Trump, the boy who cried deal

You might be wondering why Trump keeps saying that he’s about to get a deal with Iran any minute now. Maybe today. Or tomorrow. Or in three days. Or might it be weeks from now? At this point nobody really knows. And granted, many people, including staunch Trump supporters, have started to question Trump’s approach to the whole Iran thing.

Doesn’t America have the guns to thoroughly glass Tehran three times over? Of course it has the firepower. Only fools could question that fact. It demonstrated it has the ability to surgically remove dictators at will, either in a Nike jumpsuit or a bodybag, whichever comes first.

Then why can’t Trump just ‘finish the job’ and stop what has been dragging for 100 days?

Ok, let’s do one of my favorite intellectual exercises and imagine that something Michael-Bay worthy happens. Trump does the nod, Hegseth nods in return, and Tehran, as well as any relevant IRGC outpost, bridge and power plant in Iran is turned into a Walmart parking lot. Just with a little more rubble than an actual Walmart parking lot.

Got that image in your head? Nice. What do you expect the Iranian regime is going to do in that situation? They will still have several dozen missiles and a couple hundred drones to launch. To... launch at what? Well, if I had to make a guess, I’d say they’d launch several of those at the UAE, or Bahrain, or Kuwait. Especially the latter two, since the UAE has demonstrated robust defense systems and the IRGC would want to do one and only one thing:

Maximum damage to whoever in the GCC that has even remote ties to Washington. Or despises the Iranian ‘ruling model’ of the past 47 years. Or both.

That’s the problem when you look at this from a ‘burn the ships’ perspective. Of course you’re not burning your own ships in this case, you’re burning the Iranian regime’s leeway to... well, exist as a proper country. Especially the ‘bomb the bridges and power plants’ part. That, in fact, will affect innocent Iranians more than the regime itself. In fact, that would actually turn neutral Iranians AGAINST America as well.

But the main problem for the Trump administration would be the *cornered* Iranian regime. Because we all know what happens when you corner rats. Or regimes, in this case. Burned ships mean there is no possibility of retreat and all that is left is to fight to the death and take with you as many enemies as you can. We can all agree that’s what would happen.

So, instead of glassing Tehran three times over, you take out their main missile pads, radar systems, naval units and then some. You send a strong message with a single request: drop your nuke dreams. That’s exactly what has been... politely requested since the start of the Iran war and to be fair with the Orange Man, the guy and Marco Rubio have been 100% consistent about that. Not ‘regime change’, not ‘justice for the tens of thousands protestors killed’, nope. The heart of the matter has always been nukes and nothing else. And since the bunker busters back in June 2025 didn’t finish the job, then that’s why a more ‘personal’ request had to be made.

I used to think that the IRGC were the same kind of dudes who blow themselves up in the name of religious reasons. But no, they happen to be quite smart and pragmatic about it and instead, they encourage and train and prop up other groups, like Hezbollah and the Houthis, to do the dirty bomb work for them. I guess that they like breathing more than they like the ‘death to America’ motto, so they appeal to proxies. That alone tells you that you’re dealing with people who are evil, yes, but at the same time they don’t want to end up in gibs in the name of whatever they believe.

And this, for the most part, has been obvious because of how the ceasefire has stayed put. Granted, some stray drones and missiles have broken the ceasefire here and there, but let’s not forget that upon the death of the Ayatollah, and the dubious cardboard replacement put in place, the IRGC is a group of thirty plus divisions that pretty much act on their own. So it’s not that hard to imagine that every time Iran’s president Pezeshkian is close to a deal with the Western Demons, a rogue IRGC commander decides to drive a pickup to the shore himself and launch a couple drones at Abu Dhabi. That’s not something that Tehran can actually control, and that’s by design by Tehran themselves. Trump’s words “A ceasefire in the Middle East is just shooting a bit less” (I’m paraphrasing here), are not that far from reality. The Middle East has always been extremely complex and I’m not even adding Israel and Lebanon.

So, right now I’m writing this and I’m sure that Trump must be sharing to his social media channels that either they’re really, really close to a great deal OR that he’s about to glass Tehran for good. In fact, he just said that he was about to take Kharg Island, which hosts 90% of Iran’s oil exporting capacity. I’m not going to say I have an uncanny ability to call out bluffs (I sometimes do, nevertheless), but my main question here would be, why wouldn’t you do exactly that, seize control of Kharg Island and use it as the main leverage since day one? Why wait one hundred days? Maybe there’s some kind of 7D military strategy here that someone can explain to me but I honestly can’t imagine how it could explain this in a simple way.

