I wanted to share a few more thoughts on the current ceasefire and negotiations between the United States and Iran. As I noted earlier, there’s something so rich about sending JD Vance to lead the negotiations since the vice president has bent over backwards to signal to everyone who will listen (or write stories) that he was absolutely, positively against the war in the first place. President Trump has sent Vance to conduct and really own negotiations that almost certainly wouldn’t go well for the United States.

This cannot be an accident.

I started this post before the news broke that the first attempt at negotiations had broken down or, at least for now, had failed. That news just tightened the box into which Trump placed Vance. If the war resumes, Vance owns that continuation because he walked away from the negotiating table. It’s almost as though he gave the original order. If the negotiations fail, that’s on Vance too.

So where are we now?

Here are a few additional thoughts about the state of the war between the U.S. (and Israel) and Iran.

First, we had news from Reuters over the weekend that the U.S. and Iran might be on the brink of a ceasefire agreement, maybe as soon as Monday. It now seems like that was yet another example of a mix of over-optimism from broker countries trying to bring the sides together and, even more, the White House trying yet again to force a quick-to-fade market bounce. Yesterday afternoon I saw this piece in Haaretz which says that Pakistan (a lead country trying to broker a deal between the two sides) believes that Iran is now under the effective control of the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, that this commander thinks Iran is winning and that he’s not willing to compromise on Iran’s key demands or accede to the United States’. It also notes that Pakistan thinks the U.S. is more eager for a deal than Iran.

I don’t think you need to be Pakistan to see that last point. Everything President Trump does sends that message. Now, in the wake of the Trump’s threat to “end” Iranian civilization tonight, Iran has reportedly cut off participation in ceasefire talks with the U.S..

A few moments ago I saw this snippet in the Times:

We’re over a decade into the Trump era. To assess the damage his two terms have wrought and how, exactly, we got here, TPM’s David Kurtz was joined on Substack Live by friend of TPM and charter member of our DC bureau, Brian Beutler, who now writes the Off Message newsletter. 

In a wide-ranging conversation, David and Brian discussed Trump’s propaganda campaign around his war in Iran; how the Democrats could act as a true opposition party; and what the U.S. could look like come Jan. 2027 or 2029 depending on how the next two rounds of federal elections shake out. 

Check out their full live below.

I want to reiterate all the points I made about Trump’s speech last night. Just for the sake of his own political standing, the whole idea was a mistake. It wasn’t a good speech. It wasn’t delivered well. And it didn’t either make favorable news or actually address the issues that have the public or energy markets upset. I didn’t realize as I was watching the speech that his vague “two to three weeks” prediction of when the war will end was really just a restatement of what we might call the Trumpian Constant, the prescribed duration after Trump will, purportedly, always have gotten things worked out and awesome. The time before the Obamacare replacement plan is released, when infrastructure week will finally arrive. I mean, two weeks is genuinely a cliche with Trump or, in more modern parlance, a meme. Trump just tacked on another week. As you might have seen there are lots of charts floating around showing how the price of oil and oil futures spiked pretty dramatically during his speech.

The U.S. is approaching a newly dangerous phase of its war against Iran. The administration is signaling that it will likely soon commence ground operations in Iran that will yet stop short of a full-scale invasion. Obviously, certainly to many TPM readers, this whole situation and war of choice are very bad things. But I want to point your attention to something specific.