Published on: September 28, 2026 at 12:33 pm
U.S. President Donald Trump repeatedly criticized the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran, which had been negotiated by Obama administration officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry and Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman. Trump famously withdrew from the agreement in 2018 during his first term in office.
According to Academy of Management Scholar Jeffrey Sonnenfeld of the Yale School of Management, who moderated the panel “The Framers of 1776 vs. The Nation’s Leadership In 2026; Is the Vision Now Vivid or Blurred?” at the 2026 AOM Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, the situation—a seeming stalemate in the conflict with Iran—is much worse in 2026. Sonnenfeld has coauthored the book Trump’s Ten Commandments: Strategic Lessons from the Trump Leadership Toolbox with Steven Tian, also of Yale.
“This ongoing Iran war is costing more money, and we have less control, and we can’t get through the Straits of Hormuz, which were open before Trump started bombing Iran, but now he’s looking to change the subject yet again with the saber-rattling around the midterms, which really worry him,” Sonnenfeld said. “But he’s the only person that any of us will ever know who would actually shoot himself in the left foot, literally, if he doesn’t want you to look at his right foot, and you think, ‘Why would you do something so destructive?’”
“Tomorrow he’ll do something else to his finger or his nose or somebody else’s face, or he’ll just do something that distracts you again,” he said. “He keeps buying time with these distractions.”
“Whether or not it’s genius, that’s questionable, but it is what he does, and if you criticize him without understanding this is what he’s going to do the next time there’s bad news, it doesn’t get you anywhere.”
It’s obvious that Trump is concerned about how he and Republican candidates are polling ahead of the November 2026 midterm elections.
“These plunging poll numbers worry him—he said, ‘This is not a tax on me as president; it’s a tax on the Republican Party,’” Sonnenfeld said. “So now all the pollsters will be coming out and showing us that those Republican legislators who are badly hurt in the polling right now are still far higher in the public opinion ratings and favorability than Trump himself.”
“But he creates that false narrative because now he’s got to find something new to distract people,” he said. “But it’s his continued manifest style—there are these 10 things he uses over and over again. They are his consistent 10 devices for wielding and maintaining power and influence and controlling the narratives about himself and his presidency.”
