SAN DIEGO — President Donald Trump didn't want to be compared to one failed president, and so he wound up following in the footsteps of another. That makes Trump the biggest failure of all.

Two months ago, concerned about "economic catastrophe" here at home because of his bungled war with Iran, President Trump said that he didn't want to go down in history as a modern-day Herbert Hoover. The 31st president — who Trump said was "always the one I didn't want to be" — is often blamed for the Great Depression.

Now that Iran is dictating outrageous terms to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and stalling to get past the U.S. midterm elections on Nov. 3, Trump resembles Jimmy Carter. The 39th president lost his 1980 re-election bid in large part because he was at the mercy of a group of Iranian militants who held 52 U.S. hostages in Tehran.

Today, Iranian officials have a new hostage: Trump. They know him better than he knows himself. They can predict his every move. And they know how much the war is costing him.

The Iranians have studied the American people for five decades, and they pay close attention to U.S. public opinion.

According to a recent poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, about two-thirds of Americans don't think the war was worth fighting. That includes about 37% of Republicans. Only 28% of U.S. adults overall approve of how Trump is handling Iran. And only about 20% want to continue the conflict.

Now the Iranians are tightening the screws. They're cutting a separate deal with Oman to open and manage a portion of the Strait of Hormuz. Certain countries would have to pay a toll to use the waterway, but the United States and Israel couldn't use it at all — unless they first compensated Iran for the damage caused by the war.

This story is tragic but also poetic. Live by the deal, die by the deal. What if Americans elected a president who marketed himself as a master negotiator? Then, one day, along came the Iranians and, by comparison, the supposed master turned out to be a mere apprentice.

Even Trump has conceded that Iran is great at haggling. "They're very good negotiators, they're crafty," he said on Fox News in May.

Trump lost this war. Defeat came not on the battlefield but in the boardroom. The U.S. military performed brilliantly. U.S. negotiators — including U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner — not so much.

A share of the blame also goes to Vice President JD Vance, who went to Switzerland in June for high-level negotiations with Iranian officials and lost his shirt in the process.

By demanding that Iran re-open the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. negotiators implicitly conceded that Iran owns and operates an international waterway over which it has no claim. The Strait belongs to the world. The Trump administration is supposed to know that.

After that basic miscalculation, the Iranians must have realized that Team Trump was composed of amateurs and opportunists.

In any case, once the Trump administration gave Iranians control of the Strait, Operation Epic Fury was cursed. One thing after another has gone wrong for Calamity Don.

That includes efforts to tamper with the water supply in more than a dozen states by hackers who appear to be affiliated with Iran. We can expect the number of targets and states affected to increase.

Meanwhile, Israel and the United States seem to be headed for a divorce — or at least, a trial separation. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has figured out that Trump is not a dependable ally because Trump is only loyal to Trump.

At this point, the allies who started this war in lockstep are currently not on the same page. They're not even in the same book. And every time Trump makes a mistake, it puts Israel at greater risk.

In a bizarre twist, Trump now claims that, in fact, it is the United States that controls the Strait of Hormuz because so many U.S. Navy warships are anchored in the Persian Gulf. He also made a reparations demand of his own, calling upon Iran to compensate the United States for a series of terrorist attacks over the last 47 years.

That's how Trump rolls. If he doesn't like the reality he is facing, he'll create his own — and expect the rest of the world to go along with the charade.

To find out more about Ruben Navarrette and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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