Stack the Week Daily

Today the Wall Street Journal printed a detailed account of the decision-making in the run-up to the Iran war. It shows, as the New York Times and others have, President Trump receiving explicit warnings about many of the dangers that have since materialized. He went ahead anyway. The great American national-security blunders have taken different forms: the groupthink behind the Bay of Pigs, Lyndon Johnson’s escalation in Vietnam, the failure to connect the dots before 9/11, and the false assumptions, faulty intelligence and wishful planning that produced the Iraq War. These four are the canon of blundering. In each, the president was one part of an institutional failure — advisers who missed signals, agencies that got the intelligence wrong, a process that broke down around him. Trump’s may be a new kind — not a failure of process, but a failure housed more centrally in the president himself, who actively rejected the process. The intelligence was right. The failure is his alone. That’s worth remembering next time a candidate boasts that he alone can fix something. It’s a warning. The warnings were specific. Then-Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told Trump that killing Iran’s supreme leader would likely produce “a more hard-line regime open to acquiring nuclear weapons.” She warned that Tehran would “rush to close the Strait of Hormuz, destabilizing the global energy market,” and attack American forces and partners in the region. Military leaders warned of casualties, depleted weapons stockpiles and readiness problems for an already overstretched force. All of it happened. The war Trump promised would end within six weeks has reached the six-month mark without a clear end. “This was all predictable and predicted,” Eric Brewer, a former national-security official who served in Republican and Democratic administrations, told the Journal. I want to make a larger point but first, to show that I have metabolized the scale of the harm of this decision: we are watching the consequences spool out in real time as the administration lunges toward something it can call success. Consider the new economic sanctions announced Monday. Enforcing them against the Chinese institutions that sustain Iran could provoke a confrontation with Beijing. Declining to enforce them could expose another American threat as hollow. Longer term, the U.S. has burned through roughly two-thirds of its Patriot interceptor stockpile and close to half its THAAD inventory in under six months of fighting — inventories that take years, not months, to rebuild. And there are other years-long consequences: bruised alliances, and nations making choices based on a new — and perhaps warped — understanding of American strategic confusion. So put this on the to-do list: catalog the consequences of this decision and reward those who come up with the most creative and realistic solutions for containing those consequences and addressing the fallout. This is one way to combat the despair people feel when faced with the president’s combination of bluster and incompetence. Look for the helpers, as Mr. Rogers used to say. Seek out and lift up the people who can scope the problem, name the challenges and identify realistic ways of limiting the damage and beginning the repair. This brings us (if you’re still with me; I feel like I should pack a juice box to give us all a little energy at this point) to my little corner of obsession: presidential campaigns. Everything about Donald Trump’s decision-making is bad enough, but it gets worse when you measure his performance against his boasts about how he would perform as president. Donald Trump ran on the promise that he had a special quality in just these moments. In the South Carolina primary debate in 2016, he offered his opposition to the Iraq War as evidence of his superior judgment. He also stood by his earlier claim that George W. Bush had lied the country into war. “The war in Iraq was a big, fat mistake,” Trump sai

Confirmation hearings in the modern era are largely exercises in evasion. Senators deliver speeches disguised as questions. Nominees repeat rehearsed assurances. Everyone leaves carrying the opinion they brought into the room. By that contemporary standard, the confirmation process for Attorney General nominee Todd Blanche did something unusually useful. Instead of producing answers about his independence from the president, it produced a real-time test of it. At issue was an extraordinary arrangement, which Blanche signed, resolving President Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS. It purported to grant sweeping protection from existing tax claims to Trump, his sons, and the Trump Organization, and to create a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” that could compensate people claiming to have been persecuted by the government—including, potentially, Trump’s political allies and January 6 defendants. The arrangement was not merely controversial. Critics questioned