The Week: Iran Deal or No Deal? | May 29, 2026

◼ Reports indicate that the U.S. and Iran have reached a tentative deal to trade our blockade of Iran for a reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, with a continuation of the cease-fire for 60 days to allow more time for nuclear negotiations. Aware of discontent among his pro-war supporters, President Donald Trump has said he is in no rush to sign anything. But even in the worst case, Iran is going to end up in a reduced position from October 6, 2023. Its economy was already in crisis before the war. Now, its proxies have been devastated; much of its nuclear infrastructure has been wrecked; and its industrial plants have been hit hard. Whatever sanctions relief or revenue from the strait that it gets will be poured into rebuilding. The regime has to assume it can wait Trump out, hoping that anti-war Democrats win in 2026 and that any presidential successor in 2028 won’t be willing to risk open conflict once again. If the deal is unsatisfactory, it won’t be because the president’s negotiating skills are lacking but because we weren’t able or willing to set the military conditions for successful diplomacy, most importantly by reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

◼ Trump was targeted in another assassination attempt. On May 24, a man approached a security checkpoint outside the White House and opened fire. Secret Service agents returned fire and killed the shooter, and a bystander was also shot. The would-be assassin, 21-year-old Nasire Best, has previously attempted to access the White House and identified himself to Secret Service agents as Jesus Christ. It is frustrating but unsurprising that past attempts on the president’s life have inspired copycats. But this latest incident received such fleeting media coverage over the holiday weekend that there was barely any time for the now-routine calls to lower the temperature of America’s political rhetoric. Those calls will be ignored as long as our political culture and social media algorithms continue to reward the most extreme voices.

◼ It was a bad primary runoff day for conservatives in Texas. Senator John Cornyn was defeated in his Senate primary and Representative Chip Roy lost his bid for state attorney general. Both have faced challenges in navigating the Trump era, and we have had our differences with them. But Cornyn’s defeat is especially depressing because Republicans have instead chosen to nominate Attorney General Ken Paxton, whose career has been defined by financial and sexual scandals, election conspiracy theories, and bad judgment. Paxton puts a safe Senate seat at risk against Democratic nominee James Talarico, and even if elected, he seems unlikely to be an effective or honorable legislator.

◼ Pope Leo XIV telegraphed his intention to write an encyclical about artificial intelligence upon his election. This has made Magnifica Humanitas perhaps the most widely anticipated church document since at least the Second Vatican Council. At 42,000 words, Magnifica Humanitas is an especially lengthy document for the church. It warns against “equating this type of ‘intelligence’ with that of human beings.” But it acknowledges that technology is a glorious part of humanity’s God-given capacity for creation and invention, and it rejects the Luddite view that tech is “antagonistic to humanity.” What gives this document weight and ties it back to Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum is the church’s insistence that no new system or technology can justify reducing human beings, made in God’s image, into mere cogs of a larger machine. Humans are ends in themselves, and their proper end is defined by a God who “casts down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly.”

◼ Trump scrapped a planned executive order that would have established federal oversight of new AI models. Promoted by AI skeptics in the administration, the order would have encouraged developers to submit their models to national-security agencies before public release. Officials would assess capabilities that bad actors could use to inflict devastating cyberattacks on digital infrastructure. The order’s intent was reasonable enough. As AI tools become ever more advanced, their risk to traditional cybersecurity systems grows. Yet Trump is right to be wary of any bureaucratic framework that might hamper AI development. Although the review system would be voluntary, it is designed to slow the introduction of new models. China is imposing no such limitations, and America’s narrow lead in the AI race is measured in months, not years. The threat from rogue AI users is real, but the risk of allowing our chief adversary to pull ahead and define the technology’s frontier is greater. Any effort to regulate AI should be carefully calibrated to protect cutting-edge innovation (and, ideally, be formulated by Congress). With the stakes so high, America cannot afford to get in its own way.

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◼ The misleadingly titled Railway Safety Act, which was introduced in Congress in 2023 and failed to garner enough Republican support to pass, is back from the dead. It shouldn’t be. The original legislation was drafted by then-Senator JD Vance after a Norfolk Southern train tragically derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, spilling chemicals into the town. But none of the bill’s major provisions would have prevented the East Palestine derailment. Railroads have become far safer without bureaucratic guidance: No one has a greater incentive to prevent trains from derailing than the operators themselves. Last year was the industry’s safest on record as measured by accident and injury rates. Much of the improvement has been driven by innovative upgrades and efficiency gains that the Railway Safety Act discourages. Vance is pushing for the Railway Safety Act from the White House. He and his allies in the administration successfully pressured House members on the Transportation Committee to attach it to a routine highway-authorization bill. House leadership should strip the Railway Safety Act from the text before bringing it to a vote. Of all the things Republicans should be doing before the midterms, approving legislation that, at the margins, will raise shipping costs for businesses and consumers isn’t one of them.

