U.S. President Donald Trump looks on, as he departs from the White House, en route to Joint Base Andrews (JBA), in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 11, 2026. REUTERS/Annabelle Gordon
Columnist Maureen Dowd has a message for Donald Trump: You went hunting for a quick win in Iran and ended up the prey.
In a blistering Saturday column for the New York Times, the veteran columnist compared Trump's Iran adventure to the classic O. Henry short story "The Ransom of Red Chief," in which two bumbling kidnappers are so tormented by their captive that they end up paying to give him back.
"President Trump went along with Bibi Netanyahu’s Panglossian case for slamming Iran," Dowd wrote, invoking the O. Henry story's opening line: "It looked like a good thing: but wait till I tell you."
Nearly two months into the conflict, Dowd argued, Trump's Iran claims keep falling apart under scrutiny. The Strait of Hormuz, which Trump has insisted is open, remained closed, and negotiations have been touch-and-go. Iran has not handed over its enriched uranium, and the new Iranian regime, Dowd noted, is run by "hardened, fanatical generals" — harder to deal with than ever.
The columnist landed several devastating blows, revealing that, according to the Wall Street Journal, Trump screamed at aides for hours after an F-15 was shot down and two airmen went missing over Iran, and privately fretted about becoming another Jimmy Carter. She cited a forthcoming book by journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan reporting that Trump brushed aside military warnings that war with Iran would deplete weapons stockpiles — and notes that the US has now burned through approximately 1,100 long-range stealth cruise missiles built for a potential war with China, close to the total number remaining in the stockpile.
According to Dowd, Trump's own staff is resigned to a midterm electoral disaster brought on by higher gas prices and a lack of focus on the economy. Meanwhile, Republican unity on the war is fracturing as the 60-day War Powers deadline approaches.
Dowd mocked Trump's Truth Social bravado, writing, "The president with the attention span of a gnat posted that 'I have all the Time in the World, but Iran doesn't'" — before delivering her devastating verdict: "But he is the one who has lost control of the timeline, and himself."
While the Iran crisis festers, Dowd noted, Trump has increasingly retreated into a more comfortable obsession: his White House ballroom renovation project, which, according to a Washington Post analysis, he has invoked on roughly a third of all days this year.
"It's a pleasant mental escape," Dowd wrote, "now that he has tied himself into a Gordian knot with Iran."