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The Felon Dreads an Iran Deal Worse Than Obama’s

The Felon's Iran war was supposed to be quick and over in a few days - similar to Vladimir Putin's illegal invasion of Ukraine.  Like Putin's misadventure that has dragged on for going on four years, the Felon's misadventure shows no sign of an ending quickly and the Felon now finds himself in a mess of his own hubris filled creation.  In addition, the Felon has an added difficulty in that whatever exit strategy he may ultimately be able to cobble together, it may not be enough to satisfy Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu (the Felon reportedly read Benjamin Netanyahu the riot act earlier this week for wanting to launch strikes on Beirut, which could collapse the Felon's negotiations with Iran). Perhaps more disturbing to the egomaniac Felon, any deal he is able to put together could well make the deal Barack Obama structured look like a far better deal than the Felon's, perhaps the ultimate humiliation for narcissistic Felon.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at the tensions with Israel:

A U.S. official told Axios that on Monday that Donald Trump read Benjamin Netanyahu the riot act for wanting to launch strikes on Beirut, which could collapse American negotiations with Iran. The message, the official said, was “You’re fucking crazy. You’d be in prison if it weren’t for me. I’m saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this.”

The spectacular bust-up, which Trump confirmed today, reveals a deeper problem. With a nuclear deal with Iran out of reach, Trump seems content to defer the problems he faces instead of squaring up to them. There may be an end to violence, but any peace will be temporary and inherently unstable. The war will likely resume at intervals over the next few years, with grave consequences for all concerned.

The U.S. and Iran are too far apart for the distance to be bridged with a lasting settlement. Instead, they are moving toward a narrow deal: the U.S. lifting its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and Iran allowing ships to transit in exchange for economic compensation. The nuclear issue—including what to do with Iran’s highly enriched uranium—would be deferred to later negotiations, which few expect to succeed.

Having placed himself - and the nation - in an impossible position which previous American presidents were smart enough to avoid, the specter of any deal the Felon does achieve looking like a loss compared to Obama's agreement that the Felon canceled is only increasing.  Another piece in The Atlantic looks at the Felon's growing dread of looking like a loser compared to Obama.  Here are article excerpts:

[The Felon] President Trump was on a conference call late last month from the Situation Room with leaders from across the Middle East and South Asia to pitch a deal that he believed was within reach to end the conflict in Iran. Trump asked for their support in a roll call, going one by one through Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain, and Pakistan. All answered in the affirmative. Trump’s tone, according to officials briefed on the conversation, suggested that he believed each country should be in his debt for taking on Iran.

But then Trump reached for something bigger: He proposed linking the Iran negotiations to a major expansion of the Abraham Accords, the U.S.-brokered agreements normalizing relations between Israel and some of its neighbors that Trump regards as a signature foreign-policy achievement. He suggested that those countries that hadn’t yet joined the Abraham Accords get on board—but received a less than lukewarm response. . . . Several times during the 90-minute call, Trump had to interject: “Hello? Hello? Anyone there?”

The awkwardness of the conversation, the details of which have not been previously reported, encapsulates what has gone awry in the roughly eight weeks since the United States and Iran entered a tentative cease-fire designed to allow negotiations for a longer-term deal. That agreement has remained out of reach . . .

Critics of Trump’s decision to go to war contend that his impulse to go big masks the weakness of his negotiating position despite the U.S. military’s dominance. . . . Tehran has succeeded simply by surviving the onslaught and has gained leverage by taking control of the Strait of Hormuz. As a result, Trump has been unable to convert tactical success on the battlefield into any lasting diplomatic or political achievement. None of his original war goals has been met, and the pressure to get a deal done is arguably now greater for Trump than it is for Iran, given the war’s broad unpopularity in the United States and the approaching midterm elections.

Every attempt to seal a deal has expanded the list of issues or created new wrinkles that prevent progress. What began as a narrow negotiation to end the conflict has become a grab bag of objectives: constrain Iran’s nuclear program and destroy its highly enriched uranium, reopen shipping through the strait, achieve a durable cease-fire in Lebanon, reassure Persian Gulf monarchies that they can count on U.S. protection, and, if possible, reshape the political map of the Middle East through new alliances with Israel.

The likely result is not another “forever war” of the sort that Trump has repeatedly condemned, but a “forever limbo,” where all sides involved have sufficient incentive to stay at the table but not enough to make binding commitments.

Inside the White House, Trump oscillated between impatience and theatrical self-confidence. He told advisers repeatedly that he wanted a deal bigger than President Obama’s 2015 nuclear agreement and broader than the initial round of Abraham Accords. He also made clear that he did not want to own the failure of negotiations. The longer the process dragged on, the more the competing impulses pulled him in different directions.

He wanted the conflict over. But he had become irritated by comparisons between the emerging framework and the Obama-era agreement, which set restrictions and time limits on Iran’s nuclear-development program. Administration officials said Trump repeatedly complained that critics were calling his team’s draft agreement a weaker version of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which he had spent years attacking and tore up in his first term.

