That’s how David Ignatius describes the negotiations between the United States and Iran in his most recent Washington Post column. Mr. Ignatius seems vexed by what’s happening:
Given the stakes, you’d think that Trump would want de-escalation. But that’s not the way he operates. He likes disorder and destabilization — and seems ready to keep extending the state of uncertainty. He seems to think that creating and tolerating instability is his secret power. But with his extension he may have moved toward a more stable negotiation platform. The financial markets have been so convinced that Trump will make a deal in the end that they’ve been discounting the trash talk, reciprocal blockades and negotiating delays. Tuesday’s events make that look like a wise bet, but we’ll see.
As I see it there are several possible explanations for how things have progressed or, more accurately, failed to progress.
The first is the one that President Trump offered: he’s giving the Iranians time to agree among themselves. That reflects a reality that neither the Administration nor Mr. Ignatius have fully come to terms with: Iran does not speak with a single voice. Just as a start there are the mullahs, the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC), and the secular civilian authorities. The IRGC appears to benefit from sanctions and may even be gaining power as a consequence of the Israeli and American attacks against Iran. The clerical leadership prioritizes regime survival and ideological legitimacy. The civilian technocrats may want economic normalization.
With whom has the Administration been negotiating? Based on public reporting, the Administration appears to be negotiating primarily with civilian authorities. But there is little evidence those can bind the other power centers, and equally little evidence that those centers can reliably agree among themselves.
The second explanation is that this is another example of TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out).
The third, which Mr. Ignatius seems to lean into, is that this is simply the president’s way.
I suspect there are elements of truth in all of those explanations but, again, the simple reality is that even if you got all of Iran’s competing factions into a room, agreement, even if achieved, would be slow to form, fragile in substance, and uncertain in execution because it would rest on actors who cannot fully bind one another..
Ignatius gestures at an important point but doesn’t develop it: “bargaining” does not mean the same thing in Tehran as it does in Washington. Iranian negotiating practice places greater emphasis on patience, positional strength, and the avoidance of visible concession, and often proceeds through indirect signaling and extended back-and-forth rather than linear problem-solving. If you combine that with the fact that Iran does not speak with a single voice, the expectation of a single, clean, comprehensive deal begins to look less like a delayed outcome and more like a bad assumption.
Who is paying for this nonsense? Do supports of the war support raising taxes?
I gotta go. I think I hear Iranian troops moving down the street, or it could be children playing, better not to take a chance. Into the Iranian bomb proof shelter, I go.
The “rich”, i.e. the top 10% of income earners, are to the extent that they are taxed disproportionately. Since 25% of the budget is “borrowed”, i.e. credit extended to ourselves, and the decision has been made to monetize that, the poor pay for that.
“The first is the one that President Trump offered: he’s giving the Iranians time to agree among themselves.”
I think one has to add what I referred to as “humanitarian” considerations. Meaning, Trump doesn’t want to see unnecessary bloodshed, or to inflict the hardship and economic pain of rebuilding on the general population Trump and reasonable people desire to free from this murderous religious regime.
I happen to disagree with the delay. Not because I want the reasons cited above to be ignored. But that its not an attainable goal. The IRGC will fight to the death, either inflicted by us, or a citizen uprising. (and they will not honor any agreement). They are being starved of revenue, but are getting some support in currency and munitions by China and Russia. This won’t go on forever, but these delays prolong the inevitable. But who knows, maybe delay will bring people to the table. But a real agreement is another story.
I think the IRGC only benefits from delay by temporary survival and by the opportunity to broadcast US media headlines to an information starved Iranian populace that they are winning. It could delay an uprising and shows just how despicable US media really are.
TACO is just silly, the type of juvenile charge you might see at OTB.
Iran may have a different negotiating style but 50 years of behavior inform us that they will respect nothing but raw power, and that, yes, chasing a deal they would honor and/or we could monitor is a fool’s errand. The history of behavior point being one you made about China in a recent post.
