The World and Everything in It: July 9, 2026

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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning!

The ceasefire with Iran crumbles, as the president’s patience wears thin.

TRUMP: They're vicious, violent people. And if they had a nuclear weapon, they'd use it. As far as I'm concerned, it's over.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: We’ll analyze the latest developments, plus commentary from WORLD’s Cal Thomas.

Also today, South Africans explain why they’re seeking refuge in the U.S. 

And, teenagers pivot in search of a summer paycheck.

Later...

BECKER: It’s just as easy to get into Harvard than it is to become a guide at Gettysburg.

… how a battlefield became a battleground for wannabe tour guides.

BROWN: It’s Thursday, July 9th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. 

I’m Myrna Brown.

REICHARD: And I’m Mary Reichard. Good morning!

BROWN: Up next, Kent Covington with today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: U.S. and Iran carry out new strikes » The U.S. is striking Iran again. American forces reportedly hit more than 80 targets — air defenses, radar sites, and dozens of small boats. It's retaliation for Iranian attacks on three oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz … the waterway that normally carries a fifth of the world's oil.

Aboard Air Force One last night, President Trump promised an overwhelming response:

TRUMP: Every time they hit us, we're gonna hit them twenty. And we did it last night. They did a little something today, but it was really retribution for last night. They hit actually three boats, not two.

Iran responded by firing missiles and drones at Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar.

Kuwait says it shot down two ballistic missiles and 13 drones. Bahrain intercepted several more.

That all came after Trump said he believes last month's ceasefire is “over.” He added that negotiations may continue, though he now feels they may just be a waste of time.

Patriot missile license for Ukraine » Trump returned last night from Turkey where he spent two days at a NATO summit in Ankara.

While there, in a joint news conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Trump said he's giving Zelenskyy something he's been lobbying for: the right to manufacture Patriot air defense missiles.

TRUMP: We're going to give a license to you to make Patriots. That's pretty cool, right? This way he can't complain that we're not giving them enough. I said, “make them yourself.”

Zelenskyy has repeatedly said that Ukraine needs more Patriot missiles, to shoot down the ballistic missiles Russia continues firing into Ukraine.

And Moscow launched another attack on Wednesday.

SOUND: [Kharkiv attack]

Local officials say two people were killed and dozens injured after missiles struck the city of Kharkiv.

Trump, though, remains optimistic about the prospects for peace. He had this to say after Zelenskyy was asked if he'd ever visit Moscow for negotiations.

TRUMP: I don't know that he'd go to Moscow. Maybe he would. Would you go to Moscow?

ZELENSKYY: It's difficult. Lots of Ukrainian drones there. [LAUGHTER] It's dangerous for me. Dangerous.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin has suggested Moscow as a possible meeting location.

Trump-Greenland » Also at the NATO summit, Trump again pushed for the United States to take control of Greenland:

TRUMP: Greenland is very important for the United States, but it's not important for Denmark. We need it for protection of the world.

Greenland is a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark — a NATO ally — and both reject the idea. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen:

FREDERIKSEN: Greenland is of course not for sale. We hope that all, including all allies, will respect the Greenlandic people right for self-determination. And we are a sovereign state, and we need everybody to respect our territorial integrity.

NATO chief Mark Rutte is trying to thread the needle — agreeing the U.S. has a point about keeping China and Russia out of the Arctic. He is pushing for some kind of arrangement that will satisfy Trump while respecting the sovereignty of Greenland and Denmark.

RUTTE: I will make sure that that deal is step by step being implemented.

For now, officials from the U.S., Denmark, and Greenland are meeting to work out next steps.

Beshar on McConnell health » The governor of Kentucky is pressing longtime Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell … to break his silence about his health. WORLD’s Mary Muncy has that story.

MARY MUNCY: Democratic Governor Andy Beshear sent the Republican lawmaker an open letter Wednesday, urging transparency.

The 84-year-old stepped down as GOP Senate leader last year but plans to serve out his term, ending in January.

