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Notes -
Political calculus had little to do with why Trump started this war. It will have little to do with whether he resumes it. MAGA is a personality cult. His allies get political capital from him, not vice-versa. His allies have no leverage.
I think it kind of did, though. He was already staring in the face of a wave election. If he could get Iran to capitulate quickly, he could prop up his numbers, and by extension the GOP's, by being the president who could solve the Iran nuclear issue once and for all by being the only president with the balls to attempt a military solution. Unfortunately, he believed his own bullshit and has such disdain for every president since Bush that he failed to consider that there were good reasons why nobody did it before. In the course of things, he pissed off the America First wing of the party and made fools of the hawks by insisting that he was achieving unprecedented success, akin to Germany in 1918. I figured he'd eventually be forced to yield, but not like this.
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