Steve Clemons

Things are not going well for the United States, which is trying to navigate a situation in which Iran is trying to tell the world that attacking it is hard, that forcing it to give up

control of the Strait of Hormuz or many of its core assets to have its leadership wiped out.

It's trying to send the message, don't mess with us so casually.

And it's largely succeeding in that.

At the same time, America's partner in this, Israel, which Donald Trump keeps saying that he holds all the cards and Netanyahu will do everything he tells him to do, is clearly not

that compliant and that Israel continues to pursue its own parochial interests, regardless of what Trump is doing.

There is some respect there, but particularly with regards to Gaza-fying the southern part of Lebanon, which its defense minister, Israel Katz, has explicitly said they're doing.

They're wiping out all the homes on the border and they're going to follow the lessons of Gaza in doing what they're doing.

So that is something that

Iran has decided that agenda matters to them.

Whether they really care or not is another question.

But both sides are continuing to throw pieces into this equation that Donald Trump is frustrated with because he just wants a deal and he wants America out and he wants to have a new equilibrium that's stable.

The Strait of Hormuz there and energy and fertilizer and everything running again.

And right now it's just messy and wobbly and likely to stay that way for a while.

I mean, in a way, it's sort of a fact that every time you've got two warring parties with absolutely no trust is that they think that you've got to really muscle up and show very intense power, no weakness as a way to maximize whatever gains you're going to get after a negotiated end and a negotiated change.

But it shows the fact that

America, which was, you know, a lot of even Trump supporters, they continue to support him, his base.

But a lot of America was very surprised by this because Donald Trump was saying he would never get into this kind of war.

You know, this is beginning to feel like to people it could slip into another war with no end.

And and that's the kind of thing as you see consumer prices.