So much for a peace treaty. President Donald Trump is back to making threats.

In a phone interview on Sunday with Fox News, Trump threatened to attack Iran and take over the Strait of Hormuz if Tehran interfered with passage through the waterway. He told Fox's Trey Yingst that he warned Iranian officials, "You close (the Strait of Hormuz) and you won't have a country." Trump himself posted on Truth Social, telling Iran to stop Hezbollah militants in Lebanon from "causing trouble. If they don't, we'll hit Iran very hard again, just like we did last week, only harder," he said.

The more we learn, the worse it gets. Iran's lead negotiator, parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, responded in a post that: "We don't count on the threats of the Americans." Why would he? The details of the Memorandum of Understanding signed by Trump spell out a clear victory for Iran — unfreezing billions in assets, lifting sanctions and dismantling naval blockades and trying to convince Israel to back off in Lebanon. And what does Iran do in exchange? Agree to talk about what negotiators have spent years talking about?

The clearest proof, the best evidence, that this war made no sense in the first instance is the deal that Trump was forced to sign to try to end it.

Meanwhile, there is J.D. Vance in Switzerland talking nice, while his boss is making threats. Vance is in an impossible position, which is to say he is the vice president in charge of the unwinnable war. The only issue that seems to matter to anyone at this point is how the deal compares to what Obama got, although you would think the passage of time and technological developments might have rendered that comparison suspect. Nope. The truth is that so far, former President Barack Obama is looking pretty good, which clearly drives Trump crazy. But what can he do?

It seems clear from this deal that the next one he cuts will not be much better. He has no leverage. He can bomb all he wants — without the support of his party and the American people, of course — but that isn't going to bring about a new regime in Iran. This is a determined adversary, and there is no appetite for the kind of ground battle that would be necessary to take them out. Another way of saying that he never should have started this war in the first instance. You don't start wars where there is no public will to do what it takes to win. And in this one, the public knew better than Trump.

Watch Marco Rubio stay out of this picture. Let J.D. have it. How much this war will cost Trump's party, as opposed to Trump's own popularity, remains to be seen. It's hard to see a scenario when Trump actually "wins," although he will spin whatever he gets that way. On Monday, Vance was selling the fact that Iran was willing to agree to inspections of its nuclear stockpiles, one of the tenets of the Obama agreement that Trump so ridiculed and dumped. That agreement will continue to plague Trump, as he tries to better it.

The answer to that dilemma will be Trumpian. On Monday, The Washington Post reported that Trump falsely claimed traffic through the Strait of Hormuz set a record two days earlier. In fact, 20 vessels crossed the waterway Saturday, compared with a prewar daily average of 130. "We have an oil gusher," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday afternoon. Whatever Trump ends up with will, according to Trump, be the best deal ever.

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

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