BTW – I have read that early returns suggest that Trump’s “giveaway” legislation on taxes has materially increased the proportion of taxes paid by the upper 10% and 1%. You won’t hear that from progressives, or their slaves, the Democrat Party leadership.
The issue is what price are we willing to pay vs the outcome we are likely to achieve. I think its a somewhat unique American belief that if we bomb and kill a bunch a people they will greet us as liberators and overthrow their existing govt. There isn’t a lot of history of this working. History suggests that Iran, like the other ME countries we recently invaded, will be willing to tolerate deprivation for quite a while. How long will we tolerate the costs of losing 20% of the world’s oil?
It remains unclear to me how we will supposedly make sure Iran doesnt do any more nuclear work and doesnt build missiles. Since “we” dont trust Iran how is that achieved absent total surrender and occupation? Remembering that we obliterated their nuclear program a year ago and they supposedly reconstituted it in a year are we willing and able to do this every couple of years instead of occupying?
And what do we gain? Not much. Iran has not killed any Americans on North American soil. The big gains are for Israel.
Steve
I’m afraid it’s worse than that, steve. When the Iranian factions cannot agree what they’re willing to accept or do and there’s no binding mechanism, there is no outcome. There’s just ongoing war albeit at varying levels of intensity.
The “ greet as liberators” snark is cheesy straw man stuff. It’s much more utilitarian than that.
What we know is that for 50 years there has been no hope of a normal Iranian society. Murder, terrorism and torture have ruled the day. And rapidly approaching has been nuclear capability and dominance of the Straights. A point of no return. Israel may in fact be the current largest beneficiary, but as the unanticipated range of Irans missiles showed, it would not be long until Paris, London and NYC were in the sights. You might want to wait and hope, but pallets of cash haven’t worked in the past. Methinks they won’t in the future. That’s irresponsible.
The IRGC is clearly in control. But they have a depleting advantage. The regular Army is getting restless. I may have been wrong, delay may indeed have advantages. Commentary I have been listening to, people who clearly maintain contacts in the US military hierarchy, (and not paid shills you might hear on the CNNs of the world) report a far more tenuous situation on the Iranian side than people believe. It’s the 11th hour. It’s now just how wrecked the Iranian economy is going to be when it’s over.
Cheesy but it really describes this fantasy about the Iran people overthrowing the IRGC. Anyway, you keep thinking like an American (and one who hasn’t followed military history) and you only read or communicate with people who believe everything Hegseth and Trump say. Piece at link from Foreign Policy cites numbers given by our military intelligence, which clash with claims by Trump and Hegseth. Some excerpts.
“Even with huge swaths of its leadership wiped out, the Islamic Republic controls access to the Strait of Hormuz and appears to be increasing that control, seizing several vessels this week and sneaking past the U.S. blockade. According to the Financial Times, citing cargo tracking group Vortexa, as of Tuesday, approximately 34 oil tankers linked to Iran have passed through the blockade.
Meanwhile, the director of the U.S. Defense Department’s Defense Intelligence Agency, Marine Corps Lt. Gen. James H. Adams, conceded during congressional testimony that Iran “retains thousands” of missiles and one-way attack drones. CBS reported on April 22 that about half of Iran’s stockpile of ballistic missiles and launch systems were still intact as of the start of the cease-fire on April 8, along with about 60 percent of the IRGC’s naval arm, which is used to disrupt the strait.
These numbers tend to belie statements from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who declared on the day the cease-fire began that “Operation Epic Fury was a historic and overwhelming victory on the battlefield.”
Much different than the claims by T and H.
However, the following looks at the issue from a non-American perspective.
“No, Iran is not yet “another Vietnam.” There are no U.S. ground forces taking unsustainable casualties, no headlines tallying the week’s dead, no massive anti-war protests in U.S. streets. And of course, rather than a beaten-down Lyndon Baines Johnson, the current U.S. president is bragging that he’s only been at this war a few months and, by the way, he would have won Vietnam “very quickly.”
