Iran busts the myth of Trump as master of the art of the deal
The president’s ego and indifference to facts leave him open to resistance by Tehran and manipulation by Russia and China.
If anyone still believes President Donald Trump is the ultimate dealmaker, his erratic efforts to exit his failed Iran war should shred that illusion.
Whether or not a tenuous ceasefire holds, as the U.S. and Iran continue to exchange fire, or if it is extended yet again, Iran looks set to emerge as the strategic winner of Trump’s ill-conceived “military operation.”
Tehran’s rulers, who had never before attempted to close the Strait of Hormuz, now know they can hold the U.S. and the world economy hostage by blocking the waterway. Moreover, even if the strait reopens without Iran charging tolls, which is doubtful, any negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program will be pushed off for months.
And whatever emerges isn’t likely to improve on the 2015 deal negotiated under President Barack Obama, which Trump withdrew from during his first term, and continues to trash.
To put it bluntly, Iran has shown the world that dealmaker Trump has no idea how to “deal” with adversaries whose leaders push back against his threats and bluster. Meanwhile, his ineptitude is already having negative consequences that extend far beyond the Strait of Hormuz — from Russia to China to the entire Mideast.
Before I get to details, I refer you back to Jane Mayer’s brilliant New Yorker interview in July 2016 with Tony Schwartz, the ghostwriter who penned Trump’s iconic book, The Art of the Deal.
Schwartz, who shadowed Trump for 18 months, has profusely apologized for his snow job in the tome. But he lays out five character traits that perfectly summarize why POTUS is incapable of negotiating a serious security accord.
Trump “has no attention span. It’s impossible to keep him focused on any topic, other than his own self-aggrandizement for more than a few minutes.”
His short attention span has left him with “a stunning level of superficial knowledge and plain ignorance. That’s why he prefers TV as his first news source — information comes in easily digestible sound bites.”
“Lying is second nature to him. He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it.”
“More than anyone else I have ever met, Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true.”
Trump has a “willingness to run over people [and an] absolute lack of interest in anything beyond power and money.”
In the case of Iran, Trump’s “superficial knowledge and plain ignorance” — unchallenged by competent advisers, or a functional national security council, or the U.S. Department of State — are the cause of his failure. Only ignorance could have impelled him to buy Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim that regime change could be achieved without using ground forces. Or to ignore the obvious possibility that Iran would retaliate by closing the Strait of Hormuz.
When plan A quickly failed, he had no cohesive plan B beyond continued bombing. He still doesn’t. He ignored military warnings about running out of missile and drone defenses. And a continued U.S. embargo on Iranian shipping only guarantees the strait will stay closed.
Trump’s endless string of lies about the state of the war alternates in speeches or on Truth Social from day to day or hour to hour. A week ago, the president said a deal was “largely negotiated,” then he told negotiators, “Not to hurry.” Now, once again, the deal is supposedly almost done.
This is not clever diplomacy, as MAGA acolytes claim. Trump’s never-ending contradictions, aimed at manipulating markets and domestic political polls, only convince allies and adversaries that he can’t be trusted. They tell the world that Trump is negotiating from weakness with no good way out.
The president’s Iran options range from bad to worse: He can keep the strait closed and let the global oil crisis and U.S. gas prices rip, fully restart the military conflict despite a dangerous U.S. shortage of critical air defenses, while Iran can still retaliate against U.S. bases and Arab oil production, or accede to a deal that leaves the U.S. worse off than before the war, without resolving the nuclear issue or removing the future threat to the strait.
A serious leader, recognizing that Iran’s nuclear program had been set back by U.S. bomb strikes in 2025, would never have acquiesced to Netanyahu. Instead, Trump lied about an imminent nuclear threat, even ludicrously claiming Tehran could have struck within a week.
Recognizing his huge error, the president could have chosen to rally our European and Asian allies, along with Mideast Arab nations, to address the Gulf closure together. Instead, with his “willingness to run over people [and allies],” Trump has treated friends like foes.
He has diminished U.S. troop numbers in Europe at a time when Russia is threatening NATO, and cut off arms to Ukraine despite its offers to help with interceptors to counter Iranian drones. In other words, he told Europe to get stuffed and then demanded it help in the Gulf.
As for Mideast allies, Trump has been equally disdainful. He gave them no advance warning of the U.S. strikes on Iran, even though they would bear the brunt of Iran’s retaliation. Now he is trying to use them as a scapegoat for his Iran failure: He has demanded, ludicrously, that the Saudis and others immediately join the Abraham Accords and recognize Israel, even as they are suffering from Iranian attacks.
Never mind that the Saudis have repeatedly made clear that they will only do so if Israel addresses the issue of Palestinian statehood. And never mind that Trump has entirely dropped the Gaza issue, even though Palestinians are still living in rubble in Gaza and being attacked by fanatical Israeli settlers on the West Bank.
Once a ceasefire was agreed between Israel and Hamas, Trump lost interest in the next phase of the Gaza “peace deal.” The Board of Peace that he touted so highly is moribund without any funds.
Yet, Trump is raising the Abraham Accords to deflect from his failures in Iran.
It is long past time that Americans realized Trump’s claim to be the world’s greatest dealmaker is as much a fiction as the claim that the Iran deal is already resolved. He kowtowed to China’s Xi Jinping on trade and Taiwan at the recent summit in Beijing, and has continued to bow to war criminal Vladimir Putin as he rains ballistic and hypersonic missiles on Ukraine.
Why expect better in Iran?
As ghostwriter Schwartz told the New Yorker, Trump’s interest lies only “in accumulating power and money,” and he fools himself into believing he can never fail. So, if the ceasefire is extended with Iran, he will claim it is a great victory, while pushing the Iran nuclear issue off until the future, and leaving Tehran effectively in control of the Strait of Hormuz.