whether it was legally binding at all, and even after Blanche narrowed its scope, the remaining tax protections could still be worth tens of millions of dollars to the president and his family. U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams, who is presiding over the case, dismantled both the lawsuit and the settlement it produced. She found that the suit had been brought for an “improper purpose.” This was not, she concluded, an ordinary lawsuit between genuinely adverse parties. The president was effectively suing an administration he controlled. She rejected the government’s attempt to present the resulting agreement as the product of an ordinary adversarial proceeding. She noted that the settlement outline bore only Blanche’s signature, even though the Justice Department purported to represent the government against the president. In the Senate, the arrangement that got such rough treatment from judge Williams was a double test of Blanche’s independence. Did he put the president’s interests and those of his allies above his duty to the law and Constitution? That independence matters because the attorney general leads a department powerful enough to shield a president and his allies from the law—or turn the law against their enemies. This weekend, we saw the conclusion of an episode that illustrates the danger of what happens when law enforcement becomes an instrument of the president’s passions in the department Blanche is asking to run outright. After president Trump blamed “vandals” for the Reflecting Pool’s peeling liner, federal authorities charged former Olympic canoeist David Hearn with felony property destruction. Prosecutors have now moved to dismiss the case, acknowledging that the damage resulted from a rushed, botched installation—not vandalism. The government’s own filing acknowledged that the evidence no longer supported the vandalism theory. The machinery of federal law enforcement advanced far enough to put a man under felony indictment before the evidence stopped it. Even then, the president didn’t concede the point—he told reporters the damage was still “VANDALS,” contractor problems notwithstanding. Blanche was not a nominee being asked to speculate about some future conflict between presidential loyalty and the law. His signature was already on such a conflict. Blanche, the president’s former personal lawyer, helped create the arrangement, publicly defended it, and then called the fund “dead” while declining to rescind the order that had created it. When Republican Senators Thom Tillis and John Cornyn demanded that he put his assurance into binding form, he resisted. Only when they placed his confirmation in jeopardy did he issue the written order they had demanded. That sequence is more revealing than any hearing exchange. Blanche’s conduct tracked the location of leverage. Blanche had already shown how he would behave when presidential loyalty collided with the impartial administration of justice. As of this week, the senators have gotten a c

Spanish troops and police deployed in Ceuta on Friday after roughly 60,000 people crossed from Morocco into the Spanish territory. The Associated Press reported that at least 57 people died. Because Ceuta belongs to Spain, the crossing placed the migrants inside the European Union’s asylum system even though Ceuta sits in North Africa. That does not make the migrants EU citizens or give them an automatic right to travel across Europe. It does allow them to request asylum from Spain, which must register and evaluate those claims under Spanish and EU law. The influx, equal to about 70 percent of Ceuta’s normal population, became a European dispute Friday. Italy temporarily restored checks on air and sea travel from Spain because its government feared that migrants admitted or released by Spain could travel onward through Europe’s normally border-free Schengen Area. Italy does not share a border with Spain; the restrictions apply to passengers arriving from Spain by plane or ship. The European Commission said Friday that it had not detected such onward movement. For migrants who remain, the next morning begins with registration, screening and a possible asylum proceeding. For other travelers, the political reaction means the return of passport checks on routes where they had largely disappeared. President Donald Trump announced Friday that Hamas had accepted a plan to disarm in Gaza, but Hamas tied disarmament to an Israeli withdrawal while Israel insisted that Hamas surrender its weapons first. The Associated Press verified a written roadmap and reported Friday that Hamas had confirmed its participation; Israel had not formally accepted the plan. Under the roadmap, Hamas would first surrender police weapons and later turn over heavier arms. A new Palestinian security force would replace Hamas, while an international Board of Peace official would oversee a transition expected to last between 200 and 350 days. According to the Associated Press, Israeli forces remain deployed