For two months, President Trump has been touting the success of negotiations with Iran to end the war, open up the Strait of Hormuz, and silence the regime’s nuclear ambitions. For all the world to see, it seemed like a one-sided negotiation. In fact, who was negotiating for the U.S. all this time? Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Vice-President JD Vance were nowhere near any negotiating table except for one day early on.
It appears that Trump has finally been forced to admit that Iran has been playing him for a fool all along, just as he has been playing the American public with his endless promises of a deal in “a day or two,” or “this weekend,” or whenever soon happens to be.
In remarks to the press this morning, Trump said the bombing of Iran that commenced after their downing of a U.S. helicopter would continue for a second day. Further, he admitted that negotiations were either stalled or, more likely, were never really started in the first place.
Question: How were we actually dealing with Iran — relying on Pakistan to negotiate for us?
“We were really close to a deal, but they keep tapping us along, they keep playing us for suckers,” Trump told reporters. “We want a deal that’s meaningful, we want a deal that works.” Result: bombs away.
Secretary of Defense/War Pete Hegseth seemed to sum it up more concisely: “If we need to negotiate with bombs, we’ll negotiate with bombs. And we’re very good at it. Nobody better in the world.”
After two months of some semblance of negotiations, Trump’s reliance on the “art of the deal” (also the title of a book he wrote) has given way to relying on Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War.” Sun Tzu’s famous book, which is studied at West Point, notes that “…we may say that to know yourself and to know your enemy, you will gain victory a hundred times out of a hundred.”
Using this standard, it appears that our approach has been deficient on both fronts: we don’t know ourselves as well as we think we do, and we certainly don’t know Iran. If we did, we never would have started the war, or once we did, we would have obliterated them, so they would have to crawl out of the rubble to sign a surrender.
Unfortunately, there was — and is — no middle path with the Islamic Republic of Iran, which now seems more determined and evil than before the U.S.-Israeli onslaught that started in February.
“The Art of War” also warns that “a protracted campaign depletes the state’s resources.” Which we have seen in the depletion of the U.S. arms stockpile, and at gas pumps and supermarkets, where prices are skyrocketing due to diminishing resources.
The time is now for a rapid and decisive end to this war, which appears to be possible only through the use of more military might — or by just giving in to Iran’s demands.
