Put in a terribly uncomfortable position, Rosenstein showed how to stand up for the rule of law. In doing so, he is keeping faith with a tradition of Justice Department independence that spans both Democratic and Republican administrations over the past half-century — but that Trump is trying to break.

Rosenstein’s example is particularly important, because he hasn’t always been willing to stand up to his boss. But he now seems to have found his courage. If only more members of Congress and Republican elders would do the same.

Iran deal. In Israel this week, we saw another cost to Trump’s disinterest in facts.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, gave a televised presentation bashing the Iran nuclear deal, but he offered no evidence that Iran has violated its terms. Netanyahu instead talked about Iran’s efforts to disguise its nuclear program before it agreed to a deal in 2015 with the United States, China and European countries. Surely, Netanyahu — who has opposed the deal since the beginning — would have offered evidence of cheating if that evidence existed.

But evidence wasn’t the point of the presentation, as The Atlantic’s Peter Beinart writes. The point was goading Trump into canceling the deal. “Netanyahu understood his audience: A president bored by policy details, surrounded by advisors like John Bolton, who have long argued for abandoning the deal.” It was, Beinart concludes, “the first example of a foreign leader using television to sway Trump in the way American politicians and pundits do.”

Trump is likely to announce a decision on the deal before the end of summer.



In The Times, my colleague Bret Stephens offers a different take, writing that Iran’s history of dishonesty and noncompliance means that the United States should not keep the current deal. The Times editorial board criticizes Netanyahu’s “flimflam.” And Antony Blinken, President Barack Obama’s former deputy secretary of state, argues that scrapping the Iran deal would damage the chances of a nuclear deal with North Korea.