Trump appears indifferent to all the battles he’s losing. So what’s the deal?

If President Donald Trump succeeds in closing a “deal” with Iran, the more likely ultimate outcome in the months ahead is that it will fail – just as the “deal” he made to end the war in Gaza is failing. No Nobel likely.

Trump has made grand claims – that Iran will fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz, will send all its highly enriched uranium to the US and has pledged never to make a nuclear bomb – but Iran has not publicly accepted those terms. Iran demands the US unfreeze tens of billions of dollars in Iran’s assets, but Trump has rejected that. Will the deal also ensure that Israel’s expanded campaign in Lebanon is halted?

Trump has come close to sabotaging his Iran deal by demanding that Pakistan, Egypt, Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia sign the Abraham Accords and recognise the state of Israel. The Saudis made it explicitly clear, when the Gaza deal was signed last year, that there was no way they could do this without progress on a Palestinian state. And there is no way Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu is moving towards a Palestinian state. His vision is for controlling all the land “from the river to the sea” – for Israel. What keeps the Arab states out of the Abraham Accords is not the Iran war but that there has been no progress on a Palestinian state.

In Trump’s Gaza peace deal, basic provisions have lapsed. Hamas has not been disarmed. The work of the Board of Peace is stalled. Israel has expanded its physical control over the territory. There is no good end in sight for Gaza.

With the war still on, Trump talked to his cabinet for 10 minutes on something really important to him: the reflecting pool he is rebuilding between the Washington and Lincoln monuments in the capital. Pete Hegseth, the secretary of war, tied the president’s endeavours all together for us. “Washington and Lincoln … stood up in historic fashion and delivered for the American people. And, when you step back and look at 47 years of what Iran waged — war against us and our people — there’s only one man, over the course of both presidencies, who has stood up and said they will never get a nuclear weapon.”

Trump’s standing today with the American people is treacherous. Only 30 per cent of voters believe the decision to go to war with Iran was the right one. His approval rating has collapsed, heading towards 35 per cent. In 44 of the 50 states, Trump’s net approval rating is underwater, even in Trump states such as Texas (-19), Ohio (-18), and Florida (-9). On major issues of concern to Americans – foreign policy, the economy, inflation – Trump’s performance is not trusted. Consume