The Iran Trap Was Built at Home
The President is caught in an Iran war trap of his own making — visibly eager for a 'victory' deal, visibly afraid of being seen to capitulate. The two impulses cannot be reconciled by tweet.
The administration's Iran problem is not, primarily, a problem of Iranian intransigence. It is a problem of incompatible American demands that the President himself has set.
He has, for weeks, signalled an appetite for a deal he can declare a victory. He has, in the same weeks, rejected every framework that would let him do so without acknowledging what the deal actually concedes. There is no diplomatic vocabulary that resolves this.
The country's allies understand the bind. So, plainly, does Tehran. The longer the contradiction sits in public, the higher the political cost of any eventual settlement — to both sides.
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