Unconditional Surrender!

Our blowhard, none-too-bright president wanted it to be clear, and he said so on his little message board on March 6: “There will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!”

What he didn’t say — it might not yet have slithered through what’s left of his brain like RFK Jr.’s worm — was that the U.S. would do the surrendering.

Sometimes one has to wonder if Donald Trump is aware that he’s actually the president of the United States and not just playing the character on a poorly produced, not-very-funny situation comedy. For example, on January 13 he posted a note about the protesters who were being murdered by the tens of thousands in Iran.

“Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING - TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!!… HELP IS ON ITS WAY," he wrote. Anyone who has followed his antics for any length of time figures that Trump holds the belief that his decrees must be obeyed without delay or question, and that having been scolded by Trump the mullahs of Iran would cower in some place where only Israeli munitions could find them and stop shooting such freedom-loving Iranians as had survived to that point. This kind of thing has never worked for Trump, but in his life demonstrating the cliché about the proof of insanity, the ever-fatter, ever-fading-orange lout keeps thinking it will. He does this by later denying he ever made claims and demands he provably made.

It had already been a bad weekend for Trump. On Friday night, the name — his — that he had ordered affixed to the John F. Kennedy Center for the performing Arts was forcibly removed on the order of a federal judge. (The two names did not harmonize. Kennedy is famous for saying, “Ask not what your country can do you for you, ask what you can do for your country,” while Trump will be remembered for “What’s in it for me?”) The name came down, we’re told. We cannot know for sure because Trump had the front of the building covered with a giant tarp. Maybe the name was removed, or maybe Trump figures that the judge will issue a “Writ of Just Kidding” when the FBI shows up to arrest the judge’s family.

Donald John Trump turned 80 on Sunday. He threw a thug-themed party for himself on the White House lawn. As the camera followed him from inside the White House to the ring, his expression was not festive. He bore the expression of a man who had realized that his happy days were probably behind him. Here’s hoping.

Trump had planned to make the announcement on his birthday that the Iran war he had started for no particular reason — certainly not to rescue the Iranian people — had ended in stunning victory. And he did indeed make that announcement.

He just didn’t mention that Iran was the stunning victor. That might explain why as he ambled to his birthday party Sunday he had the mien of one who knows his future birthday cakes might well be, certainly should be, fashioned from nutraloaf.

And if I had interpreted the signs correctly I would have known Trump’s miserable failure was foreordained. Beyond the obvious, I mean.

Early Sunday a lizard, a chubby five-lined skink, found its way into my house, as they do a time or two each year, always during the week when the peaches are ripe but not yet Trumpen sacks of grainy fruit-flavored mashed potatoes. This one skittered under the stove and, lizards not being particularly troublesome, I did not move the stove to go after it. But that afternoon it reappeared, stuck to a glue trap that had disappeared over the winter.

The lizard was not happy, but there was nothing to be done. There are no brier patches that can get Br’er Lizard, Trump’s spirit animal, off a glue trap onto which it had wandered. A group of scientists in a laboratory with many thousands of dollars in specialized equipment might be able to do it, but here there was no way to free the overly confident reptile. The only thing to do, really, was to put the thing, lizard, glue trap, and all, in a bag and into the freezer, where the lizard would go to sleep and then die.

It was, as I said, Trump’s spirit animal. Not five-lined skinks in general but this particular one. While searching for something that would benefit itself, it had gotten itself into trouble whence there was no escape. (This comparison to Trump is of course metaphorical; the real life version will come when Trump soon appoints judges based on whether the nominee will pledge to rule that, a. Trump can put his name on anything he wants, and b. that there is a valid insanity defense against impeachment.)

On Sunday Trump declared that he had won the war, that he had found the good guys in Iran and that they were his friends, that a peace deal (“Memorandum of Understanding,” which signifies nothing) would soon be signed, and that no, he’s not stuck to the glue trap, and that like the Black Knight he had won. Always eager to sacrifice his friends in order to save himself, Trump said the “deal” had been jeopardized by Israel having decided that its own safety was more important than his birthday plans. What did he think, that Iran would refuse our surrender?

He then sent out J.D. Vance, if that’s his real name, to defend the “agreement.” A thing worse than being Trump’s enemy is being his friend.

But the contents of the alleged document were not disclosed. Vance and Trump said one thing while Iran said something entirely different. Neither has ever been known to tell the truth on any subject. If the MoU were favorable to Trump, you know it would have been released all over the place.

What’s more, at its “signing,” supposedly Thursday or Friday, Trump is sending Vance. Trump is in Europe, in Switzerland, and the signing is supposed to take place in Switzerland. Don’t you suppose that if there were anything good to be said for the MoU, anything that could even be twisted into a convincingly favorable lie, Trump would be there, front and center, for the signing? But he’s skedaddling away from Europe just as fast as Air Force One can carry him. If there’s praise, it will go to Trump. Criticism, that’s Vance’s. You almost feel sorry for the guy. Almost. He scurried into his own glue trap.

