Trump Has No Idea How to End the War Against Iran
Source: The New Republic · Bias: Left
Summary
You can watch this episode of Right Now With Perry Bacon above or by following this show on YouTube or Substack. You can read a transcript here. The United States and Israel’s war against Iran has now been going on for about three weeks. President Trump sounds increasingly frustrated that Iran has not surrendered. In the latest edition of Right Now, Matt Duss, executive vice president of the Center for International Policy, argues that the war is failing by nearly every metric: Oil prices are rising; civilian casualties are up; the bombings by all three countries are getting more aggressive, destroying critical infrastructure; the Iranian regime remains controlled by leaders hostile to Israel and the U.S. Duss argues that what Trump and Israeli leaders see as successes, the killings of numerous Iranian officials, are really violations of international law. He says Trump is now grasping for a way to declare the war a success and end it. Duss, who was a foreign policy adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders during his two presidential runs, says that America’s problems in the Middle East are not just the fault of Trump. He argues that it was a huge mistake for the Biden administration to not restart the nuclear deal with Iran and to support Israel in its destruction of Gaza over the last two years. He says 2028 Democratic presidential candidates should use the terms genocide and apartheid to describe the current situation in Israel and Palestine. Duss also discussed Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s recent trip to Germany. He advised Ocasio-Cortez on her comments there.
Related Coverage
- Pentagon Changes How It Reports Casualties in Iran War (Center Left — NYT > U.S. > Politics)
- Trump's 'insane' AI image posting spree alarms onlookers: 'Pure delusion' (Far Left — Raw Story)
- Pentagon reports more than 600 Iran war casualties in quiet database update (Center Left — US news | The Guardian)
- Zelenskyy accuses Russia of helping Iran target U.S. bases with satellite images (Center — Politics - CBSNews.com)
- Mike Waltz, US ambassador to UN, insists country has enough munitions for Iran war: ‘People that are leaking this nonsense deserve to be in jail’ (Right — New York Post)
- Red flags fly after Trump 'lays the groundwork' for election plot: 'This is about pretext' (Far Left — Raw Story)
- GOP rep: Trump ‘would be derelict in his duty’ if Iran had nuclear weapon, despite war’s unpopularity (Center — The Hill News)
- Trump 'would be derelict in his duty' if Iran had nuclear weapon: Rep. Donalds (Center — NewsNation)
Daily Analysis
Read the full Parallax Pulse for March 20, 2026 — an AI-powered analysis of how Left and Right media covered the biggest stories this day.
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