So This Might Be What ‘Tired of All the Winning’ Feels Like

By Jim Geraghty

Wednesday, July 16, 2025

 

The Institute for Science and International Security completed a study of the 19 Iranian nuclear scientists killed by Israeli operations in June. The organization concluded, “The elimination of these nuclear scientists deprived Iran’s nuclear weapons program of its most capable and experienced personnel. This act weakened Iran’s base for building nuclear weapons, eliminating needed expertise and hard-to-get management experience.” They also note, “Israel threatened a far larger group of scientists during the war via social media, an effort that may continue, warning them explicitly that death awaits them if they work on nuclear weapons. They reached out throughout Iran offering rewards and safety to informants who provide information about secret nuclear activities.”

 

(Let us pause to note that the Institute for Science and International Security might want to consider changing its name to form another acronym, and can stop telling people who call their offices, “No, no, ma’am, we’re the other ISIS, not the one you’re thinking of, we’ve never—hello?” )

 

Earlier this month, chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said, “All of the conversations that we’ve had since Operation Midnight Hammer with our allies all around the world, but certainly also in the region, they say a couple of things. They share our sentiments about the degradation of Iran’s nuclear program and the fact that we have degraded their program by one to two years . . . it’s not just enriched uranium or centrifuges or things like that. We destroyed the components that they would need to build a bomb.”

 

The Iranian nuclear sites were bombed 24 days ago. Despite high-profile figures making predictions of near-apocalyptic consequences of that action, the Iranian retaliation, so far, consisted of a missile strike on a geodesic dome used for communications at the Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar. Parnell said the Iranian response “did minimal damage to equipment and structures on the base.”

 

(If you think you’re having a tough day, imagine being a salesman for the air-defense systems purchased by the Iranian regime. Israel dismantled Iran’s air defenses within 48 hours. Zohar Palti, former head of intelligence for the Mossad, told Sky News, “This is shocking in a way. This is amazing. We thought that it would be much harder. It was much more fast than we anticipated.” Despite claims from the Iranian government, there are no confirmed shootdowns of Israeli or U.S. planes.)

 

This morning, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany agreed to restore tough U.N. sanctions on Iran by the end of August if there has been no concrete progress toward a new nuclear deal.

 

Today, Benjamin Baird, the director of MEF Action at the Middle East Forum, writes at National Review, “Congress has already introduced much of the legislation needed to bring the ayatollah to his knees, and committee chairmen need only hold markup hearings to advance these bills and send them to the House and Senate floors.” This legislation would enact crushing sanctions on key parts of the Iranian economy, place an economic stranglehold on Iran’s remaining proxies, rescind Biden-era loopholes, and undermine the Iranian regime’s ability to censor information.

 

The year 2025 has been a terrible one for the Iranian mullahs, and we’re not even in August yet.

 

Our Noah Rothman wrote a little while ago that in foreign policy, “Victories beget more victories.” When the U.S. appears strong, capable, resolute, and innovative, our allies want to do more, and our enemies start wondering whether they really can live with the risks of brinksmanship.

 

You’re never going to see a lot of open criticism of Vladimir Putin in Russian circles, but today in the Washington Post, those who track Russia carefully are noticing murmurs of frustration that the Russian dictator botched a golden opportunity to end the war on relatively favorable terms:

 

Trump’s new weapons deal and his increasing criticism of Putin’s grinding military campaign have sparked uneasiness among some factions of the Russian elite over the deepening conflict and fears that Putin may have overplayed his hand.

 

“The number of those who are upset with Putin for the fact that he could have stopped the war but didn’t do it is growing,” [Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow with the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center] said. “It is not a question of whether such a deal was ever genuinely possible, but rather a matter of prevailing sentiment — a belief that there was a moment of opportunity, unilaterally squandered due to Putin’s obstinacy and irrationality. . . .”

 

With no deal now in sight, concern has been growing among members of Russia’s financial elite about the deterioration of a Russian economy racked by inflation due to the existing sanctions regime and Putin’s wartime spending spree. Central Bank efforts to rein in price growth by imposing sky-high interest rates at over 20 percent have pitched the country toward a credit crisis and recession.

 

. . . [O]pinion polls published last week by Russia’s Levada Center show that 64 percent of Russians support peace talks over continuing the war, a record high for the second month in a row.

 

You know what’s kind of amazing? The independent, foreign-funded Levada Center calls up Russian citizens, asks them how they feel about the war, and people feel comfortable telling a stranger that they prefer peace talks to continuing the war.

 

Russia allegedly invaded Ukraine not out of pure lust for power and dominance, but because Putin allegedly felt threatened by NATO. Well, here we are, about three-and-a-half years later, and NATO is larger, stronger, shares more borders with Russia, and everybody involved except Spain is finally agreeing to spend 5 percent of GDP on defense. Oh, and as our James Lynch reports, “Across every branch of the U.S. armed forces, military recruitment has significantly increased since President Trump took office . . . the Army hitting its goal four months early and the Navy doing so three months early. The Air Force and Space Force have both achieved their recruiting goals three months ahead of schedule.”

 

Speaking of foreign economies, the official numbers from the Chinese government tell us they’re easily withstanding the trade war and tariffs. But Reuters reports that once you look closer, the Chinese economy is showing signs of strain:

 

Contract and bill payment delays are rising, including among export champions like the autos and electronics industries and at utilities, whose owners, indebted local governments, have to run a tight shop while shoring up tariff-hit factories.