McConnell was hospitalized June 14th. NBC reports paramedics performed CPR on someone in cardiac arrest at his address that same day.

He hasn't been seen publicly since; aides say only that he's “improving.”

The three-week silence has fueled speculation about his condition — after a string of health scares in recent years.

Governor Beshear wrote that Kentuckians are worried about McConnell's “ability to hold office.”

If McConnell left the Senate, Kentucky's governor could not name a temporary replacement — one of the few states where that's true. The seat would stay vacant until an election can be held.

For WORLD, I'm Mary Muncy.

Democrat Senate candidate to drop out after sexual assault claim » In Maine, a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate says he plans to drop out of the race following sexual assault allegations.

A woman who says she dated him years earlier, claimed Graham Platner drunkenly forced himself on her.

The candidate responded on Wednesday:

PLATNER: The things that have been claimed did not happen. It’s not real.

That from an 11-minute video in which he said the accusation was politically driven.

PLATNER: A corporate media system and the political establishment got to act as judge, jury, and executioner. Accusations are supposed to be the beginning of things, not the end.

He said he’s bowing out, not directly because of the accusation … but because Democratic leaders have cut off resources, ending his ability to run a successful campaign.

Drone strikes on civilians kill at least 20 in Sudan » In Sudan, drones are killing civilians — even families on their way to weddings. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin reports.

KRISTEN FLAVIN: At least 20 people were killed in the latest strikes.

A guided drone struck a vehicle near Omdurman on Tuesday, killing all 10 people aboard — including five women from the same family — as they drove to a wedding. A day earlier, another drone killed 13 more on their way to a wedding in North Kordofan.

Rights groups blame the paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces, and say the attacks were deliberate. The UN now calls drones the leading cause of civilian death in Sudan's war.

That war between the army and the RSF has killed nearly 60,000 people directly. And indirectly, rights groups say hundreds of thousands have died from resulting famine and disease.

For WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

I'm Kent Covington.

Coming up, a South African couple explains why they fled. Plus, teenagers get creative to earn a summer paycheck.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Thursday the 9th of July.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

Up first, the dance with Iran.

During President Trump’s trip to Turkey for the NATO summit yesterday, he said the ceasefire with Iran is essentially over.

TRUMP: If we make a deal with Iran, I’m not sure it will stick. I’ve found them to be very dishonorable people.

BROWN: Earlier in the week, Iran struck three ships in the Strait of Hormuz, prompting the U.S. to launch airstrikes in retaliation and revoke Iran’s waiver to openly sell crude oil.

U.S. Central Command said yesterday 20 warships currently patrol waters near the Middle East.

Is it possible to salvage the deal, or are we back to war?

REICHARD: Joining us now is Janatan Sayeh. He’s a research analyst focused on Iran at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Janatan, good morning.

JANATAN SAYEH: Good morning, great to be with you.

REICHARD: Well, President Trump did not mince words in speaking about Iran, calling them scum, threatening strikes, saying negotiations are just a waste of time. What were you thinking as you heard what he had to say?

SAYEH: Was mostly following what comes after as a retaliation from the United States. We heard strikes go after military installations, but that has unfortunately turned into the new normal. We see this violation of the ceasefire constantly happening, but limited to certain assets in the south of Iran's coast. So, what I'm really looking for is: should we actually expand this retaliation? Would it go after the internal security apparatus? Or perhaps elimination of senior figures that are calling these shots.

REICHARD: Well, Iran has attacked many vessels throughout this whole process, and every time I see media reports saying the attacks are “testing a fragile ceasefire.” So getting kind of tired of seeing that now that with the president's statement, is the ceasefire broken? And if so, who do you think broke it?

SAYEH: Well it's, it's clear that the regime violated it more than once. In the beginning it was maybe through the gray zone using proxies or having enough plausible deniability. But now they overtly attack some of these vessels that are going through the Omani route as opposed to the route that's closer to the Iranian coastline. And they take credit for it and they explain why they went about attacking them. So, the, the violation is very clear on that end.

