Trump's magic trick: Selling Obama's deal as his own victory

It has become a complete diplomatic circle now: Donald Trump's team is putting basically the same deal with Iran on the table that he tore up in disgust seven years ago – with him failing to endorse it.

After all the bombing, threats of civilization destruction, blockades against Iranians shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the Trump administration has offered Iranians a 20-year ban on nuclear weapons development. Iran already publicly said that a five-year ban is okay by them.

Only Donald Trump now is saying he does not back the offer made by his own vice president and government. How do we deal with a president and vice president who don't know what they are putting on the negotiating table? Just this week, it became clear that the U.S. will not extend relief on sanctions on Iran's oil sales that they lifted the previous week. What are we doing?

Is it a mystery why Iran, a contentious renegade country, "mistrusts" the U.S.?

So, we're either starting another round of talks or not, either looking for a deal or not, insisting on total capitulation that does not seem in the cards or not.

But of among all the back-and-forth movements, the development that Vice President JD Vance translated Donald Trump's "never" into a 20-year bar on nuclear weapons development had to stand out as among the strangest.

For that matter, a blockade of Iranian exports by the U.S. Navy after Trump insisted that Iran was in serious wrongdoing for stopping free movement through the Strait is also peculiar, with military, diplomatic and business experts alike wondering how this will be sustained. Still main issue was — and remains – a permanent standdown from acquisition of nuclear weapons.

A Messy Reality

War never goes according to plan. We now know that Trump started this one by ignoring intelligence about some of the most obvious effects, including missiles and drone damage to neighboring Gulf nations and the rocketing price of oil from Iran's squeeze on the Strait. His idea that a quick bombardment, campaign would bring about the fall of Iran's regime, and an uprising in the streets has disappeared into a messy reality with the U.S. isolated in seeking an exit ramp.

Iran has shown that the U.S. achievements in military objectives do not equal a strategic victory.

The U.S. entered negotiations skewed by the stranglehold on the Strait, rising prices, lack of political support at home – and now seriously mixed messaging. Even the boasts that the war is "almost over" that Trump told Fox News is at odds with the announcement that a third aircraft carrier group and thousands more troops are on the way to the Middle East send too many simultaneous messages.

And if Vance advanced the 20-year deal, we were left confused about how different it would have been form the deal negotiated a lot more deliberately by Barack Obama's administration – with full participation and endorsement of the international community, including Russia and China. It called for 15 years' ban, with close observation and other monitoring, removal of any potential fissionable material and a pathway to extend it upon expiration – a deal that Trump has attacked repeatedly as weak.

Trump and team should be removed from office for incompetence, never mind graft, undercutting NATO, mismanaging trade and economic concerns, and cheapening the brand of the U.S. military for egoistic purposes.

Unresolved 'Victory'

We've watched Trump set aside diplomatic and military advice to follow his 'gut,' suborn U.S. strategic goals to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's constant need to bomb, claim 'victory' for a strategic outcome that is a complete mess at best.

The entire logic of the Iran war was to permanently end Iran's ability to process uranium and to accept nothing less than the entire dismantling of its missile and drone programs, its proxy armies in Lebanon, Gaza and Yemen, to have a new government subservient to U.S. control – and, likely, a piece of Iran's oil reserves. We have exactly none of that, despite brilliant military targeting of Iran's naval, air, and radar.

Instead, Trump finds himself between a belligerent Iran and an unsupportive home front, with a looming congressional vote about cutting off funds for war, and rapidly declining voter support. He has lost respect in the world, is threatening to end our strongest alliance, helping Russia and China, and he seems lost in irrelevant, self-promoting social media posts that make him look mentally unstable.

If the difference truly is between a nuclear ban between 20 years and five, JD Vance, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, none of whom have substantive diplomatic or technical knowledge, should be able to bring off a compromise. That the result of this could be a negotiated settlement with Iran that looks very much like what was negotiated in 2014 and torn up in 2019 by Trump 1.0 is almost beyond comprehension.

That is, unless Trump decides to bigfoot all of it and insist that the settlement is not what he had in mind at all.

How Trump, who found the Obama administration deal appeasing and weak would now declare his own version of the same deal to be an unprecedented victory will be magic trick of the highest order.