Which is why, understandably, people are starting to affirm that Trump is openly bluffing. I just did, in the previous paragraph. But there’s another approach, more subtle, that is Trump going step by step, ramping up the heat progressively to see if the Iran regime reacts at some point. But that wouldn’t make sense because 1) it’s 100 days of American military resources in the Arabian Gulf, 2) 100 days of the Iranian regime claiming that they’re the ‘resistance’ and they have ‘courage’ and whatever propaganda they can produce from the already stated fact that the United States has all the guns right now and 3) it’s 100 days of roller coasting headlines about the Iran war being the right thing to do or not. The markets follow suit, they have gone up and down in insane ways in the past three months and it’s not hard to imagine that whoever can predict what the headlines are going to say, is becoming quite rich about it. And since Trump is basically the main driver of headlines... well, even if you’re a Trump supporter you know there’s a huge conflict of interest in the [ generate tension -> headlines -> markets ] chain that Trump basically dominates.

Because, regardless of the outcome of the main topic of this war (Iran dropping their nuke dreams), this is going to have an actual impact in the November midterms. And Trump knows this. He’s still willing to go SLOW with Iran, and keep pushing for a deal, the same way he’s going slow with Venezuela. By the way, his latest remarks about Venezuela becoming a ‘very happy country’ and Venezuelans ‘very happy’, well, you know that message was certainly NOT for Venezuelans. That message is for Americans. Or, maybe Iranians. Because Venezuelans who are still in Venezuela have all the right to be pissed about every headline being about how ‘prosperous’ the local oil infrastructure is becoming and they’re worse than ever.

This is a good time to remind you that 1) I’m Venezuelan, 2) I don’t live in Venezuela and can’t return safely to the country and 3) I’ve always said that Trump was the miracle that the USA needed in 2024 and for my country, he’s been a net positive. I can’t expect, or no Venezuelan can expect 25+ years of corruption, drug cartels and terrorism hosting to be undone in a matter of months because I’ll tell you myself that the problem is not reds vs. blues. The problem in my country, is that reds AND most blues were on it all this time and that’s why the chavista-madurista machinery has stood for so long. Right now people want Delcy out but Delcy is the most pragmat-ish of the regime bunch so that’s the only channel Rubio can use to establish some sort of order. And that order is guaranteed by the gun pointing right at Delcy’s head, of course.

But I digress. Even so, the Venezuela example is not much different than the Iran situation. You can’t simply try to ‘glass Caracas’ and call it a day, because even if our military arm is not divided in 30 plus divisions like the IRGC, it was fractured enough to make the country absolutely ungovernable without cleaning the house first. And for Washington, a ‘clean’ Venezuela with actual elections is way more important than a regime-free Iran, because we’re in the same backyard. That’s why the Cuban regime is next.

You see, the Venezuela situation is complicated. The Iran situation is also complicated in its own way, and this is one of the reasons Trump can’t simply ‘finish the job’, because he knows that if he goes full Michael Bay on Iran, then forget about any sort of negotiation with them, and what is worse: Iran will make sure to hit back at the GCC countries, especially those who signed the Abraham Accords, not only with missiles and drones but with whatever proxies they can throw at them. And the GCC countries absolutely don’t want that. They want Iran to behave, yes; and they don’t want Iran to have nukes. In fact, nobody wants Iran to have nukes. It’s tragic what’s happening to Iranians, but in geopolitics you have to make pragmatic decisions in the best interest of your own citizens. And as long as the Iranian regime behaves (mostly) well, everyone will be OK with that.

The GCC countries understand the complexity of the situation, they want these matters to be settled, they know they NEED America’s support, and Trump knows he can’t just sweep-bomb the country. That’s why he pushes for a deal. Again and again. And that’s why he telegraphs that he’s about to hit Iran again. Maybe he will. Maybe he will actually take Kharg Island. I don’t think Iran has any capacity to retaliate against the United States or Israel, so the next best thing they can do is to inflict pain on their neighbors. I already wrote about that being the reason why they have been pummeling the UAE’s walls so hard, out of spite.

Which brings me to one thought: at this point it’s obvious that the Iranian regime REALLY, REALLY wants nukes. They’re willing to continue an asymmetric, attrition war to make sure that dream stays alive. Which in itself, should confirm what everyone thinks about them.

That’s why Trump keeps pushing for a deal. Not because he can’t land the finishing blow, but because in doing so he would precipitate a scenario way worse than the current one.