At the six month mark of this war, the Wall Street Journal had reporting that in the walk up to this war, the extent to which the President's intelligence apparatus all told him of all the things that ended up happening, planning that the leadership of Iran would become more radical, that they would use the Strait of Hormuz, that they would target bases all over the Middle east and that there would be a dangerous drawdown and a stretching of readiness which was already in bad shape. All of that came to pass. And what struck me as I was thinking about this is that in the history of US national security blunders, when we think about them, you know, Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, Iraq War, not connecting the dots before 9/11, those were institutional failures in addition to presidential failures. In this case, because the President basically went with his gut and in contravention of a lot of the intelligence he was getting, this is a kind of unique Donald Trumpian failure. He was elected because he said, my gut is better than any other human on the planet in assessing whatever happens to be before me. And the decision making tree here was exactly as he wanted it to be. And so in a way, this presidential decision on Iran is more circumscribed around the man himself than these other instances. ... I think that is unique in American history.
-- John Dickerson (6 July 1968 -), American journalist, contributing writer at The Atlantic, and past co-anchor of CBS Evening News, speaking on the Slate Political Gabfest podcast (27 August 2026)
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