It’s a form of Rope-A-Dope. Keep him bouncing from one horn of this dilemma to the other. His two choices are war or withdrawal. War is limited to air strikes, which are rapidly using up expensive stand-off munitions like cruise missiles and glide bombs, because he doesn’t want to risk pilots being shot down. And boots on the ground is right out, because body bags are a bad look before the mid-terms.
Withdrawal cedes control of the Strait of Hormuz, guaranteeing higher oil prices indefinitely, and the appearance of defeat. Same with Iran’s highly enriched uranium; withdrawal lets them keep it.
One of the things Iran is doing, IMO, is playing for time. The longer they drag things out with the Strait of Hormuz mostly closed, keeping the price of oil relatively high with knock-on effects on inflation etc, the more difficult Trump’s political position re the war becomes, and the more likely they are to strike a more favourable deal. Time is on their side, so their incentive is to start negotiations with a maximal position.
And let’s not forget no matter what happens, Iran has already won this war and done so decisively. That’s what happens when you put a conman in charge: you lose because the key to their fraud is having what sounds like a believable timeline, but is really one that will never be met. Iran has no such timeline to meet.
It’s called an ambit claim and I would have thought any New York property developer would recognise it. Just as Iran in turn recognised 45/47’s braggadocio.
Exactly; and Iran knows this. They know Trump can’t be trusted, so any negotiating position they take isn’t going to designed with “would the other side consider this acceptable” as a consideration because there’s no point. It’s going to be designed to meet political and diplomatic goals both domestic and foreign, and maybe to manipulate Trump; but not meant seriously as a negotiating position. Because it’s not possible to negotiate seriously with Trump.
There’s an old saying that “diplomacy is the art of saying ‘nice doggie’ until you can find a rock”, and that’s seldom been more true than with Trump.
Sure. Why not? His bestie is already outsourcing infanty (aka cannon fodder) from North Korea, a country ruled by Trump’s “lover”.
And why would Iran’s government even talk with a US negotiating team, let alone consider anything the US team has to say as true? They were negotiating with a US team when the US bombed the country, starting this absolutely useless war.
Iran has the stronger negotiating position and has for months - they’ve essentially won this war, and dragging it out just increases Trump’s personal desperation to find a way out. They may have even calculated that they can keep this going until a new president comes in in '29 who will have the political mandate to apologize for the war, functionally surrender to Iran, and normalize a diplomatic and financial relationship.
Imagine how the '28 election campaign will go if the war is still continuing like this, with American stocks totally depleted and gas prices having risen for multiple years - every Democrat will be insisting this was Trump’s stupid war, that it was a catastrophic mistake to even entertain the idea of war, that we should apologize to Iran and openly admit we lost. For a new administration, Iran might drop the tolls in exchange for no more sanctions, an end to the US alliance with Israel (likely coming anyway, at least in some form), some reparations, an apology, and normal diplomatic and trade relations.
Moderating: This post, especially the second paragraph is way out of line for this thread. I’m going to make it easy on myself and hide your entire post. Stop with the future speculation of US political stuff in this thread.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Karoline Leavitt’s successor describes ground troops landing on Kharg Island as shore leave and compares it favourably to Iwo Jima. And gets away with it.