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Opinion
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Maureen Dowd
Trump, Iran’s Newest Hostage
April 25, 2026,
7:00 a.m. ET
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Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times
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By
Maureen Dowd
Opinion Columnist, reporting from Washington
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“It looked like a good thing: but wait till I tell you.”
That’s the opening of the classic O. Henry
short story
“The Ransom of Red Chief.”
The tale, written in 1907, is the ultimate parable about the perils of trying to seize and control a hellion so devious, so maniacal, so awful that the captors become the captives.
The story is about two small-time crooks who think they can make some easy money by kidnapping a 10-year-old boy, the son of an affluent landowner in a sleepy Alabama town.
They underestimate badly. When they go to abduct the red-haired, freckle-faced boy, he is throwing rocks at a kitten and hurls a brick at one of his kidnappers.
“Red Chief, the terror of the plains,” as the boy calls himself, runs his captors ragged. He relishes tormenting the men and doesn’t want to go home. In the end, they have to drop their demand for a $2,000 ransom, pay the boy’s father $250 to take the demonic child off their hands and run for the hills.
President Trump went along with Bibi Netanyahu’s
Panglossian case
for slamming Iran. It looked like a good thing: but wait till I tell you.
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