The ‘Peace President’ at War: Two Dead in Jordan, a Torn Treaty, and a Presidency Coming Apart

July 19, 2026

The ‘Peace President’ at War: Two Dead in Jordan, a Torn Treaty, and a Presidency Coming Apart

One month after signing his own Memorandum of Understanding with Tehran, Donald Trump has torn it up, ordered a seventh consecutive night of strikes on Iranian bridges and power plants, and put American service members back in body bags. This is not statecraft. It is a temperamental collapse with a nuclear launch code attached — and the Constitution provides a remedy.

The message from U.S. Central Command arrived on a Saturday afternoon, in the flat cadence the military reserves for the worst news. Two American service members had been killed in action in Jordan on Friday, July 17. Four more had been medically evacuated to Jordanian hospitals. One more remained missing in action, presumed lost as Iranian ballistic missiles and drones rained down on U.S. and partner forces defending the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base. It is the first time the U.S. military has confirmed American deaths in the Iran war since March, and it brings the total American dead in this conflict to sixteen, with more than four hundred wounded, according to reporting from NewsNation.

The names of the fallen have not yet been released. Their families are being notified. And in the meantime, the man who campaigned as a “peace president” — who signed the Islamabad Memorandum on June 17 in the gilded halls of Versailles, over dinner with Emmanuel Macron, telling reporters simply, “It’s signed” — is presiding over the seventh consecutive night of American airstrikes on Iranian bridges, energy facilities, port infrastructure, and railway junctions. Iranian officials say water has been cut to villages in the country’s south. At least seven civilians were killed in the strikes of July 17 alone. Trump, meanwhile, has called the Iranian regime “sick people” and declared his own signed agreement “over.”

This is what unraveling looks like. Not a policy pivot. Not a strategic recalibration. An erratic, personal, escalating unraveling — visible to allies, visible to adversaries, visible to the American troops paying for it with their lives.

I. The Peace President Buries His Own Deal

On June 17, 2026, Donald Trump signed the fourteen-point Memorandum of Understanding brokered by Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt. The document called for the “immediate and permanent termination of military operations,” the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, sanctions relief for Iranian oil exports, and a sixty-day window to negotiate a comprehensive final agreement, according to the text obtained by NPR. Macron, standing beside Trump, called it a “lasting peace.” The administration paraded the signing as the defining foreign-policy achievement of Trump’s second term.

Three weeks later, it was rubble. On July 8, after a confrontation over commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, Trump declared the memorandum “over” and resumed strikes on Iranian territory. Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi told state television this weekend that Washington had “violated its commitments under the deal” and that Tehran was “no longer implementing them.” Iran subsequently reclosed the Strait of Hormuz — the very artery the MoU had reopened — and began striking U.S. bases across Qatar, Kuwait, and Bahrain. A Kuwaiti power and desalination plant was hit. Then came Jordan.

Every one of these consequences was foreseeable the moment Trump abandoned the deal he had negotiated. This is the second time in seven years he has publicly torn up an agreement he himself signed onto or inherited — first the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, now his own MoU. The pattern is not diplomacy. It is temperament dressed up as policy.

“Trump’s war in Iran is creating perpetual global chaos.”

— Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), Ranking Member, House Armed Services Committee

II. The Bridges of Bandar Abbas: War Crimes in Plain Sight

The targets tell their own story. Over the past week, U.S. strikes have hit the Kahurestan Bridge, the Gariyeh Bridge on the Bandar Abbas-Khamir-Lar route, two bridges on the Kahurestan-Lar road, a bridge near Latidan village, and a maritime control tower, per Al Jazeera’s field reporting. American munitions have damaged a railway station and residential neighborhoods in the city of Bandar Khamir. Water facilities have been struck. Food silos. Two civilian airports. Iranian officials report at least seven dead and twenty wounded in these strikes.

None of this is incidental. It is policy. On Easter Sunday in April, Trump posted on Truth Social a threat to attack “Bridges next, then Electric Power Plants,” declaring Iran’s leadership “knows what has to be done, and has to be done, FAST!” He also promised to “bring them back to the Stone Ages, where they belong.” Iran responded by calling on its youth to form human chains around power plants. Days later, the U.S. struck the Karaj B1 bridge in a double-tap strike that killed eight civilians — families gathered below to celebrate the Sizdah Be-dar festival — and wounded ninety-five more.

As NPR reported this week, legal scholars have warned that attacks on infrastructure with wide civilian use can, in some circumstances, constitute war crimes under international law. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has explicitly accused Washington of committing them. The Geneva Conventions’ Additional Protocol I prohibits attacks on “objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population” — drinking water installations, food supplies, and, in most reasonable readings, the bridges and rail lines that carry them.