At the G7 conference in Switzerland this week, Trump was seen as something of a laughing stock, as is appropriate. That’s really the best he can hope for, because Trump has made himself easily the most hated man in the world. He has cost literally everyone in the free world money. On a whim.

Trump apparently believes he gets to start wars as he wishes, which under our system of government he does not. He also believes he can end wars as he wishes, which he does not as a matter of reality.

So without even a nod from the branch of government that has the power to declare wars — the legislative branch — he went to war with Iran. It was not just for nothing but in fact for less than nothing. We’re worse off than we were before and would be if Trump had done nothing. Which can be said of much of his administration.

Beginning Sunday night, various versions of the MoU were leaked to news media around the world. These were discarded out of hand because they so ridiculously favored Iran that not even Trump would countenance such a document.

We all forgot about the immense power of Trump’s self regard and his all-important birthday party. Tuesday evening, Bloomberg published what it said was the text of the agreement, and it is worse than anyone could have imagined. Sadly, it was in fact the MoU.

It gives the remaining mullahs everything they want. It includes, as you may have heard, \$300 billion. Trump weaseled around this the other night by posting on his BBS for slow learners that it did not give Iran \$300 million. No, it’s a thousand times that much. Iran will be allowed to charge tolls on ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz. In keeping with Trump’s “what’s in it for me” motto, Politico Tuesday night carried this: “Trump administration officials are discussing ideas to kick-start oil tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, including a plan that would offer a fee-based ‘VIP pass’ naval escort through the waterway, three people familiar with the discussions said.”

Meanwhile, Australian Broadcasting Corporation had this to report: “China and Russia helped shape the US-Iran ceasefire deal, experts say, with future deals between Washington and Tehran also likely to be influenced by the two countries.”

Oh, and the MoU specifically says that Iran can do whatever it wants to its residents, so if you are an Iranian counting on the help Trump promised was on the way, you’re outa luck, to wit, from the MoU itself: “The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran undertake to respect each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and to refrain from interfering in each other’s internal affairs.”

The writer Joshua Keating reported that anyone excited about the war being over should hold his horses.

Tuesday,, CNN reported this: “US negotiators are working to quickly release the text of the agreement between Washington and Tehran, even as they downplay the significance of the specific language in the document, US officials told CNN.” This raises numerous questions, such as: If the text didn’t exist, what was agreed to? “Happy birthday, Infidel Satan”? The CNN report quoted American officials as saying, “What’s more important than the actual document is the understandings we have with each other . . .”

Reliable Trump ally The New York Post seems to have finally run out of patience. “Trump’s Iran deal gives the Islamic Republic big wins upfront —- and America nothing” is the headline of its lead editorial.

The highly regarded Institute for the Study of War minced no words: “The leaked text of the agreement, if accurate, indicates that Iran has emerged from the conflict in a stronger strategic position, however.” That is the nice part. The leaked text turned out to be real.

It will be interesting to see how Trump and poor Vance try to defend this mess and who if anyone takes their side. It is not beyond possibility that Congress rejects the whole thing by bringing an article of impeachment or two, saying that Trump entered the war illegally and maybe that Trump and Hegseth’s sport of blowing up motorboats in international waters is illegal, too. They would be right. Trump’s little friend, House Speaker Mike Johnson, would try to block that. It would be his shortest path to becoming former speaker. There’s an election this fall, and people in Congress are like Maynard G. Krebs when having to get a real job is possible.

As I write this, I think of Trump’s spirit lizard and it occurs to me that the lizard probably would have said that no, it wasn’t caught by the glue trap but that instead it had itself captured the glue trap. It’s what Trump would do; what he will probably in its effect do with the surrender to Iran. It’s been the case so far.

A bitter irony in all of this is that the burr under Trump’s saddle recently hasn’t been Joe Biden so much as it has been Barack Obama, who was a bad president but unlike Trump he wasn’t demonstrably insane. On May 8, Trump held forth on Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA. “The deal lifted crippling economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for very weak limits on the regime’s nuclear activity, and no limits at all on its other malign behavior, including its sinister activities in Syria, Yemen, and other places all around the world.”

Trump withdrew the U.S. from the agreement. Allies were left scratching their heads.

It is true that the JCPOA was awful and the United States should never have entered into it.

But the MoU, acquired by Vance alongside Trump’s bagman Steve Witkoff and bagman-in-law Jared Kushner (both Trump business partners, by the way) is far, far worse. Its lone justification is that it gave Trump something to announce on his birthday.

I think it should come to be known as the DJTPOS. You can figure out what that stands for.