REICHARD: Mm-hmm. Let's back up just a bit. The U.S. and Iran agreed on the outline of a peace talk process back in June. What benchmarks did both sides achieve before this week?

SAYEH: Well, Tehran's set of commitments were rather tame, if you will. All they had to do was not to attack the Street of Hormuz and not weaponize as the negotiations were ongoing. And in return, they were getting a sanction waiver not only to sell oil, but to repatriate those funds and get the payments directly to their central bank. So they were not even able to uphold the most basic fundamentals that was effectively benefiting them more than us.

REICHARD: Mm-hmm. I want to talk about the days-long state funeral of Ayatollah Ali Khomeini. It wrapped up this week, just five months, maybe, after the Supreme Leader and other top officials were killed in American and Israeli airstrikes. Jonathan, you were originally from Iran. In those images of the state funeral, what have you seen or maybe better not seen that tells you about Iran's leadership and outlook of the people?

SAYEH: It's a recurring pattern with not just funerals, any regime parade. They have people transported and busted in from different parts of the country. When you look at these images, oftentimes they’re AI altered. This time around, actually, and different outlets put out reports, Reuters being one of them, saying it did not look like the crowd surpassed a few thousand. And these again were not locals, they were regime supporters from around the country. Now, comparing that to how dissidents organized without having that much of a political backbone like the regime does, you saw millions pour into the streets, and that should tell you everything you need to know about the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic.

REICHARD: Mm-hmm. Let's move now to another peace deal in the Middle East. Hamas says that it's going to hand over control of Gaza to a UN committee, but it has not agreed to disarm. So Jonathan, is this a genuine step forward or is Hamas stalling while they regroup?

SAYEH: Hamas is watching Tehran's tactic very closely when it comes to stalling. And to be more specific, they said they've dissolved an emergency committee, but at the same time they said they're going to have their technical and professional staff to remain in the position. so and in in effect the group is continuing to rule at gunpoint, but rather quietly.

REICHARD: Mm-hmm. What do we know about the president's Board of Peace? What has it been doing to oversee the next steps in Gaza, and do they have what they need?

SAYEH: Comparing that to let's say the situation regarding Iran, having a coalition in place would not only legitimize any policies in place, but in theory would actually facilitate them to be more effective and maybe more long-lasting. But the challenge continues to be this this armament. It is not just about managing Gaza and reconstruction, is about the future of the terror group itself and the peace plan itself. it it it has enough capabilities, but it's a matter of how deep we want to get when when we're dealing with an enemy like Hamas.

REICHARD: Janatan is there anything else you think people should know about the state of US Iran relations today?

SAYEH: The United States revoking the sanction waiver was a significant step in a sense that this no longer benefits the RGC financially. But the real question is, are we back to the point of the maximum pressure campaign, or is this simply going to be a pause and the retaliatory strikes just being a form of punishment to nudge the regime in the right direction? One thing we've seen with Tehran time and time again, behavior only changes when the regime does.

REICHARD: Jonathan Sayah is a research analyst focused on Iran at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. His work examines Iran's domestic politics, regional influence, and nuclear ambitions as well. Jonathan, thanks so much.

SAYEH: It was a pleasure speaking with you.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It, a safer life.

This spring, President Trump raised the cap on the number of white South African refugees who will be allowed into the country by 10,000–bringing the total to 17,500.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: They’re known as Afrikaners, and they’ve been the only refugees allowed inside the U.S. for nearly 18 months. The White House cites racial discrimination and unfair laws in the country. Critics say the policy is unfair to others in dangerous situations.

But one refugee couple says getting to America has offered them new hope. Recent WJI college graduate Will Hoogendyk brings us the story.

WILL HOOGENDYK: On a warm spring night in northwest Iowa, Daniel and Maria marvel at a basic amenity most Americans take for granted.