And it is precisely at this moment — with American munitions falling on civilian infrastructure — that the Trump State Department, led by Marco Rubio, has announced a “whole-of-government response to systematically disable the ICC’s ability to operate, target American servicemen or officials, or otherwise threaten American sovereignty.” The timing is not subtle. The administration is dismantling the one international body with jurisdiction to weigh in on what it is doing to Iranian civilians. That is not a defense of American sovereignty. It is a confession.

Sixteen American Dead

Total U.S. service members killed in the Iran war since it began Feb. 28, 2026, with more than 430 wounded, per CENTCOM figures reported by NewsNation.

Strategic Reserve

319.5M

Barrels remaining in the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve as of July 3, 2026 — the lowest level since the Reagan administration in 1983.

MoU Lifespan

21 days

Time between Trump signing the Islamabad Memorandum at Versailles (June 17) and declaring it “over” (July 8), after which strikes on Iranian territory resumed.

ICC Under Siege

11+

ICC officials sanctioned by the Trump administration as of May 2026, before the State Department’s July 13 announcement of a full campaign to “dismantle” the court.

III. Empty Barrels, Empty Reserves, Empty Promises

The economic reckoning is arriving in slow motion, and the tools to soften it are gone. Since the Iran war began, the administration has drained more than 66 million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, dropping it to 319.5 million barrels — its lowest level since July 1983. Global commercial inventories have collapsed alongside it. The Cushing, Oklahoma storage hub, the largest commercial oil facility in the country, sits at what analysts at Commodity Context call an “operational stress” level of just 20 million barrels.

The International Energy Agency estimates that restoring depleted stocks will require an additional 1 million barrels per day of supply for three years, running through 2029. That is not a crisis you refill in a hurricane season. It is a strategic buffer that has been detonated. Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican, called the deal Trump signed “the worst foreign policy blunder in decades” and noted that “families have paid billions at the pump.” That was when Trump had at least signed a peace deal. Now he has torn it up.

The math of a renewed shock is punishing. Bank of America analysts have warned that sustained oil prices above $100 a barrel would cut more than 60 basis points off U.S. GDP growth. Macquarie warned that a prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz could push crude to $150. Brent futures surged more than 3 percent on the day Trump killed the MoU. And the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) — the shock absorber that would ordinarily blunt the impact for American families at the pump — is a hollow tank. The president who inherited low gas prices as one of his few economic bright spots is on track to hand them off as one of the worst energy crises in a generation, all in service of a war he ended, then restarted, then tore up his own peace deal to expand.

“Whatever pops into his head, he says immediately. He picks one plan one day, then he picks the total opposite the next. He doesn’t think it through, he doesn’t check the facts.”

— Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), on the Senate floor, describing the president’s conduct of the Iran war

IV. The Ground War Nobody Voted For

The question that used to be theoretical is now operational. In March, The Washington Post reported that the Pentagon was preparing for limited ground operations in Iran, including raids on Kharg Island and sites near the Strait of Hormuz. Rep. Nancy Mace, a South Carolina Republican, warned publicly: “If we’re going to do a conventional ground operation with Marines and 82nd Airborne, that is a ground war that I believe Congress should have a say and we should be briefed.” In June, The New Republic reported that the administration had come “incredibly close” to putting boots on the ground to seize enriched uranium, restrained only by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff opposition.

CNN’s field analysis of the current strike campaign, drawing on Iran analyst Hamidreza Azizi, is stark: the pattern of American strikes on bridges, railway junctions, and coastal power lines “could be preparation for a potential deployment of ground forces,” aimed at disrupting Iranian military logistics and mobility in the south. That is what the current infrastructure campaign looks like if you know what to look for. It is not, in the ordinary sense, a strategic bombing campaign. It is battlefield preparation.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said earlier this year that he feared “now more than ever” that the administration was planning to put troops on the ground in Iran. The administration has never sought and would almost certainly not receive an authorization for the use of military force from Congress. It does not plan to. It plans to present the country with a fait accompli, exactly as it has done with the strikes on Iranian civilians, exactly as it has done with the destruction of the MoU, exactly as it has done with the dismantlement of the ICC.

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V. A Chronology of the Unraveling

February 28, 2026

The U.S.-Israel war on Iran begins with joint strikes on Iranian nuclear and military sites. Iran retaliates and closes the Strait of Hormuz.

