Ideas

Trump Got This One Right

The president has made many poor decisions, but in striking Iran, he acted where his predecessors had failed.

First published in The Atlantic on June 22, 2025

by Eliot A. Cohen, The Atlantic
June 26, 2025 | reading time: 6 Min.

“Why are the wrong people doing the right thing?” Henry Kissinger is supposed to have once asked, in a moment of statesman-like perplexity. That question recurred as Donald Trump, backed by a visibly perturbed vice president and two uneasy Cabinet secretaries, announced that the United States had just bombed three Iranian nuclear sites. It is a matter of consternation for all the right people, who, as Kissinger well knew, are often enough dead wrong.

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