Why Trump’s latest blink on Iran could be more than a TACO Tuesday

 https://edition.cnn.com/2026/04/22/politics/trump-iran-ceasefire-taco-vance-pakistan-talks-analysis

President Donald Trump blinked again by extending the ceasefire with Iran.

His critics are mocking another TACO (“Trump always chickens out”) Tuesday after the president caved on one more personal red line days after warning there’d be “no more Mr. Nice Guy” if the Islamic Republic didn’t capitulate.

But the derision would be more justified if a president risked more Iranian and US lives by doubling down on what looks like an unwise war purely to preserve his tough-guy persona.

A haunting question about the Vietnam War that future Sen. John Kerry posed to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971 seems apt here: “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”

Still, Trump’s climbdown cast fresh doubts on his wartime leadership skills on a day when Iran refused to show up to talks in Islamabad aimed at ending the war — leaving Vice President JD Vance cooling his heels at home.

The president’s spin cannot obscure the most important takeaway from Tuesday: His strategy of using threats of overwhelming US military force to coerce Iran into surrendering at talks has now failed multiple times. Inside Iran, therefore, it must appear that Trump’s threats of military escalation lack credibility.