Donald Trump’s not enamored with the idea of postponing negotiations around Iran’s nuclear program as part of an interim deal that reopens the Strait of Hormuz.
The proposal, delivered to mediators in Pakistan by Abbas Araghchi, was the subject of pitched debate in the White House Situation Room on Monday.
The IRGC has prohibited Iranian negotiators from agreeing to any concessions on the nuclear issue, and Trump still wants some manner of deal (or “deal,” in scare quotes) he can sell to the American public as a “win.”
That, in a nutshell, explains the stalemate. Although administration officials insist Trump’s been clear about what, precisely, he wants from Iran in terms of commitments, that’s not entirely true.
“Iran can’t have a nuclear bomb” sounds straightforward, but Iran never openly espoused such ambitions in the first place. The clandestine nature of Iran’s weapons program, and their generalized reluctance to own up to what everyone knows they were after, is why the JCPOA existed. Negotiating a new, “better” version of that plan, which had its flaws, is possible, but not for someone of Trump’s temperament.
In that, his decision to abandon the JCPOA had something in common with his determination to jettison the ACA: Trump set about undermining a painstaking attempt to address a highly complex problem on the excuse the imperfect nature of the solution was a bug not a feature. If you insist on doing that, you need the political will and, just as importantly, the patience, to undertake the arduous task of establishing an alternative. Trump has neither.
Iran — and I’ve been over this repeatedly in recent weeks — isn’t reading Trump well in terms of recognizing i) a man who plainly wants to wind this conflict down and ii) a man who cares far more about optics — his own vanity — than he does details. All he wants is a promise that sounds good on a piece of paper it’s worth less than.
There’s a wrinkle, though: Trump also covets Iran’s “nuclear dust,” by which he means the near-bomb-grade enriched uranium assumed buried in a tunnel complex under Isfahan.
Four weeks ago, Trump indicated a willingness to consider that material lost both to the US and Iran. “That’s so far underground, I don’t care about that,” he said, on April 1. He’s spent every week since equivocating on the issue.
Araghchi’s message to The White House is that he simply can’t say what Iran’s willing to offer on the nuclear issue. Neither can Bagher Ghalibaf. Masoud Pezeshkian presumably has an opinion, but it’s not relevant.
They need time to sort things out amongst themselves — which is to say Tehran needs a few weeks or, who knows, maybe months, to come up with something that has the blessing of Guards chief Ahmad Vahidi and security boss Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr.
The bet (the hope) is that Trump’s concerned enough about US gas prices, his single-issue inflation approval rating and, ultimately, the midterms, to cut a deal that suspends the US naval blockade of Iranian ports. That’d afford the Guards a face-saving excuse to stop impeding traffic through the Strait.
The figure above from BofA (using RCP’s averages), gives you some context for the extent to which the war’s a political liability.
“Republicans brace for brutal midterms as Trump’s popularity slips,” a New York Times headline from Tuesday read. “The elections are still six months off, and some within the GOP say there is still time to right the ship,” said the deck.
By most accounts, “righting the ship” demands free shipping lanes, and Iran reckons that’ll take precedence for Trump sooner rather than later. Trump’s bet is that he has far more time than Iran, which is staring down imminent shut-ins.
A Wall Street Journal piece published late Monday said the Iranians are “scrambling to find new ways to store” the country’s oil in an increasingly desperate attempt to avoid shuttering production. Emergency measures run the gamut from “reviving derelict ‘junk storage’ [to] using improvised containers.” Tehran’s also “trying to ship crude by rail to China,” the Journal went on.
On Tuesday, Brent breached $110. We’re now back to “pre-pivot” levels, if you will. (Trump’s “mission accomplished” moment on the war came on April 1, during a prime time television address announcing that he intended to wind down the conflict, or at least America’s direct involvement, within a few weeks.)
Late Monday, Scott Bessent took to social media to deliver what felt like an especially propagandistic message coming from the normally staid office of the US Treasury Secretary.