DANIEL: The first time I saw one of these little repair stands where you can fix your bike

MARIA: With tools,

DANIEL: With tools

MARIA: With functioning tools, and they're not broken, and they're not stolen, and they're there.

DANIEL: It's, it's crazy. It's that will not be there. (laughter)

Meaning, not in South Africa. We’ve given Daniel and Maria pseudonyms because they fear for the safety of friends and relatives still there. They are white South Africans—Afrikaners—who say they were targeted in a highly dangerous, crime-ridden country where the minority white population faces growing hostility.

For the couple, the safety of middle America is a massive adjustment from a homeland where everyday life required an iron clad defense.

DANIEL: My house, I stayed in, along with her, had six foot palisades on, on the one side, and then I put an eight foot electric fencer, because we moved in, and the first night we moved in, they broke in, they stole all our coat hangers.

Anticipating the worst became a lifestyle. South Africa has a long history of turmoil, much of it has been racial. Apartheid, literally translated ‘separateness’ or ‘aparthood’ describes the period of segregation that lasted about four decades ending in the early 1990s.

DANIEL: Everything still gets blamed on apartheid. The road's falling apart, it's apartheid, not, not the government using the funds to line their own pockets or the officials, now that now it's apartheid's fault

The minority white population had social, economic, and political control.

By 1994, the African National Congress gained power in the first post-apartheid election. They implemented a form of affirmative action called Black Economic Empowerment laws. These escalated the racial tensions.

MARIA: Existing companies had to change company ownership to put this amount of non-whites in leadership positions, management positions. They had to employ an x amount of non-white people.

Maria says the discrimination extended beyond the workplace. When she tried to foster a child …

MARIA: The orphanage that I went to, they were white babies crying, and when I asked if it's like possible to foster any of them, they said yeah, you can foster, but you have to choose one of the black kids. I'm like, ‘why can't I pick one of them?’ It's like, ‘oh no, we don't give white kids to white families, you have to take a black child.’

Starting in 2023, Daniel says he secured three different 9-month work visas to enter the U.S. Each time he returned to his home country, he noticed it declining further. Then the South African government passed a law in 2024 that authorized land seizure from farmers without compensation.

Daniel describes what happened to a large chicken farm near where they used to live after it was taken.

DANIEL: The only stuff that's left is the foundations on where the coops and everything was standing. There's nothing left, no houses, no equipment, no fences. They took everything off.

The law sparked a February 2025 executive order by President Trump allowing white Afrikaners to pursue refugee status in the U.S. Daniel and Maria began their refugee applications.

DANIEL: I'm to a point where I'm willing to just tear up my passport,

The couple has no plans to return to South Africa now, or ever.

DANIEL: I don't want to have any relation to South Africa. We still send money back to South Africa to help family and pay for the stuff that side, but as soon as that's done, I'm cutting all my ties and I'm giving my citizenship back, revoking my citizenship.

MARIA: They can have it.

DANIEL: I don't want to be a citizen of South Africa.

MARIA: I will pay for them to take it back.

Now that they are settled, their attention is split. They want their relatives back home to come to the states.

DANIEL: I know everybody's going to come over. It's only a matter of time.

They also say, they can finally think about starting a family. They’re in their mid thirties but ruled out having kids in South Africa.

MARIA: They would have a life 100 times better than what we had.

DANIEL: The way I see it is, our life started out rough, but it's only going to get better now.

Daniel and Maria are committed to striving for a better life for their children.

MARIA: In Afrikaans, we would say [speaking Afrikaans] “We didn't come here just for the view.”

The couple will be eligible to apply for their green cards later this year…granting them most of the rights of being an American… and marking a milestone in the journey to becoming a naturalized citizen.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Will Hoogendyk in Sioux Center, Iowa.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Up next: The summer slump.

In the 1970s, 60% of American teens had summer jobs. By last year, that number had dropped to just about one-third.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Teenagers around the country say they’re still applying for jobs, but not getting hired. So they’re finding other ways to fill their time, volunteering, studying, and even starting their own businesses.

