David Frum

And he's going to trap himself in the bluff that was meant to work on others.

He will find himself in a few weeks with the Strait of Hormuz still closed, oil prices high, the world economy in trouble, his numbers at home even worse than now.

And he's going to have a tool at hand that maybe magically will help him resolve his problems.

And he's not good at calculating things.

As I often say about him, no one who's good at risk management goes bankrupt as often as Donald Trump.

The best case scenario, and I'm no kind of expert on this, so I'm not gonna pretend I have any special insight here, but this is a wish casting, not analysis.

The best case scenario is that the Israeli method of eliminating the most fanatical members of the regime

one by one by one, keeps working until you hit somebody, until you bring forward a level of leadership that is more amenable to working with the rest of the world.

Because while we keep reading we are making the regime more fanatical, my understanding from people who know more about Iran than I do is that most of the regime at this point are crooks.

There is a fanaticism, there is a messianism, there is an apocalyptic desire for end of the world at the higher leadership,

But by now, most people have lost faith in the system.

They're just crooks feathering their nest.

And if you can eliminate the fanatics, maybe you'll bring to light a crook.

I guess this is Donald Trump's hope, too.

The problem is it just seems not to keep working, or at least none of the crooks are brave enough to break ranks with the non-crooks or the fanatics to make some kind of deal.

But...

The one thing not to do is not to send the ground troops.

And bringing the ground troops into the region, I think it just creates irresistible pressures.

I know Donald Trump means it as a bluff.

He thinks that the Iranians will be scared.