“While the surviving IRGC Leaders are trapped like drowning rats in a sewage pipe, Iran’s creaking oil industry is starting to shut in production thanks to the US BLOCKADE,” he said, employing Trump’s cadence, all-caps and penchant for making proper nouns of common ones. “Pumping will soon collapse. GASOLINE SHORTAGES IN IRAN NEXT!”
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz offered a more sullen assessment. “The Iranians are very skilled at negotiating, or rather, very skillful at not negotiating, letting the Americans travel to Islamabad and then leave again without any result,” he said. “An entire nation is being humiliated by these so-called Revolutionary Guards and I hope this ends as quickly as possible.”
I am sure it is coming, but I am curious to hear your take on the U.A.E. leaving OPEC and OPEC+. That one threw me for a loop this morning.
is there a correlation: The United Arab Emirates stunned the already reeling global energy markets Tuesday by announcing it is quitting both OPEC and OPEC+, dealing a heavy blow to the oil exporters’ cartel and its de facto leader, Saudi Arabia—and doing so just days after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent publicly backed an emergency dollar…
That is interesting. I heard “rumors’ of setting up emergency swap lines but didn’t know the Treasury went through with it. Makes more sense now. thanks
Here: https://heisenbergreport.com/2026/04/28/the-uae-finally-goes-its-own-way/
There’s really nothing surprising about the UAE exit. It’s been in the works for more than 20 years.
Negotiation comes down to what each side is willing to minimally accept. Iran’s position and actions would indicate that they are prepared to wait longer than Trump is to get what they want from this. We’re talking about a theocratic autocracy vs. a mildly autocratic semi-democracy. One of these two sides has unilateral power and the other doesn’t. Who can afford to outwait whom?
Merz also stated that Iranian leadership is making fools out of the United States, probably not wrong on that one.
Yeah, I sympathize with what Merz is saying, but then again, Iran’s a country with a collapsed economy and a worthless currency, and the “leadership” spent the last two decades squandering opportunities in favor of plowing scarce dollars into the “Resistance,” when what two-thirds (at least) of the populace wants is the same thing most everyone wants: A chance to live a happy, healthy life with economic opportunity and political representation. There’s something absurd about suggesting such “leaders” can “make fools” of anyone.
I wonder if Trump has a some kind of goal releated to cut China’s influence on the region. Because, if it’s just a MOU about Iran giving up nuclear developments, then the US would be pretty much the same of JCPOA.
It seems more likely that Iran is turning into a lawless country that will be run by various groups of warring gangs, all fighting over control money from whatever is left from remaining oil and weapons trading.
At some point, ships can be taken out by drones. Evidently, Russia’s navy has been immobilized by threat of Ukrainian drones.
In six weeks of war we initiated we achieved a stalemate against a 3rd rate drone power? Even if this is only speculation, what does this say about our military preparedness, our reliance on exquisite military systems? Can AI fix stupid?
Well, they’re a first-rate drone power. Arguably the only one. One of the problems here is that the Iranian military’s a hybrid beast in being both a conventional force and an asymmetric actor. The conventional force is destroyed. Asymmetric capacity, by its very nature, is harder to vanquish, but it’s not especially effective for anything other than attrition. If that’s all you need — if you just need to fight a war of attrition — then fine. If, on the other hand, you have ambitions, you need to be able to confidently confront the US in a conventional conflict. So, to your question about “preparedness,” it depends on who’s asking. If you’re a large conventional military and you’re thinking about challenging the US in a war that, even if it entails a lot of drones, will still need to include decisive victories in large battles involving conventional force, what you’ve just seen from the US and Israel is a pretty striking display. There’s a lot China can take away from what they’ve just witnessed, but one thing they can’t say is that America’s capacity to wage war at scale, over long distances, with lots of firepower, is diminished. I mean, it may be “diminished” in the sense that we’ve burned through a lot of ammo we’re not replacing fast enough, but if the question was whether we were still capable of getting a lot of assets in place and wreaking all kinds of havoc in the blink of an eye, the answer’s apparently “yes.”
