Eric Schmitt and Jonathan Swan, NYT (“Trump Holds Off on Major Escalation Against Iran as Advisers Raise Concerns“):

President Trump has set aside, at least for now, plans to sharply escalate the American military assault against Iran, with particular concern that intensifying the war could dangerously drain the Pentagon’s already diminished stockpile of Patriot antimissile interceptors and other air defense munitions in the Middle East.

The threat to interceptor stockpiles is one of many considerations that have made a return to major combat operations a hugely risky endeavor, administration officials say. Mr. Trump and his top aides are also uneasy about the prospect of a widening war in the Middle East, the alienation of key Gulf allies who are vulnerable to Iranian attack, a global economic crunch, and growing energy and refugee crises.

[…]

Few if any in Mr. Trump’s inner circle believed the plan to escalate was wise, said the two people briefed. One senior U.S. official, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity, expressed doubts that resuming major combat operations would drive Iran back to the bargaining table.

The official said the strikes have the opposite effect of what is intended, keeping Iran cohesive and allowing Iranian leaders to focus attention on an external threat.

David Sanger, NYT (“Trump Seems Trapped by Iran War, Even as He Wields the World’s Biggest Hammer“):

President Trump often celebrates his unpredictability, declaring that it keeps allies and adversaries alike off balance.

By his telling, his willingness to bomb Iranian nuclear sites 13 months ago, and send Delta Force commandos in to snatch President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela from his bed in early January, reflected his willingness to execute military operations that would have made his predecessors blanch. He told The New York Times he was limited only by “my own morality,” as he wielded the world’s biggest hammer.

But in recent weeks, he has seemed trapped, his presidency gradually consumed by a war he cannot find his way out of.

He has discovered limits on his power that he could have scarcely imagined when he began full combat operations on Feb. 28, when he set out goals for a swift end to Iran’s nuclear program and the overthrow of the country’s government.

Five months later, those goals remain almost entirely unaccomplished. And Mr. Trump, once confident that overwhelming force would enable him to pursue in Iran what he proudly called the “Venezuela model” — a change of government to one amenable to U.S. control — is now hesitant to plunge back into major combat operations that his intelligence agencies assess are unlikely to work as well in Tehran.

Essentially, this is where we’ve been for months. Despite overwhelming military superiority, we are unable to achieve our political objectives. The Iranian leadership, such as it is, has been willing to absorb the damage. Conversely, the damage they have been able to inflict on our partners and the global economy has put enormous pressure on the Trump administration to get out of this mess. So far, they have not found a way to do that.

As The Atlantic‘s Charlie Warzel notes, “Even Trump Can’t Spin This One.”

If President Trump has one true skill, it is conjuring up alternate realities and getting his supporters to accept them. The examples are everywhere: dismissing stories he doesn’t like as “fake news” from corrupt media, casting the January 6 rioters as victims, election denial. After he baselessly insisted that there had been rampant mail-in voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, 11 states made mail-voting access more restrictive. His repeated false claims in 2024 that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, were eating pets led to real threats against the community. Trump builds a world, and by virtue of his power and influence, all of us end up living in it in some way or another.

That era may be coming to a close, in large part because of the way he and his administration have bungled the war in Iran. Trump seems unable to spin this conflict, divert sufficient attention away from it with a new controversy, or end it outright. His social-media posts, which once acted as a de facto assignment editor for the mainstream media, no longer command the same attention or respect. Now, interspersed with AI slop and inexplicable middle-of-the-night reposting binges, Trump’s Truth Social screeds sound more like the fevered ramblings of a radicalized Facebook uncle. For the past five months, he’s been trying to convince the American public (or at least his Truth Social followers) that the war is over, or ending, or a rousing success. His administration is even retroactively changing on the Pentagon’s website the number of American service members who have died in the conflict. But no one seems to be falling for it. His posts don’t have the juice. His alternate universe is no match for the harsh reality of war.

[…]

As a result, Trump’s posts have become more erratic. On June 23, in response to rising gas prices, Trump posted on Truth Social, in all caps, to nobody in particular, “EVERYONE, KEEP OIL PRICES DOWN. I’M WATCHING! YOU’RE PLAYING RIGHT INTO THE HANDS OF THE ENEMY. DON’T DO IT!” And his posts no longer seem as able to influence the market. A recent report from Axios claimed that bond-market traders have stopped paying strict attention to Trump’s social-media feeds to read the economic tea leaves: “Researchers from JPMorgan show that for the most part, his social media posts are noise, with very little ability to move the market.”

It’s not just the posts, alas. As Sanger notes,

Those limits have left him deeply frustrated, his aides say, and have made him more erratic, even by Trumpian standards. This week alone, Mr. Trump’s energy secretary signed a historic pact with Saudi Arabia to provide civil nuclear power to the kingdom, before the president undercut the deal less than 24 hours later, stunning the Saudis by declaring that the agreement, negotiated over 18 months, was dead unless the country joined the Abraham Accords and recognized Israel.

Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. diplomat with long experience in the Mideast, said that Mr. Trump again “alienated the Saudis, delighted Benjamin Netanyahu and gave Iran strong talking points as to why cutting deals with U.S. is a fool’s errand, bound to be betrayed.”

The next day, he declared that the “original Deal” on the $4.5 billion Gordie Howe International Bridge, a cross-border project named for the hockey star beloved on both sides of the border with Canada, was dead. He imposed 50 percent tariffs on a range of Canadian goods, in what appeared to be a blatant violation of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement that Mr. Trump negotiated in his first term and now wants to scrap.

Not surprisingly, Canada disinvited Americans from ceremonies to mark the completion of the bridge, which opens to traffic on Monday.

He’s been erratic on domestic politics, as well.

Mr. Trump’s rewriting of deals, out of anger or frustration, has extended to his party’s domestic priorities. Republicans had assembled chairs at the Capitol for the signing ceremony of a major housing bill — a rare bipartisan agreement celebrated by the White House — when Mr. Trump stunned them by refusing to sign it. His only priority, he said, was the SAVE America Act, his effort to change voting laws, which did not have enough Republican support.

The ceremony was canceled. The bill became law without Mr. Trump’s signature — and also without a chance for his party to get the photo opportunity of action to ease affordability for new homeowners.

Not all of Mr. Trump’s frustrations, people close to the president say, are driven by the war, now so unpopular that only 29 percent of Americans polled by the Washington Post and Ipsos approved of his handling of the conflict. But much of it is. And the angst is clear as he promises to stop Iran’s nuclear program at any cost, while his allies at home want out.

[…]

But the president does not have a clear way to accomplish that goal. Having entered the conflict with little strategy for victory, he now is struggling for a face-saving way to exit.

The obvious concern is that the President will decide the only way out is through. For now, he has been talked down from a major escalation. But, with pressure mounting, that may not last.