With the latest “peace deal” now perhaps receding into what we might call the eternal “two weeks” I wanted to provide some mix of guidance or thoughts on what is going on. How do we go from a peace deal that is all but inked (despite only being a ceasefire and agreement to negotiate) to now where the deal is drifting off into the distance and Trump is adding new demands on Truth Social?
Let’s go back to the fundamentals.
There’s only one letter available for Trump to take here and it’s an L. This has been the case since the first hours or days of the conflict when Iran’s government didn’t fall and it took control of the Strait of Hormuz which was something the White House had not planned for or anticipated. Critically, it became clear that Iran could hold out on a timeline much longer than Trump’s. Everything since has been fall out of those essential facts.
Everything just a matter waiting for Trump to take the L, which has been the only available letter available for months. His team in Pakistan keeps coming up with face saving ways to take it. They leak that a deal is coming. Trump brags a deal is coming. It’s “largely” finalized, as he memorably said. But then outside players and Trump’s own backers start saying the obvious which is that Trump is taking the L. And he just can’t handle it. He needs everyone not to notice. But people do notice, either backers who are upset he’s taking it or opponents who are eager to amplify his entirely self-created humiliation.
So he starts talking tough. The White House puts out blind quotes about how Iran has totally positively agreed to voluntarily ditch its nuclear program in some future negotiation if the US just agrees to this ceasefire. Trump starts adding new demands. And then, predictably, Iran reaches out to the US negotiators and says What the Actual F … and the illusory “deal” disappears. On Twitter, his diehards frantically post that they’ve been briefed by the White House and as long as everyone keeps tweeting that Trump is rocking this all will be okay. For everyone but the dead enders though the pattern becomes clear. Everything that happens now is a matter of Trump’s inability to accept something that actually happened more than two months ago.
It’s worth remembering that for the master of the “art of the deal” a “deal” isn’t an agreement between parties so much as getting one over on a weaker or less sophisticated party. That’s the entirety of Trump’s career in business. It’s also why that business career involved a string of bankruptcies. Because he’s actually not a good negotiator at all with a sophisticated counterparty. And his business tactics are almost always a matter of overselling or overhyping a product and getting out before the buyers realize that.
In this case though the consequences of his self-soothing lurch into Iran have had economic and political costs he simply can’t paper over.