For anyone who believed Donald Trump's promise to be a "peace" president, his regime becomes more confusing every day.

Having started a war with Iran for no intelligible reason, Trump now alternates between threatening to bomb them back to the Stone Age and overseeing a ceasefire in which the firing hasn't actually ceased. Yesterday, US forces launched what the Pentagon called “self-defense strikes” after Iran fired missiles and drones against the destroyers USS Truxton, USS Rafael Peralta, and USS Mason, as well as attacking with small boats.

Trump insists the ceasefire is still in place and that negotiations toward a peaceful resolution continue. Meanwhile to avoid the Constitutional requirement for Congressional authorization, he has called the war an "excursion," a "military operation," a "conflict," and most recently a "skirmish."

But having issued repeated orders to strike boats allegedly carrying narcotics in the Caribbean and the Pacific, which most of the world regards as a violation of international law, Trump and his Pentagon stooge Pete Hegseth claim that we're "at war" with the supposed narco traffickers on those vessels. According to their twisted logic, those accused smugglers are combatants, and thus not entitled to arrest and trial instead of summary execution.

In the real world -- which bears little resemblance to the Trump fantasy universe -- we have been at war with Iran for months and while the outcome remains to be seen, this misadventure isn't going well by any sane measure despite Trump's constant grandiose prevarications.

He constantly insists that Iran was on the brink of acquiring nuclear weapons before the US started this war, a claim he reiterated this week when he slandered Pope Leo. The mullahs were "two weeks away" from possessing atomic bombs, he wrote on Truth Social, to be deployed immediately against Israel, every other country in the Mideast, Europe and the United States. They were about to blow up the world! Only the most braindead MAGA imbeciles believe such fables. The International Atomic Energy Agency and every other credible authority -- including the US intelligence community's own assessment last year -- have determined that Iran is nowhere near to building even a single bomb, nor has its leadership undertaken any decision to do so.

Both he and Hegseth boast that their current military campaign has "completely destroyed" Iran's military, including its navy, air force, missile and drone production facilities. Yet somehow Iran continues to control the Strait of Hormuz and to hit targets at will, including US navy vessels and the territory of US allies in the Gulf.

Trump has said many times in recent weeks that negotiations to conclude the "skirmish" are on the verge of success, although what success would mean is far from clear. He blusters on and on, assuring Americans that the Iranians are desperate to make a deal while he "holds all the cards."

Yesterday the Washington Post revealed that the CIA does not agree with that optimistic assessment. In a secret report to the White House, the agency found that Iran can endure the US blockade of the Strait of Hormuz for several months before encountering any serious economic trouble. As one US official told the Post, the Iranian leadership -- the same leadership that Trump says no longer exists -- has become "increasingly confident" that they can outlast the Trump administration in a contest of wills.

There is a reason that almost every word out of Trump's mouth is a lie. Neither he nor we can tolerate the reality of the world deformed by his incompetence and narcissism.

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism (St. Martin's Press, 2024). The paperback version, with a new Afterword, is now available wherever books are sold.