Politics Before Peace: How Politics Is Getting In The Way Of Reaching A Deal With Iran

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]Well, for a brief moment it looked like we might have a deal. I actually seriously thought it might happen and but alas, no. Now, I've talked at great length about how difficult it's going to be for us to strike a deal with Iran because of the many faults of Donald Trump and his lack of understanding of the sort of respect that Iran will want in public spaces, especially on social media.

[00:00:36]And his exaggerations and lies about potential deals will always blow them up. But there's something else really big that's also going to hurt the peacemaking process if that's what we want to call it.

[00:00:56]Because for all in I mean it looked to me anyway Trump was at the table. Iran was at the table.

[00:01:06]The deal was not perfect by any means.

[00:01:09]We talked about how imperfect it was.

[00:01:11]how it gave Iran a lot, gave Iran what it wanted, and how it failed to meet our objectives. But most importantly, at this point, it was an off-ramp. It got us out of this sticky situation that we're in. It was a path out of the war that it's cost American lives.

[00:01:44]Um, it's cost Americans a lot of money and it's pushing the global economy closer to the edge. And all of that disappeared, not necessarily because Iran walked away and not because the negotiations broke down on substance and not because there was like a new provocation.

[00:02:19]But it's looking more and more like it broke down because more Republicans got in the room. And reports are indicating that Trump backed off the deal at the urging of fellow Republicans, particularly, and I don't talk about Israel much, but particularly the pro-Israel hawks in his own party who saw the framework and decided it was politically unacceptable heading into the midterms.

[00:02:57]This is where politics gets in the way of peace, right? The terms were too generous to Iran. And hey, I agree.

[00:03:07]But priorities, folks, the optics weren't great. They were soft. The deal would be used against Republicans in the primaries.

[00:03:18]That's going to happen anyway.

[00:03:24]So, you know, these peace negotiations for at least now got killed not on the merits but on the politics.

[00:03:36]I I really believe that Donald Trump is willing to take an L on this.

[00:03:45]Of course, he won't say that publicly.

[00:03:47]He will try to convince his voters and the public that it's a victory.

[00:03:55]But in order for him to do that, he needs Republicans in Congress to agree and share that same message that he wants to share. And they're not willing to do that. And this should make Americans furious. It really should.

[00:04:16]Regardless of of where you sit ideologically, ideologically, we're now in a war that nobody in power can articulate a victory condition, if that's the right way to put it. What does winning look like? Nobody can tell us that.

[00:04:42]Does it look like regime change? Because that's not going to happen. Nobody is willing to commit to the half a million or so troops that would require.

[00:04:54]Is it total denuclearization?

[00:04:58]That's not going to happen. We already know that's not going to happen.

[00:05:08]our objectives that we originally set out for would require a level of a reorder of that region that no American administration has been able to achieve ever or is willing to try. So what's left?

[00:05:27]What is the actual goal of continuing this war?

[00:05:31]In my opinion, there's nothing left to do unless you drastically escalate this and send the global economy into a recession. That I mean, that's what we're up against. I said from the beginning, Iran is fighting an economic war and that's that's how they will win. Or at the very least, if you want to be kind, that's how they will preserve theirelves.

[00:05:59]Uh, the honest answer is that no one wants to say out loud, there really is no goal at this point other than making the pro Republicans look as less bad as possible.

[00:06:14]The goal is the avoidance of admitting failure, the avoidance of accepting a deal that looks bad on Fox News, the uh avoidance of midterm campaign where Democrats can run ads showing Iranian officials thanking Trump for a peace agreement. Look, they need to forget about the midterms, but when you think about it, they are willing to make this much worse on all of us if they think it buys them even one seat. If it if it prevents them from losing one seat in the midterms, they will take this economy right over the edge. that because they are incapable of thinking outside of their own minds and the power that they hope to hold.

[00:07:17]The additional cost of that calculation is staggering.

[00:07:25]Every additional week this war continues, we lose more oil from the global market. We're borrowing oil against our future. We've already lost over a billion barrels.

[00:07:42]Our gasoline inventories are far below 2022 heading into summer.

[00:07:52]California's got six weeks of inventory.

[00:07:55]Diesel demand is collapsing, which is a sign of an economy breaking.

[00:08:02]signaling potentially significant economic weakness. The physical oil market is approaching a repricing event that could permanently elevate prices for years and every additional week.

[00:08:30]Asian economies, the manufacturing hub of the world, draw down their reserves even further.

[00:08:37]Factories are slowing. Supply chains are tightening. The goods that Americans buy from Asia are going to get more and more and more expensive and harder and harder to find. Every week the global economy moves closer to this stagflationary breakdown that could potentially dwarf the Great Recession.

[00:09:08]This it's it's coming. Just because it takes time to get here doesn't mean it's not coming.

