked, he is not merely wrong. He reveals how dangerously heedless he is of the consequences of his actions.

Our cover leader this week explores how Mr Trump’s war has weakened him. The resulting energy shock is roiling the world economy. America is far more vulnerable than he claims. Russia is laughing. The chances of Democrats recapturing both arms of Congress have sharply increased. Some Republicans—the ones who took his “no new wars” promise seriously—are furious, as our editor-in-chief’s interview with Tucker Carlson for the Insider illuminates. Mr Trump could still surprise us with a diplomatic triumph, perhaps in Cuba. But for now, his fury seems not so much “epic” as blind.



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