A president orders the onset of hostilities — war — without authorization of Congress and without much in the way of making a case with the public. His troops win important victories and decapitate large parts of the government of the enemy. But in the enemy capital, no one surrenders or will even negotiate seriously.
That leaves the president with the unhappy choice of launching a new military attack on the central focus of the enemy, one riskier and less certain of success than those before, or of declaring an incomplete victory, well short of his essential objective, and just getting the heck out of there.
One president in American history chose the risky first option and, despite missteps along the way, secured major gains for the country, even if he ultimately fell short of the broader goals that emerged during the conflict. A more recent president has chosen the second option, though the results are still unclear.
Both presidents faced this basic problem: What if you have been clearly winning a war, by any military definition, and yet the other side doesn’t surrender? Even worse, what if it’s unclear just who is making decisions on the other side and what their goal is?
At this point, it should be clear who one of the presidents is and which power he has chosen to attack and back off: Donald Trump and the regime of Iran. The other is less familiar but may be familiar to anyone who remembers that when candidate Al Gore was asked nearly 40 years ago what presidents he most admired, one of his answers was James Knox Polk.
Cheap partisans and clueless reporters took cheap shots at Gore, but it was obvious that he was thinking of a fellow Tennessean, Polk, who served as speaker of the House in the 1830s, governor of Tennessee in the 1840s, and was the first successful dark horse presidential candidate, elected president in 1844 by dint of carrying New York by just 5,106 votes.
Polk pledged to serve just one term. He told historian and Cabinet member George Bancroft that he would pursue just four goals: set up an independent treasury, lower tariffs, take unified control of the Oregon Territory, and take possession of California.
He succeeded at all four in just four years. But not without difficulty and controversy.
The treasury and the lower tariffs he squeezed out of a Congress with a majority of his fellow Democrats. Oregon he got after splitting the territory with Britain (which got British Columbia). For California, however, he had to go to war.
There was then some dispute about the borders of recently annexed Texas. Polk ordered Gen. Zachary Taylor to lead troops across the Nueces River to the Rio Grande, claimed by Mexico. Mexican troops attacked Taylor’s Americans.
With American bloodshed on American soil, Polk called on Congress to declare war. Although one-third of members had qualms, they voted for war with Mexico. Taylor then proceeded to beat Mexican troops in multiple battles near the border. But in the capital of Mexico City, or among off-and-on leader Santa Ana’s entourage, no one was negotiating. The great mass of Mexicans lived far south of the U.S. border and weren’t inclined to surrender.
What could Polk, eager to secure rights to California, do? In effect, he started a second war, ordering Gen. Winfield Scott to land troops at Veracruz and proceed across 11,000-foot mountains, near the route of Cortes three centuries before, to reach Mexico City. It worked. In a feat of generalship praised by the aged Duke of Wellington, Scott beat the elusive Santa Ana, got his successor to surrender, and helped Nicholas Trist negotiate a treaty netting one-third of Mexican territory (but only 90,000 of its citizens). Polk, greedy for more land as Scott headed inland, wanted more and fired Trist, but when presented with his treaty, he sent it to the Senate, which quickly ratified it.
Trump’s actions were driven more by anger over Iran’s 1979 seizure of U.S. diplomats than by any goal as specific as Polk’s. Still, the joint U.S.-Israel attacks during the June 2025 12-day war seriously degraded Iran’s nuclear program and set it back.
His attacks this year, starting in February, further degraded Iran’s nuclear program and, with pinpoint accuracy, killed the supreme leader and dozens of subordinates. He inflicted great damage on Iran’s weaponry and its economy.
But the mullahs in Tehran, like the leaders in Mexico City, wouldn’t surrender, and they blocked oil tankers from transiting the Strait of Hormuz. Trump was left with two of his goals — higher tariffs and zeroing out Iran’s nukes — seeming to produce politically disastrous high inflation.
So Trump decided not to follow the path of James K. Polk. Amid occasional military attacks, he sought a “deal” with a regime that has paraded its hatred of America for 47 years and has made dozens of promises it has no intention of keeping.
In its latest iteration, the administration has been sluggish in revealing the details. The U.S. will be suspending military action and allowing Iran to freely sell oil, effectively paying the regime billions. In return, Iran promises to negotiate about its nuclear program and to allow tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, if they pay tolls.
Not much better, you might say, than the “deal” Barack Obama negotiated with Iran in 2015, which Trump criticized bitterly then but doesn’t mention so much now. Vice President JD Vance says that Iranian leaders have decided they shouldn’t oppose “the Great Satan” as they have for 47 years, though that would be less incredible (though not very credible) coming from the Iranians themselves.
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Perhaps Trump believes he can intimidate Iran’s evil leaders not to do things he doesn’t want, the way he has apparently intimidated Venezuela’s not-so-savory leaders. But it’s not clear that such intimidation is working optimally in the geographically closer, culturally more similar Caribbean, and, inevitably, heading into the second half of his last term, Trump’s ire is a waning asset. Neither his vice president nor any possible Democratic successor is likely to share it.
“If you set out to take Vienna, take Vienna,” Napoleon is supposed to have said. Setting out to take Tehran may or may not have been a mistake. Setting out to take Tehran and then not taking it almost clearly is.