There is no art to Trump’s Iran deal

Over Memorial Day weekend, Donald Trump made a sudden announcement that an agreement between the United States and Iran to end the war, which is approaching its three-month anniversary, was imminent. The two countries have been at a stalemate for the past several weeks, and in that time, rumors of deals have proven to be just that. But this time seemed to be different. On Friday the president begged off attending his son Donald Jr.’s wedding in the Bahamas, saying, “This is not good timing for me. I have a thing called Iran.” Then he canceled his scheduled golf outing at his Bedminster club to return to the White House. Trump never cancels his golf game, so when he posted that a deal was “largely negotiated” and close to “finalization,” it seemed as though it might be real. 

Five days later, we’re still waiting. 

The Islamic Republic quickly disputed Trump’s characterization, and everyone realized this was likely just another of his premature declarations of victory that he has taken to issuing every few days since the war began. (They have often alternated with threats to blow everyone and everything in Iran to smithereens if the country’s leaders didn’t do what he wanted them to do.) Trump began backpedaling, posting that “if” he made a deal, “it will be a good and proper one, not like the one made by Obama.” Then came the clincher: “Unlike those before me who should have solved this problem many years ago, I don’t make bad deals!”

Despite what his bestselling book once proclaimed, there is no art to Trump’s dealmaking, because there is no dealmaking in the first place. It’s all just bravado and illusion in a show where the magician has no bunnies left to pull from his top hat. During Wednesday’s Cabinet meeting at the White House, Trump shrugged off his inability to reach an agreement with the Islamic Republic. “We don’t need oil,” he said. “We don’t need the Strait [of Hormuz]. We don’t need anything.” The U.S., he implied, was doing just fine without a deal. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum appeared to agree, crediting the president with “helping to keep the price of gas down at home.” (The national average currently stands at $4.459 per gallon, and over $6 per gallon in California. Prices dropped 7% following Trump’s announcement that a deal was coming.) If Iran fails to make concessions, Trump said, referring to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, “then the man on my left is gonna finish them off.”

Details that have leaked about the proposed deal haven’t helped matters. What’s on the table is, in fact, much weaker than the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that was meticulously negotiated over the course of two years under the Obama administration between Iran and the U.S., the United Kingdom, France, Germany, China, Russia and the European Union — and which Trump tore up upon taking office in 2017. In return for the U.S. lifting sanctions and unfreezing billions in assets, withdrawing the military from the region and allowing Iran to keep certain aspects of their nuclear program, the Islamic Republic would reportedly re-open the Strait of Hormuz, which had been unrestricted before Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu attacked the country on Feb. 28. 

The plan’s rumored commitments caused Republican hawks to wail about what was clearly a full capitulation on the part of the president. South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said the provisions made him wonder “why the war was started to begin with” — as if he hadn’t been the one whispering sweet nothings in Trump’s ears about being remembered as the Alexander the Great of his time if only he would topple Iran’s government and liberate its people. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz wrote that the terms being discussed — “billions of dollars, being able to enrich uranium & develop nuclear weapons, and having effective control over the Strait of Hormuz” — would amount to “a disastrous mistake.” From secretary of state Mike Pompeo went so far as to compare it to the Obama team’s efforts that would allow “the [Revolutionary Guard] to build a WMD program and terrorize the world,” which prompted an unprecedented f-bomb laden retort from the White House warning him to “shut his stupid mouth and leave the real work to the professionals.”

But the so-called professionals — a team led by Trump’s roving “peace envoys” Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner — just can’t seem to get the deal done. Perhaps the best illustration of the state of things came from GOP pollster and strategist Frank Luntz, who tweeted unironically, “Insider reporting from an unnamed White House official says the Iran deal is ‘95% done.’ The remaining 5% of negotiations are focused on Iran opening the Strait of Hormuz and turning over all nuclear material.” 

Want more sharp takes on politics? Sign up for our free newsletter, Standing Room Only, written by Amanda Marcotte, now also a weekly show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

In other words: The most difficult issues are the ones on which the parties haven’t been able to reach an agreement. And no amount of assurances from Trump — that he doesn’t want to rush things, that he doesn’t care about the midterms — can distract from this fact.

Whatever this agreement, if there is one, turns out to be, it will not change the fact that under Trump, the U.S. has lost another war in the Middle East. And in a blunder of historic proportions, he has put the fate of the world’s oil supply and international economy in the hands of a strengthened Iran. 

Trump thought this war would be easy. High from his glorious conquest of Venezuela, he became convinced it would be simple to topple the Iranian leadership and install a friendly leader who would do his bidding, along the lines of what Venezuelan president Delcy Rodriguez has done. In fact, one of the more bizarre revelations of the past couple of weeks is that the U.S. and Israel thought they could easily kill Iran’s existing leaders and bring back former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, perhaps best remembered for his fervent declarations of “Death to America.” One supposes that Trump was convinced he could make a nice little oily side deal with him and all would be well. 

That plot went awry when they bombed Ahmadinjad’s house in the early days of the campaign — apparently in an attempt to free him from house arrest — and he reportedly became “disillusioned” with the plot. The Atlantic’s David Graham analogized it by saying that “backing Ahmadinejad as a coup leader is like backing a coup against Donald Trump led by Al Gore.” But then there’s not much about this war that wasn’t ill-conceived and half-baked. 

Trump further threw sand in the gears when he gathered all the Arab leaders on the phone early in the week to talk about the negotiations and threw in the demand that they all sign on to the Abraham Accords to recognize Israel and normalize relations — a move that reportedly shocked them into silence.

Trump is still laboring under the illusion that he can be a triumphant savior of the Middle East — and win his coveted Nobel Peace Prize — when, in reality, his impulsive actions have left America diminished on the world stage and Iran firmly ensconced as a regional power that the international community will have to reckon with. To all intents and purposes, it’s all over but the phony victory celebration — and the sycophantic paeans to his masterful non-achievement.