WORLD’s Lauren Smyth investigates the teen labor market.

LAUREN SMYTH: Sixteen-year-old Trevor Pennington wants to work. He applied for a job at a pizza shop in Jackson, Michigan. But it’s been weeks, and he hasn’t heard back.

PENNINGTON: A lot of people are trying to get jobs at the same time, and it’s just hard to find them.

For Trevor and other Michigan teens, the job market is tough this year. Nearly 20% of kids who want to work say they can’t find a job. That’s far above the overall unemployment rate of 4.2%.

CLARK: There’s just so much more to the story than this clean, simple story of “teens want work, and they can’t find it.”

Michael Clark is an economist at Hillsdale College and the father of two teens. He can think of plenty of reasons why teens might have a hard time finding jobs—minimum wage laws, strict regulations on hiring minors, and a cultural belief among hiring managers that younger generations are lazy. But Clark sees something more.

CLARK: We are wealthier … So the difference there is, they’re looking for a job, so they show up unemployed. But the reality is they’re looking for a job and they’re much pickier.

Teens who can’t find jobs that suit their preferences may choose to spend their summers volunteering, pursuing extracurriculars, or traveling with family. But what about the ones who really want to work?

CLARK: Everything pushes in one area and it has to come out somewhere else, right? And so we’re getting these substitutions all over the place, and some of that is going to be entrepreneurial.

Back to Trevor. Earlier this summer, he got a call from his friend, Fionn McEnany-Vanderwood, who had started a business washing windows and wanted to hire Trevor.

PENNINGTON: Well, I didn’t know I was doing this today. But when I did, I was all in for it, because it just seems like a good thing to do, and something to learn and experience.

Fionn is sixteen. He used to spend his summers working at local businesses.

FIONN: And one thing I noticed is that a lot of people, they show up and they get the work done, and then they go home, and it’s kind of the same thing on a day-to-day basis.

He didn’t like that routine—and he’s not the only one. Junior Achievement USA found nearly 60% of teens said they wanted to start their own businesses. Like Fionn, some wanted the freedom to develop their creative interests. Others wanted a quicker path to financial independence.

Matthew Ganaway is Fionn’s other employee. He has three jobs in total, because:

GANAWAY: I love seeing people make money, I love helping them, and I love making money, which is even more important.

Matthew considers himself employed. But what about Trevor and Fionn?

HERSHBEIN: If you babysit once or twice a week, do you have a job? Are you employed? Some people may say yes, some people may not.

That’s Brad Hershbein, senior economist at Michigan’s Upjohn Institute. He says teen employment rates are typically measured with self-reported survey data. Actual employment rates may be much higher than those surveys suggest.

Among adults, unemployment correlates strongly with a decline in both mental and physical health. Hershbein says that’s usually not true for teens. Still:

HERSHBEIN: When youth are employed, they’re less likely to get in trouble, and we know that there have been studies that demonstrate that is particularly true in terms of criminal activity. It goes down when youth have job opportunities and they learn these skills, and they have companionship too.

Glacial Gleam hasn’t quite caught on yet, but Fionn isn’t discouraged.

FIONN: Never give up, because in the end, learning and getting better at something, it's a roller coaster. You're going to have really high highs, you're going to have really, really low lows. You're going to have to look past those low lows and high highs and determine the future to what best suits you to do.

For many teens like Fionn, interest in entrepreneurship will continue into adulthood. About a quarter of young adults consider themselves entrepreneurs, and another quarter plan to start their own business soon.

For WORLD, I’m Lauren Smyth in Jackson, Michigan.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Thirteen Argentina soccer fans are roaming the streets of Buenos Aires in matching jerseys. Proudly wearing the national blue and white. Some even sporting superstar Lionel Messi’s kit.

And all thirteen on leashes.

Dog walker Nano Meneghini has turned his daily pack into World Cup supporters.