But the pressure that Tehran is applying to Donald Trump suddenly feels very much like what flummoxed LBJ in Vietnam. Specifically, it resembles the winning strategy so doggedly pursued by Ho Chi Minh, the iconic North Vietnamese leader.
By resisting talks to end the war quickly and forcing Trump to extend his cease-fire indefinitely—which the president insisted he wouldn’t do only days ago—the Iranian leadership (whoever that might be) appears to be following Ho’s playbook.”
“It was Ho and his successor in the 1960s, Le Duan, who defeated two Western imperial powers—first France, then the United States—by understanding what Tehran appears to understand: Aggressors from far away, no matter how powerful, will tire of war well before you do. As Ho told the French colonialists back in 1946: “You can kill 10 of our men for every one we kill of yours, but even at those odds, you will lose and we will win.”
And it was Ho and Le Duan who repeatedly defied Johnson’s increasingly desperate pleas for negotiations, just as Tehran is now humiliating Trump. In a letter written to LBJ in 1967, Ho made clear that he would not consider entering into negotiations until “the unconditional cessation of U.S. bombing raids and all other acts of war,” adding that the “Vietnamese people will never submit to force, they will never accept talks under threat of bombs.”
During the 1960s, Johnson regularly fulminated in his councils of war about Hanoi’s stubbornness, wondering why increased airstrikes and sustained bombing campaigns beginning with Operation Rolling Thunder had failed to force North Vietnamese leaders to the table. “I don’t believe they’re ever going to quit,” he told his defense secretary, Robert McNamara, at one point.
Similarly in Iran—while there has been evidence of what Trump called “seriously fractured” leadership— Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the parliamentary speaker, declared that Tehran would “not accept negotiations under the shadow of threats.” This week, Iranian negotiators left Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance waiting anxiously at the White House for a phone call that never came. For good measure, Ghalibaf—who is supposedly more moderate than the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders in charge—said Tehran was using the cease-fire to prepare “to reveal new cards on the battlefield.”
Trump’s response on April 21 was to announce on Truth Social that he will “extend the Ceasefire until such time as their proposal is submitted.” Translation: Iran now seems to be calling the shots.
“Fifty years after the Vietnam War concluded, once again the U.S. is repeating this history in the war with Iran,” said Hai Nguyen, the co-founder and director of the Global Vietnam Wars Studies Initiative at the Harvard Kennedy School.
“In an asymmetric war, similar to the Vietnamese during the Vietnam War, Iranians have advantages beyond what the Americans could comprehend,” Nguyen told me. “They understand that the U.S. could drop thousands of tons of bombs, but it does not possess the patience to withstand a prolonged war. Like the Vietnamese revolutionaries, the Iranians appear ready to fight a protracted war with much sacrifice of national resources. Iran, in other words, understands the Achilles’ heel of the U.S.”
https://archive.ph/R1fCw
Steve
Iran’s military (whether the IRGC or the regular military) is organized along very different lines from ours. It’s much more fragmented and tribal in nature. Less tribal than Iraq but still tribal.
The real challenge is this:
It’s not merely patience. We won’t attack the targets which we would need to attack to achieve President Trump’s stated objective. Note that I do not advocate either doing that, the war, or President Trump’s “unconditional surrender” objective. I’m just noting that you play the black jack on the red queen.
I have read fairly extensively on our wars since and including Korea. My sense is that we didnt place many limits at all on what we bombed in N Korea. We were a bit more limited in Vietnam but our bombing wasn’t all that accurate back then so we did have lots of civilian casualties. (Also important to remember that the military and the admin conspired together to lie to the American people about the conduct of the war.) We were better in Iraq and Afghanistan but often suffered from poor intel and bombed the wrong people. Taken as a whole I am doubtful that even if we bomb the “correct” targets that we get a quick resolution. Maybe if we use nukes?
Suppose I am wrong and we bomb the correct places. Iran says they give up? We need total and complete surrender to maybe achieve our stated goals.
Steve