Graeme Wood

So it's possible that they're looking for someone who can be compromised like that.

But they're digging pretty deep and killing a lot of people before they're coming to someone they're satisfied with.

I mean, I think part of this is just a kind of controlled chaos of negotiation, which is the mode that Trump seems to prefer.

So understandably, we listen to what the president of the United States says when he says what he'd be satisfied with.

But then, of course, we have to remember that this president doesn't seem to know himself what he would be satisfied with.

And so we can't quite take that as a as a direct negotiating position like today.

Trump said that the current leaders of the regime are people he can work with.

And do we take that at face value, which sounds a lot like the democratic aspirations of the Iranian people matter not one bit to him?

Right.

As oil markets open up, he says there's people at the top we can deal with, which would cause the hearts of Iranian Democrats, who have, of course, lost 30,000 people very recently, to sink.

But then again, it may also be that if you're opening negotiation, which he is with someone, then you don't want to say at the beginning of negotiation, there's no negotiation that can happen because then the negotiation stops.

So again, there's weird and conflicting messaging that we're getting, and it might just reflect the weird and conflicting thoughts of our commander in chief.

Yes, that's what the Iranians have said.

Kalibov, who's thought to be kind of the day-to-day operator of the Iranian state, said, yeah,

Trump cares a lot about energy markets, and so he should disregard a lot of what he says, which sounds wise to me, actually.

Yeah.

I mean, a lot of what's happening right now is there's an accumulation of problems.

There's realities that become more real as time goes by.

The straightforward moves, of course, it could be opened up and it would flow just like it always did if there was some agreement that could be reached.

But now, of course, the markets are starting to have to price in.