"The photo of the sweet-faced, 19-year-old Private Isabella Gonzales from Texas, just a year out of high school, who was killed in last Friday’s Iranian strike on a U.S. military base in Jordan, hurt my heart. She died for incompetence. She was sacrificed for Trump’s hubris. She was one of the four slain soldiers whose remains were returned today in the dignified transfer at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

The mere presence of Trump, alas, deprives any sacred occasion of dignity – his theatrical salute, his fake gravitas. On Tuesday, he listed on Truth Social the number of Americans killed in Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam, and Korea, then wrote “Iran Military Conflict: 4 months, 18 DEAD,” an obscene boast as hollow as it is misleading. Iran is continuing to best Trump and Americans know it. His bellicose act is falling flat with an enemy whose long game stretches to the next life. At a rally in Georgia Wednesday, Trump’s latest preposterous spin was “we don’t need the Hormuz Strait.”

If there was one takeaway message from Spain’s World Cup victory, it was the triumph of strategic coherence and assiduous attention to the lessons of experience, both absent from Trump’s chaotic Iran adventure. Today, the president digitally bellowed at Iran that he’ll “take out a bridge or a power plant for every ship attacked in the strait,” the 15th such threat – and 8 blown deadlines – he’s made against Tehran since last year." —Tina Brown