Hey fam: Get your questions for the next mailbag show in today, please? Leave them in the comments here. As always, my ask is that you take a minute to read the questions others have left. Upvote the ones you like best. And if you have follow-on questions, thread them as a reply to the existing questions.

1. Abdication

Last week I wrote that, as a political matter, Trump’s best option on Iran is to simply walk away:

What Trump should do is walk away. Swallow the loss, regroup, “liberate” Cuba, get into an online slap fight with the Spanish national team. Whatever. Take the L and all of the geostrategic consequences that come with it.

Some readers responded by saying that Trump can’t, because Iran won’t let him. Nick Catoggio wrote an interesting column about how walking away from Iran would be, for Trump, like declaring bankruptcy. Meaning: In theory, an attractive option.

But Catoggio concluded that it’s not possible:

[T]he president would happily choose the bankruptcy option, I’m sure, if only the Iranians would offer it to him. By signing last month’s humiliating peace agreement, he showed that he’s willing to accept the public embarrassment of admitting that a project he championed has failed, as bankruptcy requires. But bankruptcy is supposed to release him from the financial obligations created by that project, which in this case would mean oil commerce returning to prewar levels in the strait before November’s midterms. And the Iranians simply refuse to do that.

I’m not certain this is true? Today I want to interrogate whether or not Trump could abdicate America’s position in Iran. Could he really just . . . walk away?