Each leash has three rivets—one for each of Argentina’s World Cup titles. Meneghini says he's hoping to add a fourth in a couple weeks.

The pack has become a local sensation.

And win or lose, Meneghini says the dogs will keep wearing Argentina's jerseys. No shame in running with the pack.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Thursday, July 9th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: testing the limits of battlefield knowledge.

The battle of Gettysburg took place from July 1st-3rd in 1863, and is widely considered the turning point of the Civil War. Today, every detail of it lives on in the history books, and in the stories of more than 100 battlefield tour guides.

REICHARD: But becoming a guide takes months of studying, written exams, and oral quizzing. Most who walk into the exam room will leave disappointed: the test has a nearly 90% failure rate.

WORLD’s Emma Eicher talked to one man who beat the odds.

EMMA EICHER: Two years ago, 66 year-old Jeff Becker decided to take the toughest test in American history.

JEFF BECKER: It's just as easy to get accepted into Harvard and graduate from Harvard in four years than it is to become a guide at Gettysburg.

Becker has been a Civil War buff since he was a kid playing with toy soldiers. In his mid-50s, he started watching history shows, and became fascinated by one specific battle: Gettysburg.

BECKER: I got the bug again. I started reading books, and then I said, well, you know what, I'd love to go out to the battlefield.

Becker lives in Pittsburgh, about a three-and-a-half hour drive from Gettysburg.

He couldn’t get enough. He wanted to know every tiny detail.

BECKER: I started making trips, I don't know what five times a year or so, and I'd hire Gettysburg guides, and after a while of doing that, I said, "Wow, I think I think I want to do this.”

“This” being, taking the test to become a tour guide. The battlefield is 7 times the size of Central Park. Exam-takers have to know military tactics, unit movements, and how the battle affected the trajectory of the war. One Gettysburg website says wannabe tour guides should study anything and everything to prepare.

So that’s what Becker did.

BECKER: I would just plop up my chair, sit there, and read about all the action that occurred in, like, the wheat field or the peach orchard or different locations.

He traveled there constantly.

BECKER: I would start walking around and reading all the monuments. There's a lot of monuments at Gettysburg, probably 13 to 1400 monuments, and you're supposed to know all of them.

Then, exam day.

BECKER: They gave the test on December 7, a date that will live in infamy, that's the same day as Pearl Harbor.

The test has four tiers: The first is a written exam and an essay section.

BECKER: You have three hours of fill in the blank written exam. There's no true/false. There's no fill in or multiple choice. It's all you either know it or you don't know it.

Becker joined 170 people to take the test that day. Only 20 passed on to the second tier: a panel interview with three licensed tour guides.

BECKER: It's like a job interview where they, you know, ask you questions, they give you time to respond and answer it, and usually those last from 30 to 45 minutes.

Tier three is a weekend of hands-on training on the battlefield.

BECKER: They teach you a lot of dos and don'ts about guiding, and they're trying to help you pass the next phase, which is Tier Four, that’s what they call the oral exam.

The oral exam is the only one where you get two chances to pass. The first time, Becker failed. He says one of his errors was turning his back to the testers to point out troop movements on the battlefield. Another: he went 5 minutes over the 2 hour time limit.

BECKER: They give you a critique on things that you know you need to work on to improve, and I focus primarily on fixing every item in that critique, and then I practiced again, trying to perfect my two hour tour.

The second time, he sat alone as the interviewers went to another room to discuss the results of his test.

BECKER: I sat for like 45 minutes, and the longer I sat, the more I felt that I wasn't going to make it, but then they finally called me up, and for about the first 10 minutes it was basically what I need to work on to improve, and then after about 10 minutes the supervisor said, "We're not going to let you on the hook. You made it. Wow.”

Becker says of the 20 who made it past the first stage, 11 became licensed tour guides, including him. Now, Becker splits his time between Pittsburgh and Gettysburg. From April to October, he conducts tours for 10 days at a time, then goes back home for a quick break. His tours range from 2 hours to all day.

