Not since Sonny Corleone has anybody been as hot for a deal as President Trump is to strike an agreement with the Iranians. Over the past several months, by Trump’s telling, we have been days away from signing an amazing deal with the Iranians, only for nothing to ever come into fruition. 

Noah detailed the latest claims from Iran about what is in the current deal – a totally implausible set of provisions of which Noah was rightly skeptical. Trump has already called the terms “fake” and is back to saying that the Iranians are not dealing in good faith, and warning, “they better get their act together, and FAST!” Even in claiming a deal is close, the administration has been leaking terms that are completely incompatible relative to what’s coming out in Iran’s state-controlled media. To note just one among many, administration officials are telling reporters that the deal includes the dismantlement of the Iranian nuclear program, while Iran’s media has said that the current agreement includes nothing on the nuclear issue. 

This all comes after a wild day on Thursday, when within hours, Trump went from announcing plans for the U.S. to hit Iran hard and to imminently take over Iran’s Kharg Island oil hub, to calling off the attacks and saying the war was over and there would be a signing ceremony on a deal within days.

While a lot of the criticism has been about Trump being played by Iranians, in reality, I think Trump isn’t getting played by Iranians per se (who he isn’t directly negotiating with) but by the mediators. Politico reports that yesterday, after Trump was gearing up for more attacks on Iran, senior officials from Pakistan, the UAE, and Qatar, called up Trump to assure him that a deal was close, and to persuade him not to attack. Telling Trump that a deal is close feeds into what he wants to believe – that the joint Israeli-US operation coupled with threats against Iran have forced them to submit to his demands. So I think officials from Pakistan et al are simply lying to Trump about what Iranians are willing to agree to, while perhaps telling Iranians Trump is more flexible on certain matters. 

A number of critics of Trump have come to assume that he will agree to any deal just to be able to declare the war over, so that oil prices can go down ahead of the midterms. But so far, that has not been the case. If Trump were willing to sign onto anything, he would have struck a deal already. At the same time, he is clearly eager to get the war over with and plainly isn’t interested in a resumption of war on the scale that it would take to either A) Eliminate Iran’s ability to assert control over the Strait of Hormuz or B) Topple the regime. This is why we have been in a holding pattern — Trump won’t agree to just any deal, the Iranians won’t agree to a deal that respects Trump’s red lines, and Trump won’t go back to full-scale war. 

As far as I can tell, the original plan was to bomb Iran for a few weeks and walk away with a better government, a good deal, and/or a heavily degraded Iran. But Iran’s harassment of ships trying to pass through the Strait of Hormuz made it impossible to walk away with that as the status quo. 

It should be abundantly clear that the current regime in Iran cannot be trusted, and will never agree to a deal that would meet the criteria Trump himself has established. So if he isn’t willing or ready to go all the way militarily, to me the least bad option would be for Trump to announce that negotiations are over, and so are major military operations. However, he will maintain the embargo against Iran until traffic is freely flowing through the Strait of Hormuz.

This obviously wouldn’t be a perfect outcome. It would not immediately relieve oil prices or resolve Republican worries in November. It also could linger for quite awhile. But the U.S. could withstand the economic disruption from the Strait of Hormuz longer than Iran could endure an economic embargo. Given how depleted the Iranian Navy is, sustaining an embargo would take a lot less effort than a resumption of full-scale military action. Even if an extended blockade doesn’t lead to a complete economic collapse, as some have speculated it might, it would certainly make it a lot harder for Iran to rebuild its conventional military, its ballistic program, and restart its nuclear efforts. It would help lock in place the gains made by the bombardment of Iran. Meanwhile, Trump would no longer look desperate for a deal, which ultimately Iran needs a lot more than we do.