◼ The Democratic National Committee finally released its 2024 autopsy report—a document that purports to explain why Kamala Harris lost to Donald Trump in that year’s presidential election. The report itself is unworthy of serious comment. It’s a transparently incomplete piece of work whose analysis is devoid of evidence and technically slipshod when it isn’t simply absent altogether. Joe Biden’s name is notably absent, and so is any serious attempt to understand why the Democratic Party has become alienated from middle America. Still, such autopsies have never mattered. In 2016, Donald Trump effectively tore the GOP’s 2012 autopsy in half and won. The next Democratic presidential nominee may wish to follow his example.

◼ James Comey’s trial on two counts of threatening to assassinate Trump has been postponed for three months. The Justice Department indicted the former FBI director after he made an Instagram post depicting shells on a North Carolina beach arranged in an “86 47” pattern—which the DOJ claimed to interpret as a call to kill the 47th president. Judge Louise Wood Flanagan agreed to postpone the trial from July to October. She observed that the Justice Department endorsed the delay. That would be remarkable if prosecutors truly believed that Comey had threatened to murder the president, as would their lack of resistance to Comey’s release on his own recognizance pending trial. Under Supreme Court jurisprudence, “true threats” are exempt from First Amendment protection. Since “86” is slang for throwing something away, it does not qualify. The Justice Department is only half-pretending otherwise.

◼ The department unsealed murder charges against 94-year-old Raúl Castro, who formally stepped down years ago as Cuba’s dictator. The indictment could be a prelude to a U.S. military extraction similar to the seizure of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. Certainly, that’s what the Trump administration wants Havana to think. The charges coincide with another buildup of U.S. forces in the Caribbean, a blockade of energy shipments to Cuba, and a visit to the island by Trump’s CIA director, John Ratcliffe, who demanded that the regime make fundamental changes. Trump has also spoken of seizing Cuba (before or after Canada and Greenland?). The charges relate to Cuba’s killing of four people in a 1996 shoot-down of two aircraft operated by a Miami-based organization, Brothers to the Rescue, which sought to spark democratic revolution and help refugees fleeing the island. If there is a military operation to seize Castro and bring him to the U.S. for trial, he will undoubtedly contend that downing the planes was a sovereign act of state against a hostile threat—the same argument by which the Trump administration rationalizes its use of lethal force in the Caribbean against boats suspected of ferrying drugs, an operation that has killed nearly 200 people so far.

◼ Canada’s legal assisted suicide program, Medical Aid in Dying (MAID), now has its own poster boy: Dr. James MacLean. Two of MacLean’s 2024 cases have come under scrutiny following public complaints. In one, MacLean signed off on the death of a 45-year-old man with Crohn’s disease. Crohn’s, which involves inflammation of the bowels, is chronic and frequently painful. But it is a far cry from the kinds of immediate end-of-life situations MAID was billed to address; many people live with it for years and years. In the second case, MacLean tried and failed to kill a 67-year-old cancer patient who had previously consented to MAID. He gave him a powerful sedative and pronounced him dead when his heart stopped, then left before his breathing resumed. MacLean received a “caution” and an order that his practice be better supervised for six months. He can’t be taken off his rounds, after all: Those Canadians won’t just kill themselves.

◼ High taxes and a sclerotic economy appear to be driving Britons overseas. According to newly released figures, net migration to the United Kingdom has collapsed over the past two years, and higher emigration is a major contributing factor. Many of those leaving are among Britain’s most productive. Nearly one-third of the UK’s 350 wealthiest citizens live in another country. America’s ambassador to Britain is the only billionaire who has moved there in two years. Still, the ruling Labour Party keeps promising to increase taxes on the rich. Wes Streeting, the former health secretary angling to replace Keir Starmer as prime minister, proposes raising the capital gains tax to as high as 45 percent. Rather than generating much money, new levies may persuade even more residents to flee, taking all their taxable income with them. For those who remain, productive investments and entrepreneurial ventures will be further penalized. Britain does not lack government revenue. What the country desperately needs is economic growth and the incentives to deliver it.

◼ Kyle Busch was a giant in his sport. Born and raised in Las Vegas, he followed his older brother (and fellow champion) Kurt into stock car racing’s uppermost ranks. By age 16, Busch had already made his way to NASCAR, where he drove for top teams and won championships in 2015 and 2019. An aggressive driver and a boisterous personality, he was divisive in the way of domineering athletes, but universally respected. Busch’s last victory came just a week before his death. After his win, he remarked that “you never know when the last one is.” In recent weeks, Busch had been struggling with a cold; he kept working and reportedly collapsed while practicing in a racing simulator. His cause of death has been reported as pneumonia leading to sepsis. Tomorrow is not promised even to the hardest drivers. Dead at 41. R.I.P.