You’d think that might get monotonous, but Becker says it never gets old.

BECKER: Just to be able to tell the story of this battle is an honor. So it's exciting. I love it. I love doing it every day, do two or three tours, meet all kinds of different people, from the very old to the very young.

Becker says guiding is a nice retirement gig. And he plans to keep doing these tours for as long as he can. For him, taking the toughest test in American history was worth a job he loves.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Emma Eicher in Pittsburgh.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. As we’ve been reporting today, President Trump used this week’s NATO summit in Turkey to close the book on his Memorandum of Understanding with Iran.

BROWN: WORLD commentator Cal Thomas says the agreement may be finished. The more important question is whether Washington has finally learned why it failed.

CAL THOMAS: President Trump has never lacked confidence in his ability to make a deal. But after his Memorandum of Understanding with Iran fell apart, a reporter asked him directly whether there was anything left to save.

TRUMP: As far as I’m concerned, it’s over… They have to come back to me … As far as I’m concerned, it’s just a waste of time dealing with them. They’re liars.

Readers of my syndicated newspaper column may recall that less than three weeks ago I questioned the MOU and the administration’s insistence that it represented a victory for the United States and world peace.

At the time, Hassan Khomeini, grandson of the founder of the Islamic Republic, was celebrating the agreement as a victory for Tehran and promising the beginning of what he called the “greater jihad.”

The Trump administration told us Iran would get nothing unless it met our conditions.

Iran apparently had other ideas.

Iranian forces again attacked shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. The United States responded with renewed strikes on small boats, radar sites, and facilities used to store drones and missiles.

At a news conference with the president in Turkey, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte described the sequence this way:

RUTTE: And then trying to bring this to a peaceful end, and they attacking ships yesterday, I think what you did last night was absolutely necessary. It was a very strong response, and I’m with you on this.

So much for the MOU.

Last month, Trump called Iran’s leaders “very rational,” “nice,” and “smart.”

At his final news conference in Ankara, a New York Times reporter reminded him of those words and asked what changed.

TRUMP: I got to know ’em. … Based on their actions over the last week or two, they’re not—they’re not doing a service to the people. And I think more than anything else, as I got to know ’em, and I’m not sure I want to make a deal with them. We can play games, but I’m not sure I want to make a deal. Let’s just finish the job.

The rest of us have had 47 years to get to know them. Since the 1979 Iranian revolution … the regime has shown us who they are and what they believe. They chant “Death to America.” They threaten Israel with destruction. They sponsor terrorists and supplied weapons that killed and maimed American troops.

The problem is not that Iran suddenly changed after signing an MOU. The problem is that too many American presidents have believed they might persuade Iran’s rulers to become something they are not.

Barack Obama tried it with his nuclear deal and billions of dollars in sanctions relief. Trump rightly withdrew from that agreement during his first term.

Which makes his recent faith in another agreement all the more puzzling.

When critics questioned the MOU last month, Trump called them “fools.” Without his agreement, he predicted markets might collapse at levels unseen since 1929.

Perhaps we “fools” now deserve an apology.

More important is what happens next.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, traveling with the president, says the administration is prepared to impose more consequences.

HEGSETH: Anything they thought they had rebuilt or capability they were using was a target last night. And tonight, if we need to, on your order, Mr. President, we will hit even more, and even deeper, because that’s the consequence.

Iran’s rulers understand consequences. For nearly half a century, they have tested American presidents to see how much terrorism, hostage-taking and aggression we will tolerate.

Now comes the hard part: convincing Iran’s rulers that America means what its president says. After 47 years, another memorandum won’t do it.

For WORLD, I’m Cal Thomas.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Tomorrow: John Stonestreet will be here for Culture Friday. And, the beloved characters of Little House on the Prairie return in a Netflix adaptation. We’ll have a review. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. 

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio. WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Bible says, “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? But earnestly desire the higher gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.” —1 Corinthians 12:27-31

Go now in grace and peace.

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