U.S. Signals Deal While SIMULTANEOUSLY Escalating Threats

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]I mean obviously there's a intense flurry of diplomatic activity happening and in the media outlets that are preferred by the Trump administration like Axios they're really pushing this idea that the US and Iran are on the verge of signing a one-page memorandum of understanding that wouldn't be a comprehensive deal but that would stop the acute phase of the war and then provide a framework for a range of negotiations beginning with an opening of the strait uh some form of a non-aggression uh agree agreement that Iran would want to apply to all of its regional allies. Um, but this is the US version of the story and there's sort of a pattern that we're watching unfold here, which is that the US and Iran have been indirectly negotiating primarily through the mediator country of Pakistan. And what they've been doing is exchanging amendments to a 14point framework that they've been discussing.

[00:00:54]And what happens is that when the Iranians submit their amendments to it, uh, Donald Trump begins posting things on Truth Social and then leaks begin to Axios and other news outlets and they try to create a momentum that is intended on putting pressure on Iran and making it look like the US is being reasonable, Iran is being obstructionist. In reality, the US consistently injects into this framework maximalist demands. Trump has claimed that he wants to get an unconditional surrender of Iran. When the Iranians respond to Trump, they denounce the Iranians. Um, and then Trump goes online and he threatens to bomb their civilization or to carry out another bombing campaign that's going to be more intense than the last one, which was the case of what he did uh on Wednesday morning after these reports started that there was going to be some kind of a deal. You know, I I talk a lot to Iranian sources, including Iranian officials, and the top line that I think is important to emphasize from the Iranian perspective, is that they are very quick to remind uh anyone that twice in a single year, the United States claimed to be negotiating with Iran only to turn around and conduct massive bombing of Iran, even when there was another round of negotiations uh scheduled on the books. that happened in June of 2025 when the US and Israel initiated the so-called 12-day war and it started on February 28th when the US and Israel launched a massive bombing campaign against Iran that went on for many weeks. The wild card here uh that the Trump administration seems to have genuinely be been taken aback by and shocked by is that Iran didn't fold.

[00:02:31]Iran didn't capitulate. The United States and Israel assassinated the upper echelons of uh Iranian political and military leadership and the supreme leader of Iran all within a 24 to 48 hour period. And the Israelis clearly had pumped the administration, the Trump administration with contaminated uh intelligence trying to convince Trump that the whole government was going to collapse within days of them doing this. And yet what happened is that the Iranians, despite these massive assassinations that had been uh unloaded on Tehran at the beginning of this war, put up a ferocious retaliatory defense. They caused the evacuation of more than a dozen American military bases. They were able to penetrate, including with conventional aircraft that they have, warplanes, um the borders and boundaries of GCC Gulf countries that are housing American military bases. and they conducted air strikes that actually killed uh American soldiers and it's very clear that the US has been concealing the extent of the damage that the Iranians inflicted on US military infrastructure in the region. Then the Iranians showed that they had a powerful asymmetric weapon that they could unload and unleash in the straight of Hormuz.

[00:03:50]Despite the fact that the United States with its ultra powerful navy was deployed and Trump talks all the time about his highly effective military blockade, the United States military has been unable to force the Iranians to capitulate any of its control or management of the Strait of Hormuz. And so what we're looking at right now is a situation where the Iranians say that they are fully engaged in the diplomatic track that they are uh doing indirect negotiations. They say they won't do direct talks until the United States formally lifts the blockade on the straight of Hormuz. Um they are sending amendments back and forth with the United States, but they say that they have their own red lines. They want any ceasefire or non-aggression pack to apply to all regional allies. Israel is engaged in massive bombing of southern Lebanon right now. It continues to engage in intense ground operations.

[00:04:44]Hezbollah, which the Israelis claimed was basically wiped out, has been uh ferociously fighting back Israeli attempts to conquer or take more of Lebanese territory. The Israelis are threatening to resume the uh the very intense larger scale genocidal operations in Gaza right now. The Iranians say that they want an actual ceasefire to be imposed on Israel.

[00:05:07]That's a wild card how the Trump administration is going to respond to that. Um the Iranians are also saying that they are not going to do any negotiation on their highlyenriched uranium at the front end of any deal.

[00:05:18]That there has to be a framework first, that there has to be sanctions relief, that there has to be a uh an unfreezing of tens of billions of dollars in Iranian assets. And the Iranians are saying right now that they're not going to agree to a removal of their 60% highlyenriched uranium from Iranian territory. Um what the Iranians, I understand, have offered is to uh suspend for some defined period of time uh nuclear enrichment. They're talking about not clearing the rubble from some of the nuclear sites that the United States and Israel bombed for a defined period of time. But they point out that negotiations on Iran's rights to enrich uranium are highly technical and the United States has refused to send any actual experts um to the negotiations with the exception of a team that they sent to Islamabad recently. There could have been a deal on all of this. This war was a war of choice. What Iran was putting on the table back in February when the United States, in the middle of negotiations, decided to launch this war, was in the view of the Iranians a highly flexible proposal that in some ways would have extended beyond the terms of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the JCPOA. And so this whole process, if it does result in some sort of a memorandum of understanding, if it does result in serious technical negotiations on nuclear matters and other issues, um it's a damning indictment of the fact that the United States in part because of Israel's agenda decided to go on this massive war against Iran and they were shocked when the Iranians didn't capitulate. And in fact, Iran has achieved one of its core objectives. It is quite clear that Iran is not going to just stand by and allow itself to be bombed periodically by the United States and Israel. It said going into this it wasn't going to allow that, that it wasn't going to choreograph its retaliation, that it wanted to send a message uh that would force the United States and other countries to think twice before they engage in any military adventurism in Iran. So the the the status right now is part of a pattern where the US because Trump is desperate for an off-ramp is trying to force through a deal. What we don't know is what concessions the Iranians might be willing to make. It's clear that the Trump administration already is making concessions. They they announced this as a regime change war. They said they want unconditional surrender. Um that hasn't happened and the Iranians have shown that that is not going to happen. So, where things stand right now is it's highly possible that Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are going to resume the bombing of Iran, that they may do another round of assassinations of Iranian leaders. Um, that's always a possibility. It's also possible that we're heading toward a deal that Trump is going to try to spin as a victory, as though he should be praised for putting out small portions of the massive intense fires that he himself started.

[00:08:17]Um the Chinese are going to be the Chinese government is going to be a major figure in whatever happens next.

[00:08:23]The Iranian foreign minister Abbasarachi arrived in uh Beijing early on Wednesday morning and is holding uh high level talks with Iranian officials. Trump is scheduled to go to China uh in roughly one week for a state visit where he's going to be meeting with Xi Jangpang.

[00:08:40]They have the Chinese government has perhaps the single largest stake in what happens in the straight of Hormuz and the uh Chinese leadership has been increasingly outspoken in its condemnation of what the US is doing in Iran uh the responsibility of the US uh for creating the crisis that exists in energy markets and the flow of supplies through the straight of Hormuz. So the the US narrative on this which is often uh you know sort of pushed through with the conveyor belt media outlets that are preferred by the Trump administration often is just leaks of the wish casting that the Trump White House does combined with this attempt to try to make it seem like the Iranians are the ones obstructing a deal when the reality is this was a war of choice from the very beginning.