At the same time, Trump grew wary of Iran’s calls for relief from international sanctions that could generate a financial windfall for Tehran. Trump has long complained about the “pallets of cash,” according to advisers, a reference to the $1.7 billion that flowed to Iran after the 2015 pact. Rubio told the Senate committee yesterday that Iran had to get rid of the enriched uranium and that the move would not lead to sanctions relief for Iran or any other financial incentives.

But the bottom line, Rubio said, was the need to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. That, like everything else involved in the talks, is harder than it might sound. To restore sufficient security and trust for shipping to return to prewar levels—about 135 ships a day—would require a major effort by the U.S. Navy, perhaps along with other nations, to clear mines laid by Iran. Shippers also need to feel confident that Iranian drones, missiles, and fast boats won’t threaten them. Only if those things happen, and the U.S. Navy lifts its blockade, would insurance companies reduce their rates for transit.

Yet Trump remains determined to secure a settlement he can portray as a legacy-making win. . . . As Trump heads into the summer, with events planned for America’s 250th birthday and the World Cup, it is hard to see him dedicating more time than he is now to extricating the United States from the war he started at the end of February. He may be content to simply wait rather than do a deal that invites unflattering comparisons to one that already existed—and which didn’t come at the cost of 13 U.S. service members and at least 1,700 Iranian civilians, tens of billions of dollars, the depletion of U.S. munitions stockpiles, and a global energy crisis.

Friday Morning Male Beauty

 

Thursday Morning Male Beauty

 

European Travels - Thoughts From Paris

A number of readers have asked how American tourists are being received in Europe or more particularly at the moment by Parisians.   Our experience - namely me, the husband and two friends - is that the French definitely distinguish between the U.S. government under the Felon and everyday American tourists.  The former is viewed with contempt (a few Parisians have made specific remarks about the government under the Felon) while individual tourists are greeted with friendliness and courtesy.  Of course, if one behaves as an entitled "ugly American" then all bets are off for obnoxious tourists.  We make a point of setting the tone by being friendly and polite and that goes a long way.  My perception is that the French are well aware that less than a third of all registered voters casts their votes for the Felon and his evil policies and that two thirds of registered voters either did not vote or cast their votes for Kamala Harris.  One could argue that they see the Felon as quasi-legitimate and see him for the nasty, boorish, and demented individual that he is.   We will see if this reaction to Americans continues when we enter the United Kingdom before embarking for New York City aboard the Queen Mary 2 which typically as many aboard who are not Americans.   

Our scheduled activities tomorrow should allow me to get to some of my more normal political posts tomorrow.

Wednesday Morning Male Beauty

 

Reduced Posting - Europe Bound

Posting frequency will likely be reduced over the next two weeks. Today the husband and I we head out for a new travel adventure: We fly to Paris with two friends where we have an apartment in the Marais area for a week. On June 8th we will travel to Le Havre and board the Queen Mary 2 for 9 nights, visiting Cherbourg and Southampton before heading transatlantic and arriving in New York City on the 17th. A shout out to our friend Jenny who will be staying at our home while we are gone.

Sunday Morning Male Beauty

 

More Saturday Male Beauty

 

The War Trump Can’t End

The price of oil remains elevated, although down at the moment from previous highs, the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, and the Felon is desperate to find an exit ramp from the war of choice he foolishly launched with no apparent long term strategy.  Of course one reason oil prices are down at the moment is the Felon's latest claim (we have heard this storyline numerous times before) that some kind of "deal" with Iran is perhaps in the offing. If negotiations fall apart - which a piece in The Atlantic explains remains possible - oil prices will rise again and continue to drive inflation at home is America even as the Felon's approval rating is only at 34% - likely that high due to MAGA cultists who live in an alternate reality. As the cited piece in The Atlantic observes, the Felon in his delusions thought his war of choice would last mere days whereas Iran's regime has been planning for a war with America for 47 years.  Adding to the mix are the Felons lousy negotiation skill and novice negotiators (which were examined in a prior post) up against Iran's "bazaar style" negotiating tactics that aim to wear down the opposing side through attrition.  The final obstacle the Felon faces is that now Iran realizes that its ability to close the Strait has greatly strengthen its hand.  Here are article excerpts:

For nearly five decades, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been preparing for a war that Donald Trump expected would take days.

As virtually every American president since World War II has learned, a monopoly on focus can outlast a monopoly on power. America under Trump is the attention-deficit superpower, pinballing from isolationism to interventionism in Venezuela, Iran, and Cuba, having hollowed out the State Department. The Islamic Republic is an obsessive-compulsive revolutionary state—a regime with a half-century fixation on resisting America, rather than advancing the welfare of its own people. Fighting America is not the regime’s policy; it’s the regime’s identity.