April 2, 2026

Karaj B1 bridge strike. U.S. munitions hit one of the largest bridges in the Middle East during the Sizdah Be-dar festival. Eight civilians killed, ninety-five wounded. A follow-up “double-tap” strike hits first responders.

April 6–9, 2026

Trump vows to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages” and threatens that “a whole civilization will die tonight.” More than 70 House Democrats, joined by Sen. Chris Murphy, Sen. Andy Kim, and figures across the ideological spectrum, call for invocation of the 25th Amendment.

June 17, 2026

Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian sign the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding at Versailles. The 14-point deal commits to “immediate and permanent termination of military operations.”

July 8, 2026

Trump declares the MoU “over,” calls the Iranian leadership “sick people,” and resumes strikes on Iranian territory. Oil prices surge 3+ percent.

July 13, 2026

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announces a “whole-of-government” effort to dismantle the International Criminal Court — the sole international body with jurisdiction over war crimes committed by non-signatories.

July 11–17, 2026

Seven consecutive nights of U.S. strikes hit Iranian bridges, port infrastructure, railway stations, water facilities, and airports. Iran calls the strikes war crimes.

July 17, 2026

Two U.S. service members are killed in action at the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan. One is missing. Four are medically evacuated. American military dead in the Iran war reach 16.

Constitutional Analysis · 25th Amendment, Section 4

The 25th Amendment and the Meaning of ‘Unable’

Section 4 of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment provides that whenever the Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet transmit to the leaders of Congress a written declaration that the President is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” the Vice President immediately assumes those powers as Acting President.

“Whenever the Vice President and a majority of… the principal officers of the executive departments… transmit… their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.”
— U.S. Constitution, Amendment XXV, Sec. 4

The amendment’s drafters, led by Sen. Birch Bayh in 1965, made a deliberate choice: they defined neither “unable” nor “inability.” The legislative history is explicit on this point. Bayh and his colleagues considered restrictive language — limiting invocation to physical incapacity or coma — and rejected it. They understood that the forms of unfitness a modern presidency might produce could not be catalogued in advance, and that trying to do so would give a genuinely dangerous president a technical escape hatch. The word “unable” was left open on purpose. It reaches physical incapacity, yes. It also reaches mental incapacity, erratic conduct that endangers national security, and the kind of temperamental collapse that leads a president to sign a peace treaty one month and tear it up the next while American troops die abroad.

The calls to invoke it are already on the record. In April, more than 70 congressional Democrats publicly demanded the 25th Amendment be invoked after Trump’s threats to eliminate “a whole civilization.” Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, Sen. Andy Kim of New Jersey, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and Rep. Jamie Raskin — the constitutional lawyer who literally wrote a book on presidential succession — have all made the argument publicly. Raskin convened a House Democratic Caucus briefing on the amendment’s mechanics. Even figures on the right — Marjorie Taylor Greene, Anthony Scaramucci — joined the chorus at the peak of Trump’s April threats.

The honest assessment of the barriers is this: Section 4 requires the Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet. Vice President JD Vance has been an accelerant of, not a check on, the president’s conduct. The Cabinet was assembled precisely for loyalty. Congress, controlled by a Republican majority that has abandoned its Article I war-making authority to the executive, is not going to force the issue on its own. The path from constitutional text to actual removal is, in practice, closed.

But the barriers do not negate the case. They intensify it. The reason the case is worth making publicly, and repeatedly, is that constitutional norms are built by repetition. Every day this presidency continues to conduct a shape-shifting war — ordering strikes on civilian bridges, tearing up its own signed treaty, dismantling the ICC to preempt accountability, driving the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to a 43-year low, and now returning American service members in flag-draped caskets — is a day that establishes the historical record. The founders left “inability” undefined because they trusted future generations to recognize unfitness when they saw it. We are seeing it. The record is being written. And the historical judgment on those who saw and refused to act will be as harsh as the judgment on those who acted.

Editorial Conclusion

Two American service members are dead in Jordan tonight because Donald Trump signed a peace treaty in June and tore it up in July, because he decided that bombing bridges over Iranian children was worth restarting a war he had claimed to end, because his cabinet is now trying to abolish the international body that would judge him for it, and because the Strategic Petroleum Reserve he has drained to a 43-year low can no longer cushion the blow.

The founders did not define “inability” because they trusted reasonable people to recognize it. It is not a hard case. It is a plain one. The Twenty-Fifth Amendment exists for a president who cannot be trusted with the powers of the office. We have one. What remains is not a question of constitutional interpretation. It is a question of whether anyone with a vote will find the courage to act on it.