Golly, I’m a comment hog today.
“if the question was whether we were still capable of getting a lot of assets in place and wreaking all kinds of havoc in the blink of an eye, the answer’s apparently “yes.”
We answered the question that we can level an adversary when we have the luxury of close in air power. On nearby bases and on carriers. It’s doubtful that we’d have that luxury in a tangle with China. Much of their military spending has been on anti-ship missiles. Enough to force the US to operate carriers from a much longer distance or from Guam. Dunno, but they are probably congratulating themselves for this focus.
Yeah, but you know, at a certain point — and I’m certainly not hoping for this, on the contrary I hope it never happens — you have to ask where the follow-through is. If Xi’s so confident in the PLA, and he’s so bent on achieving reunification during his reign, well then why doesn’t he pull the trigger and see what happens?
I’d argue the many bases we have in Japan is probably a better position to be fighting from than Guam. However, Trump has spent much of this presidency visiting and investing in the allies we have in the Middle East. The same can’t be said for our Asian allies and that may mean more of a Spanish type response from them if called to help support an engagement with China.
If it does come to that I’d say we’d be looking at a scenario where much of our chip production just fell off the map and then we’d be in a pretty poor position anyway.
I woud argue that Russia and Ukraine are first rate drone power. However that is not as important as is the budgetary imlications of a milliion dollars a shot weapons. Even we cannot sustain this level of conflict against cheap weapon and still have anything left in our arsenal. Yes we can project lots of destruction but a stalemate is not what has been anticipated. I think our military needs a wakeup call to lower the cost of a shot and formulate real alternatives for stopping drones. I think war is evolving in a fundamental way over the last few years due to cheap chips from Taiwan. It will evolve more and faster with AI. I think we need to rationalize the entire value chain and figure out how to have allies again rather than players like Bibi, Putin and Xi that play us. If not we will be played by our former allies as well. Will take some humility but that is cheap compared to raytheon missiles. Maybe this ‘loss’ will cause a reconciliation, I hope so.
The constraints are materials and time, not money. We can credit defense contractors with dollars at will.
I guess we have to agree to disagree on this statement. I believe even in the ‘modern monetary framing’ expenses cannot be unlimited. However that is a much deeper debate than I am intellectually equipped to make.
It is expensive by design– the U.S. doesn’t want cheap weapons. That money is circular.
I think the “intercepting cheap drones” problem is pretty easily handled for defending fixed high-value facilities (airbases, energy infrastructure) and ships.
Ukraine has largely solved it, their interceptor drones are very effective and very cheap (cost 1/10 of a Shaheed), their constraint is production capacity but that is getting quickly solved (Gulf money will help). Eventually lasers will be even cheaper per-shot, but technically the problem is already solved.
For the US, the problem has been attitudinal but the war is changing attitudes very fast. Even if the US insists on a domestic solution, it has plenty – look at RTX’s Coyote interceptor, the even cheaper Merops interceptor, and the other “Fixed Site-Low, Slow, Small UAV Integrated Defeat Systems (FS-LIDS)” systems – and is very rapidly deploying these in the Gulf.
I think the problem of intercepting cheap drones in ground combat is harder, as Israel is learning in Lebanon. Drone detection/interception systems can be mounted on tanks on on accompanying air defense vehicles, but interceptor systems have to get small enough to be carried by a small ground unit, an individual helicopter, etc and smart/automated enough to not require a dedicated person operating them (AI will help here).
Defending civilian infrastructure against drones is also a problem, also both attitudinal and technical. It is partly the reluctance to embed weapons into civilian places (think of the liability when some antidrone system misidentifies an airliner on final approach). I think we’ll need to see destructive terrorist drone attacks on an airport, port, LNG tanker, or similar before real action is taken.
Oh I think like you it is solvable, not if you do not put on a full court press. This is war afterall.
If Iran is starting to break under the pressure of a leaky blockade and not being bombed, they are concealing it well.
Which one is the Cheshire Cat!