The deadlock is both ideological and structural. To justify the immense costs of conflict to American taxpayers, Trump must demand far more from Tehran in any deal than he would have before the war began. Conversely, having lost hundreds of billions of dollars and its top leadership, Iran’s theocracy must demand far more—and concede far less—than it ever would have previously. Neither side can afford a deal that the other might accept. And in a zero-sum negotiation, Iran’s monomaniacal focus is a greater currency than American military power.

Trump may pause his war against Iran. But the Islamic Republic’s 47-year ideological war with “the Great Satan, America, and its trained beast, the Zionist regime”—in the recent words of Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader—will continue in earnest. U.S.-Iran negotiations yield zero trust and zero closure. A win-win scenario does not exist. Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, threats to close the Strait of Hormuz, regional proxies, and missile programs will menace the Middle East so long as the Islamic Republic is in power.

Tehran is transparent about its negotiating tactics. “The Iranian negotiation style is generally known in the world as the ‘bazaar style,’ which means continuous and tireless bargaining,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrote in his 2025 diplomatic memoir. “This method is a process of interaction that requires great patience and time,” and thus, “he who gets tired and bored quickly will lose.” Trump has twice grown bored with diplomacy and resorted to military action against Iran.

The first phase of any deal would require Tehran to de-mine the Strait of Hormuz and cease harassing vessels traversing it, and the United States to lift its blockade proportionally—restoring, in theory, the prewar reality of an unfettered international waterway. For Tehran, the strait has become its greatest source of leverage. Iran’s implicit control over it—and the global economy—is both a potential fixed-revenue stream and a deterrent against future attacks. “This time, papers and signatures are not guarantees,” Ali Akbar Velayati, an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, said. “The objective guarantee for preserving any agreement is the Strait of Hormuz.”

A coordinated reopening of the strait could be a prelude to successful nuclear negotiations, but it could also prove merely an intermission in fighting. The resumption of traffic through the strait would bring down oil prices—a crucial strategic objective in itself for the U.S., because it would make a return to war, if necessary, more sustainable, one senior official told me, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic matters. Similarly for Tehran, the pause would provide much-needed cash and an opportunity to refortify its military.

Trump-administration officials believe that once the strait is reopened, Tehran will have a hard time closing it again: “It’s a card they can only play once,” the senior official said. Tehran appears confident taking opposite bets: that it has established a de facto Strait of Hormuz protection racket, and that the closer Trump gets to the U.S. midterms, the less appetite he will have to restart the war. For both sides, a tactical pause may relieve economic pressure and make reaching a broader diplomatic compromise feel less urgent, rather than more so.

The most difficult negotiation is the nuclear one. Trump will seek a commitment from Tehran to never pursue nuclear weapons, including a freeze on long-term enrichment, removal of its 400-kilogram stockpile of highly enriched uranium, and the establishment of an invasive inspections regime. But Tehran has drawn an obvious lesson from modern history: The regimes that gave up their weapons programs—in Iraq, Libya, and Ukraine—made themselves vulnerable to foreign intervention. North Korea, meanwhile, has survived behind a nuclear shield.

A former Iranian official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid government scrutiny, told me that Tehran retains the knowledge and now has the will to build nuclear weapons in short order. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claims to have as many as 30 underground “missile cities,” likely built with North Korean assistance, some reportedly buried deeper than the nuclear facilities already destroyed. Like Gaza, Iran is becoming a place where the authorities and their weaponry thrive underground while citizens languish aboveground.

The U.S. official told me that Washington expects to know “within a few weeks” whether this peace process has legs. The Trump administration plans to present Tehran with two possible paths. The first would require Iran to abandon its nuclear-weapons program, its regional proxies, and its foundational hostility toward America and Israel in exchange for hundreds of billions of dollars in Persian Gulf investment that could make Iran “one of the richest countries in the world.” The second path would be to preserve the status quo: Iran’s revolutionary ideology would remain intact, but at the cost of a continued naval blockade, crushing sanctions, and the potential renewal of war.

Over the past 47 years, Tehran has made major compromises only twice. The first was its 1988 decision to end the Iran-Iraq War—after eight years and an estimated 200,000 Iranian deaths—a concession that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini likened to drinking poison. The second was the 2015 nuclear deal with the Obama administration. In both cases, when faced with overwhelming economic and diplomatic pressure, a viable diplomatic exit, and no demands to change its revolutionary identity, Tehran showed itself capable of tactical compromise.

“Iran never won a war,” Trump tweeted in January of 2020, “but never lost a negotiation!” This aphorism has become received wisdom, yet it misses a central fact: Any government willing to immiserate its own population rather than compromise can look like a tough negotiator.

“The main principle of bargaining is practice: repetition, repetition, and repetition,” Araghchi wrote, “so much that the other side of the deal, as they say, ‘gets numb’ and gives its consent.” Up until now, Tehran’s negotiating style has not numbed Trump into consent but agitated him into conflict. Yet conflict, like negotiation, has not resolved the fundamental problem that has confounded every American president since 1979: The United States needs a deal, but the Islamic Republic needs the United States as an adversary. America seeks resolution. Iran is committed to revolution.