The war that was supposed to last four to six weeks is now six months old, draining U.S. missile stockpiles, spiking gas prices, and quietly destroying Donald Trump's approval numbers with the very voters who put him back in office. Meanwhile, back on the home front, Trump's hand-picked attorney general nominee can't even get out of committee because two Republican senators want something in writing proving the Justice Department won't use federal funds to reward Trump's friends and shield his taxes from auditors. It's a Tuesday in the second Trump administration.
The War That Was Definitely Going to Be Over by Now
Cast your mind back to last year, when both Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu assured anyone who would listen that military action against Iran would be swift, decisive, and done in four to six weeks. It is now late July 2026. The United States is in month six of that conflict. According to NBC News, Trump met with Netanyahu on Tuesday for the first time since the shooting started, during a visit to Washington for the funeral of the late Senator Lindsey Graham, one of Netanyahu's closest American allies.
The agenda at that meeting was bleak in the way only a meeting that should have happened five months ago can be. Three options on the table: negotiate a deal to eliminate Iran's nuclear program, apply sustained economic pressure without a deal, or keep bombing. NBC News reports that a senior Israeli official present said there was broad agreement that Iran cannot be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. Which is exactly the kind of statement that sounds reassuring until you realize they've been saying it for six months and are still discussing what to do about it.
Netanyahu also met separately with Vice President JD Vance, who NBC News notes was initially skeptical of the Iran war, as well as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other Pentagon officials. The meetings were productive in the sense that they occurred. What came out of them, concretely, remains unclear.
Missiles, Money, and a Mountain Nobody Can Blow Up
Here is one of the more quietly terrifying details in NBC News's reporting: the war has depleted the supply of U.S. missiles and interceptors for Patriot air defense systems. The United States went into a conflict it was told would last a month, and six months later the stockpile of weapons needed to defend American assets from Iranian strikes is running low. That is not a metaphor for anything. That is the literal military situation.
There is also the matter of Pickaxe Mountain, a suspected Iranian nuclear site that U.S. intelligence assesses would be impossible to eliminate even with the most devastating American bunker-buster bombs available. NBC News reports the Israeli official present at the briefing would not say whether Netanyahu is urging the U.S. to bomb it. He also wouldn't say Israel disagrees with Trump's assessment that the sites already struck are effectively neutralized. Diplomatic non-answers dressed up as confidence.
Meanwhile, NBC News reports that a second Israeli official said money is still flowing from Iran's regime through Turkey to Hezbollah, which Israel is fighting in southern Lebanon. A ceasefire was officially agreed to in mid-June. Israel hated it because it approved the release of billions in frozen Iranian assets. Those assets were never actually transferred because diplomacy collapsed and the airstrikes started again. So the ceasefire achieved very little except giving everyone a few weeks to reload.
Trump's Political Problem Is the Opposite of Netanyahu's
Both leaders face elections this fall. That is where the similarity ends. NBC News reports that Netanyahu, despite growing domestic opposition, has strong popular support in Israel for resuming attacks against Iran. The Israeli public, for complicated and historically understandable reasons, is behind their prime minister on this one.
Trump's situation is the reverse. The war has contributed to spiking gas and diesel prices, driven inflation, and according to NBC News, is damaging his popularity even with his own base. The MAGA coalition was sold a vision of American strength projecting force briefly and triumphantly. What they got instead was an open-ended military commitment bleeding the defense stockpile dry while they pay more to fill up their trucks. That is a difficult gap to spin closed, even for this White House.
The Israeli official who briefed reporters was gracious enough to call Trump an "amazing ally," but also acknowledged the obvious: the U.S. is the senior partner and Israel the junior. Which means when this war becomes politically untenable for Trump, Israel doesn't get a vote on what happens next.
Meanwhile, Todd Blanche Has a Problem Called John Cornyn
Separate from the war, Trump's nominee for attorney general is in trouble, and the people causing the trouble are Republicans. NBC News reports that the Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing Wednesday to advance Todd Blanche's nomination, but two GOP senators have emerged as potential roadblocks: John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina. Crucially, neither man is facing re-election pressure. Cornyn lost his primary earlier this year to Trump-backed Ken Paxton. Tillis is retiring. These are senators with nothing left to lose.
What they want is simple and damning in what it implies: written commitments from the Justice Department to kill the so-called "anti-weaponization fund" and to restrict the scope of tax audit immunity granted to Trump and his family members. That fund, NBC News explains, was established under a purported settlement between Trump and the executive branch he controls over a lawsuit Trump filed about the disclosure of his tax records. A federal judge in Virginia indefinitely blocked the fund after a former January 6 prosecutor sued. A federal judge in Florida found Trump's IRS lawsuit was brought in "bad faith" for an "improper purpose" and ordered sanctions against multiple people involved, including Blanche himself.
Cornyn was direct about where things stand. "I haven't seen a single piece of writing that is responsive to what I've requested," he told reporters. Tillis was slightly more optimistic, saying DOJ is working on a draft and that his office has been in daily contact with them. Great. The attorney general nominee is being held up partly over his own sanctioned conduct in a case a federal judge called bad faith. Totally normal confirmation process.
What the Anti-Weaponization Fund Actually Is
It is worth slowing down on the anti-weaponization fund because the name alone is doing a lot of work. This is a fund, established through a settlement in a lawsuit Trump personally filed, that could direct money to Trump's political allies. The lawsuit itself was about keeping Trump's tax records private. The settlement that resolved it also gave Trump, his family members, and his companies some protection from IRS audits, according to NBC News.
A federal judge blocked it. Another federal judge called the original lawsuit bad faith brought for an improper purpose and sanctioned the lawyers involved, one of whom is now the president's pick to run the entire Justice Department. The Senate is being asked to confirm that man without any written guarantee that the fund stays dead and that the IRS protection gets narrowed. Two Republican senators are saying no, give us something in writing first. That is not obstruction. That is the minimum.
The Dingo Take
You are supposed to believe this is all going according to plan. The war that would be over in a month is now a six-month drain on missile stockpiles and household budgets. The attorney general nominee sanctioned by a federal judge for bad-faith litigation on behalf of the man who nominated him can't get written assurances to two retiring senators that he won't use the Justice Department as a personal slush fund for the president. And the president is meeting with a foreign leader for the first time since a war started, six months in, to discuss what to do next. This is the plan working.
The Iran situation is the one that should keep people up at night. Not because war with Iran was necessarily avoidable, or because the nuclear question isn't real, but because the United States stumbled into an open-ended military conflict on a timeline set by political bravado rather than strategic reality. "Four to six weeks" was never an assessment. It was a press release. Now the Patriot interceptors are running low, the Strait of Hormuz question remains unanswered, and Pickaxe Mountain sits there being un-bombable while everyone nods carefully in meetings.
Blanche will probably get confirmed eventually. DOJ will probably produce some piece of paper that satisfies Tillis enough to vote yes. The anti-weaponization fund will stay blocked by courts even if the Senate rolls over. But the Iran war has no such easy resolution. Trump needs it over before November for purely domestic political reasons, which is a hell of a way to set military strategy. Netanyahu, who has the domestic political space to fight indefinitely, is the junior partner. That math does not work out well for anyone filling up a gas tank between now and Election Day.
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