in or control access to roughly 60 percent of Gaza. Reconstruction is estimated to cost $70 billion, but contractors cannot safely rebuild while Hamas and Israel disagree over who disarms or withdraws first. For civilians, the agreement arrives amid continued displacement and shortages. The United Nations humanitarian office reported that military operations, movement restrictions and insecurity were still forcing families to move and limiting access to drinking water, food, shelter, sanitation and medical care. Many people remain in temporary shelters or damaged buildings while reconstruction is stalled. Reconstruction cannot begin at scale until Hamas, Israel and the international force agree on who disarms, who withdraws and who controls Gaza during the transition. Drones hit Kuwait on Friday, and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said it had attacked two oil tankers. Donald Trump’s pledge to hit a piece of Iranian infrastructure for each Iranian attack has not been followed up on. Four other tankers turned away from the Strait of Hormuz. Saudi Arabia assembled a 14-country security alliance to protect shipping and regional infrastructure, according to the Guardian’s live reporting. The alliance is intended to coordinate the protection of tankers, ports and regional infrastructure, although its members have not publicly explained how they will divide that work. The war’s financial effects appeared in oil-company earnings Friday. Exxon earned $14.53 billion and Chevron earned $12.07 billion as oil traded above $100 a barrel and briefly reached $126. Exxon’s refining profit increased sixfold, while diesel prices rose 41 percent. The same supply disruption produces opposite mornings: producers and refiners collect higher prices, while drivers and businesses pay more for fuel, shipping and petroleum-based products. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the Trump administration’s expansion of mandatory detention for immigrants arrested inside the United States, t

Welcome to Stack Stories Daily for the 29th of July. We’re trying a little bit something different here today, so hang with us. You can read it or listen to it as a podcast. Let’s get to it. The Iran war moved again from background to foreground. Iran launched missiles at U.S. forces in Jordan; U.S. Central Command said the missiles were shot down. The systems doing this work are the same scarce air-defense systems the U.S. has been burning through in the Iran war. The Wall Street Journal called it a surprise missile attack; the point is that Iran fired after a brief lull and while de-escalation talks were still being floated. There was action in Iraq. The United States and Saudi Arabia hit Iran-backed militias in Iraq. AP reports at least 20 militia fighters were killed, along with six Iranian advisers. Iraq condemned the strikes as a violation of its sovereignty. Iraq and Saudi Arabia are now more directly engaged in the war. Ukraine said it hit two major Russian oil refineries overnight. That pushes forward the strategy we talked about before: Ukraine is not just fighting Russian troops; it is attacking the fuel and revenue that feed Putin’s war. Ukraine’s Zelenskyy was in Washington getting support from senators who advanced a Russia sanctions bill, 86-12. The bill would punish countries that keep buying Russian oil, gas and other exports. The bill would also let Trump impose tariffs of 500 percent on Russian imports and tariffs as high as 100 percent on the five largest importers of Russian oil and gas. At Trump’s request, senators added sanctions aimed at Iran too. In Congo, Ebola is now making hunger worse. The head of the U.N. World Food Program told AP that more than 2.7 million people in affected health zones face acute food insecurity. People are being told to isolate, but they also need food. That is the trap. In Japan, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said at least 13 people had died after a magnitude-7.1 earthquake struck Kumamoto. In Europe two firefighters were killed on Crete on July 29 while battling a wildfire driven by extreme heat and high winds. The Fed held interest rates steady, but three officials wanted to raise them. Trump wants lower rates, which would make borrowing cheaper. But the Iran war is pushing oil prices higher, and that increases the price for gas and goods that move by gas-powered vehicles. The president insists his new Fed chair wants to lower rates. The war Trump is directing is making the rate cut he wants harder to justify. A CNN/SSRS poll found a record 73 percent of Americans saying Trump has not paid enough attention to the country’s most important problems. His approval among Republicans fell to a new low of 78 percent, and the share of Republicans enthusiastic about the rest of his second term fell from 38 percent last spring to 19 percent. 