[00:09:20]Every additional week, American sailors remain in harm's way, and we have nothing left to accomplish because we're not going to try to achieve those objectives anymore.

[00:09:39]So, what are we doing?

[00:09:41]What are we doing?

[00:09:43]Are we doing this for the political comfort of a a faction of people in the Republican party that can't accept any deal short of total Iranian capitulation?

[00:09:56]A deal that's not even available, that has never been available and will not be available no matter how long we fight.

[00:10:10]And this is a trap.

[00:10:16]I don't know how many times I heard, you know, nobody else had the guts to do this. No, they had the sense not to do it because of this situation right here.

[00:10:30]And now there's there's talk that Donald Trump wants the Arab nations to to sign a peace agreement as part of this ceasefire, an additional peace agreement with Israel.

[00:10:43]This pro-Israel maximalism in in American politics is it's it's not good for America. It's not it's not in our best interest.

[00:10:57]Their strategic interests are real. Yes, but but when do we get to talk about what's in our best best interest? I mean, seriously, there's a difference between supporting an ally and outsourcing your foreign policy to that allies most hawkish hawkish faction in in Congress.

[00:11:23]The deal that we had was an offramp. No, it wasn't great, but I still supported it because we got to get out of there. We got to get the straight open. Period.

[00:11:36]Hour by hour, day by day, this is getting worse.

[00:11:43]It opened the straight. It ended the war. It would it would eventually stabilize energy markets.

[00:11:51]It it would be the first step in allowing a global economy to begin some sort of recovery.

[00:11:58]and it gets our forces out of this unwinable position.

[00:12:06]It did not however satisfy the people who believe the only acceptable outcome is regime change in Iran.

[00:12:18]And those people who are operating within the Republican coalition with significant influence over Trump's political base were able to kill it.

[00:12:44]I I I don't think we're going to get a better deal. And I don't think we're going to return to war.

[00:12:50]If we were going to return to war, Donald Trump would have done it the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, or eighth time he said he was going to do it.

[00:12:56]There's a reason he's never done it. He doesn't want to.

[00:13:03]There's if we do that, there's no defined end point. There's no exit strategy. There's no theory of victory.

[00:13:14]There's just the slow, grinding, expensive accumulation of damage to the American economy and the global system.

[00:13:28]I honestly believe, and I don't think he would ever admit it, but I I do honestly believe that Donald Trump realizes he made a massive mistake. Now, he'll never say that. Of course not. He always has to project.

[00:13:48]It's a performance, folks.

[00:13:51]It's a performance.

[00:13:55]The president is a performer. That's what he does.

[00:14:02]I think he realizes he made a mistake.

[00:14:07]We're making decisions about war and peace. Decisions that affect everything.

[00:14:15]Your gas tank, your your grocery bill, you know, retirement accounts, plus the lives and the soldiers and civilians across an entire region.

[00:14:29]That's not for entertainment purposes.

[00:14:38]But here's the part that should haunt anyone that's paying attention.

[00:14:47]And I truly believe that Trump knows that this deal was his offramp. He w that's why he was there. He was at the table. He saw the terms. He understood it.

[00:15:01]He understood it.

[00:15:05]Did he put did he leak some of the terms of it out there to get a feel for responses from his fellow Republicans?

[00:15:14]Uh it's being reported that they actually requested fellow Republicans to be supportive of it on social media and that they did get a little bit of support from from some of their Republicans, but they got a lot of kickback from others.

[00:15:31]So he he backed off, right?

[00:15:35]The coalition decided he back off because the politics of his base demanded he back off.

[00:15:48]Now, we all know Donald Trump is not the dealmaker he claims to be. He's a man who responds to political pressure like every other politician.

[00:15:58]And the political pressure inside his own party right now is for war.

[00:16:04]It's not for peace.

[00:16:09]I don't know if that means we get more war.

[00:16:13]I'm not saying that we will that it's going to be open-ended and indefinite.

[00:16:22]But we're definitely dragging out a process that doesn't need to be drugged out. Surely there is some way that they can word an agreement even if it's the same agreement where they can just word it in a way where it sounds better.

[00:16:49]you know, we had this we I I really felt like we were within reach of this and I felt like we were there, you know, and and maybe we're still closer than I think. I just I don't get the feeling we are.

[00:17:05]The bill for letting it go will be paid not by the politicians who killed it, but by the American consumers, by the American workers, by American soldiers and the economy that absorbs the consequences of all of this.

[00:17:30]That's what I'm thinking about. That's what's on my mind.

[00:17:34]But this is what happens when politics owns policy.

[00:17:41]We had a deal. It was there. Wasn't the greatest deal, but it got us out of this trap.

[00:17:50]We just didn't have the will to follow through with it.

[00:17:55]So, it appears we shall continue.

[00:18:02]Yes.

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