 

Ferocious competition for a slice of external demand, hit by global trade tensions, is crimping industrial profits, fueling factory-gate deflation even as export volumes climb. Workers bear the brunt of companies cutting costs.

 

Falling profits and wages shrank tax revenues, pressuring state employers like Zhang’s to cut costs as well. In pockets of the financial system, non-performing loans are surging as authorities push banks to lend more.

 

The New York Times warns that China’s “local governments are swimming in debt after decades of building airports, train stations and bridges.” (And if you’ve been reading our Thérèse Shaheen, you know that modern China is beset by four walls closing in on them — environmental degradation, runaway debt, the inherent flaws of a centrally planned economy, and demographics of an aging and declining population.)

 

Closer to home, the U.S. unemployment rate is 4.1 percent, low by historical standards. The U.S. has 7.8 million job openings. Inflation ticked up a bit last month, to 2.7 percent, which is not great (and a likely consequence of the tariffs), but it’s still down from the 3 percent number in January. The stock market has won back all of its big losses from the spring, and the NASDAQ closed at another all-time high yesterday.

 

Our Audrey Fahlberg reports, “The White House agreed on Tuesday to advance a rescissions package that will exempt the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the global HIV/AIDS funding program created by George W. Bush in 2003, from the legislation’s targeted spending cuts.” Our Kathryn Jean Lopez called for precisely this move back in April; she wrote then, “By all means, get rid of real waste, fraud, and abuse, as they say. But the U.S.’s role in preventing and treating AIDS in Africa saves lives and has changed culture.” The woman once known around these parts as “K-Lo” is always standing up and speaking up for the most vulnerable, who often can’t speak up for themselves.

 

PEPFAR is staying, while Planned Parenthood is losing a big chunk of its funding. Our John Gerardi has the details: “To lose out on approximately $700 million, even for one year, will be devastating to an organization that is already struggling and nearly impossible to make up via increased donations or increased state funding. Even if they do find more revenue from such sources, Planned Parenthood will face such an enormous one-year loss that it will have to downsize: in some cases, massively.”

 

Elsewhere in the Trump administration, Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin just put out a big report on contrails, or so-called “chemtrails,” dispelling the conspiracy theories. That’s . . . responsible and mature governance!

 

(Robert F. Kennedy reposted the Zeldin announcement on X and added, “I’m so proud of my friend Lee Zeldin and President Donald Trump for their commitment to finally shatter the Deep State Omerta regarding the diabolical mass poisoning of our people, our communities, our waterways and farms, and our purple mountains, majesty.” It is entirely possible that Kennedy never bothered to look at the EPA report. Then again, there’s good reason to believe Kennedy never bothers to look at his own department’s reports, either. Okay, enough cynicism, this morning is supposed to be about optimism!)

 

“Trump betrays his conspiracy-addled base,” writes progressive MSNBC contributor Paul Waldman. Dude, why are you complaining? This is what you wanted to see!

 

Our man Lynch also notes that in the coming years, America’s best-endowed universities are going to be paying way, way more in federal taxes:

 

The new tax on large university endowments, passed as part of the GOP’s “big, beautiful bill,” is set to cost billions of dollars for the wealthiest U.S. universities.

 

An analysis from the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute found that over the next five years, Harvard University, Yale University, Princeton University, Stanford University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will be on the hook for more than $1 billion apiece.

 

Harvard will have to pay $2 billion, the most of any university, between 2026 and 2030. Yale will be taxed at $1.5 billion, and Princeton will pay $1.2 billion, rounding out the top three. Stanford is going to face $1.1 billion in taxes, and MIT will pay $1 billion.

 

To sum up, the Iranian nuclear program is now smoldering rubble; Europe’s ready to enact tough sanctions on Tehran again; the Russian economy is creaking with strain; NATO’s stronger than ever; the Chinese are holding their export-focused economy together with duct tape; unemployment’s low; inflation’s still mostly okay for now, the stock market is roaring; the tax cuts are preserved; PEPFAR is preserved; Planned Parenthood is so financially squeezed the organization might go under; and the wealthy, snooty, and overwhelmingly left-wing universities finally get to pay those higher taxes they’ve been calling for all these years.

 

All in all, things are going pretty good right now, huh? It took a while to get here, but this might be what “tired of all the winning” feels like.

 

I mention all this easily overlooked good news because it’s particularly easy to get sucked into doomscrolling. Negative news is more likely to go viral than positive news.

 

And there is genuine bad news out there. You’ll read about that in past and future editions; for example, one story that doesn’t get nearly enough attention is that in the six months since the devastating wildfires, Los Angeles County has issued 106 building permits . . . with an estimated 12,000 damaged or destroyed buildings.

 

Oh, and once again, please give what you can.

 

ADDENDUM: I keep getting told that since I started writing columns for that other publication in Washington, I’ve “gone soft” or shifted to the left. These people A) forget how much I used to irk them before I started writing for the Post and B) apparently never read what I write for the Post, because I’m constantly telling left-of-center Post readers things they don’t want to hear (and if you doubt me, read the comments section). Today’s offering is about Joe Biden’s pardon spree and the use of the autopen — and how the evidence indicates that the former president had minimal or no familiarity with the cases involving the people he rewarded with pardons or whose sentences he commuted.