U.S. President Donald Trump at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, U.S., March 29, 2026. REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
Veteran conservative columnist Mona Charen has first-hand experience with hawkish presidential administrations. During the 1980s — after her time as an editorial assistant at the National Review — she worked in the Reagan White House, where she was a speechwriter for First Lady Nancy Reagan and also worked in the Communications Office.
Charen, now 69, often made peace-through-strength arguments over the years. But in an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on March 31, the journalist/author offers a scathing critique of President Donald Trump's Iran war policy.
"I am an Iran hardliner, but I'm struggling to understand how other hardliners can be so credulous about Trump's leadership of this war," Charen argues. "It's as if you were stranded by the side of the road and accepted a ride from an obviously drunk driver…. But here's the problem with the hawks' posture: You cannot separate the war from the people directing it."
The Never Trump conservative stresses that cheerleaders for Trump's attacks on Iran are failing to see "the daily chaos."
"Trump fans believe he always has a plan — that if he threatens, cajoles, or pivots, it's a sign of his unique ability to keep others off balance," Charen writes. "To me, it looks like he's the one who's off balance. How do they account for Trump's pronouncements early in this now-month-long war that it was 'won in the first hour?' Do they recall Trump's proclamation, on March 6, that he would accept only 'unconditional surrender?' Or the invitation to the Iranian people to rise up and take back their country? What about the demand, five days into the conflict, that Trump have a say in choosing Iran's next leader?"
Charen continues, "Perhaps they've forgotten that Trump 'ruled out” Mojtaba Khamenei as the next supreme leader. Did all of that suggest the smooth unfurling of a master plan or clear evidence that he expected a quick and decisive toppling of the regime and was surprised by reality?"
The former Reagan White House official agrees with the "Iran hawks" that the Middle East "would be so much better off without the mullahs in charge" in Tehran but asks, "Where is the evidence that a bombing campaign led by an impulsive narcissist can achieve that goal?"
"Was there a Plan B if the bombing failed to ignite a popular uprising?," Charen argues. "How confident can we really be that Iran will, in the long term, be less dangerous, less hostile to the United States and Israel, less likely to support terrorism, less brutal to its own people thanks to Trump's 'excursion?'…. One can't help but wonder who's going to be left to clean up the mess made by Trump and his enablers."