ANALYSIS — President Donald Trump’s decades-old fixation on Iran threatens to derail his second term, as he displays the kind of “magical thinking” about the Middle East that has hobbled previous commanders in chief.
Overly optimistic views helped spawn the lengthy and expensive post-9/11 conflicts that Trump ran against during three presidential campaigns. But after starting his own war there, he has been flip about what might matter most: Who will be the next Iranian leader? He told an interviewer on Friday that he would be open to another religious leader taking over the Islamic Republic — but history suggests religious clerics tend to have more extreme views.
“Their leadership is just rapidly going. Everybody that seems to want to be a leader, they end up dead — and it’s an amazing, amazing thing that’s taking place before your eyes, because for 47 years we were pushed around and we shouldn’t have been,” Trump said Wednesday.
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