World Series of Brinkmanship

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.