19 percent? Wowza. A new filing in the James Comey case says Trump requested notes from the Secret Service interview of Comey “to use in his 6 p.m. press conference,” while repeated searches by federal investigators, including Secret Service agents, for evidence that “86” meant killing produced inconclusive or empty results. Today’s Washington spectacle was Anthony Fauci’s appearance before the Senate. Republicans, led by Rand Paul, are still investigating the origins of COVID and whether Fauci misled Congress about U.S.-funded research. Paul claims Fauci helped obscure or deny U.S. support for risky “gain-of-function” research in Wuhan, and he released parts of Fauci’s diary to argue that Fauci privately took the idea that the virus leaked from a lab more seriously than he admitted publicly. Fauci has said the NIH did not fund gain-of-function research as Paul defines it. Gain-of-function research means altering an organism, often a virus, to study whether it becomes more transmissible, more dangerous, or better able to evade defenses. Fauci said he had testified or briefed Congress “well over 200” times during nearly 40 years in government. To

1. Netanyahu visits presses his advantage Benjamin Netanyahu met for 90-minutes with President Trump Tuesday. He declared near-total agreement on Iran and called the meeting one of their best. The administration was equally upbeat. The public display obscured consequential disagreements. Israel wants the United States to resume the war if Iran refuses to dismantle its nuclear program, including attacking the deeply buried Pickaxe Mountain complex. Washington has not explained how that could be accomplished, and the United States is consuming Patriot and THAAD interceptors faster than it can replace them. Trump acknowledged Netanyahu’s pressure about the danger of Pickaxe mountain before the meeting: “Bibi’s telling me that because he wants me to stay involved.” Politico reported that some of Trump’s America First allies fear the meeting will pull the US deeper into the war, alleging that Netanyahu had “sold” Trump on starting the conflict in the first place. His renewed pressure—and Trump’s slightly irritated acknowledgment of it—echoes all that. It was Netanyahu’s eighth Oval Office meeting since Trump returned to office — and RealClearWorld’s read on it was blunt: he arrived “weaker and less influential” than in any of the previous seven. The Telegraph reported the IRGC has fielded its deadliest kamikaze drone yet, a jet-powered upgrade explicitly framed as a message to Trump. The math here seems to be inescapable. Iran has not surrendered its nuclear program. American missiles have not eliminated it. US stockpiles are shrinking, while Iran has acquired new leverage by reducing commercial traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. The current situation seems a long way off from checking off the boxes on Netanyahu’s to do list. The New York Times framed Tehran’s strategy bluntly: “Why Iran Is in No Rush to Return to Talks With United States.” Iranian leaders appear to be betting that they can endure greater economic and military pain than Trump—and that their control over passage through Hormuz gives them leverage Washington cannot ignore. You may remember that we framed this as a contest of pain thresholds in our digest on Friday. Inside Iran, the government is using the wartime environment to accelerate its repression. Authorities hanged two more men Tuesday for killing police during January’s protests. They were among 12 sentenced in closed, torture-tainted proceedings; four have now been executed, with eight on death row. These executions underscore the brutal aftermath of the government surviving the January uprising, which saw tens of thousands arrested and thousands killed. 2. Ebola update: Congo approaches a two-year toll in 10 weeks Congo’s Ebola outbreak reached 3,262 confirmed cases and 1,437 deaths Tuesday—nearly as many infections as the country’s worst previous outbreak recorded over two years. This epidemic has needed only 10 weeks to approach that total. The Bundibugyo (boon-dee-BOO-joh) strain has no approved vaccine or treatment, leaving responders dependent on isolation and contact tracing. Both are breaking down in eastern Congo: rebel violence has made communities unreachable, frightened residents have attacked treatment centers, and some health workers are striking because they have not been paid. Across the border, Uganda declared its outbreak over Tuesday. Its last Ebola patient was discharged June 16; authorities then waited the required 42 days—two complete incubation periods—without another infection. Uganda’s success shows that the virus can be stopped when officials identify every patient and monitor every contact. 3. Japan’s earthquake: a terrifying echo of 2016 The magnitude 7.1 earthquake that struck Kyushu on Tuesday produced Japan’s maximum level of local shaking—a force capable of throwing people to the floor, hurling unsecured furniture and collapsing some reinforced-concrete walls. The second floor of a shopping mall partially collapsed, leaving 20 to 30 employees missing. About 90 injured peop