Jeremy Scahill

Trump very much brags about his close relationship with the Chinese leader.

And so I think China is also looking at this and saying Donald Trump's going to be here in a matter of days.

He doesn't want to cruise into Beijing and

on a sort of failure tour.

And so I think Trump is the one who's desperate right now.

And the Iranians are aware of that.

Trump wants some piece of paper he can point to where he can claim that he's now, again, ending a war, by the way, which he started, and then rolling into China so that he can feel like he's sort of the good guy in all of this.

The cards are in the Iranians' hands right now to an extent.

And so I wouldn't look for them to be doing any radical concessions.

Trump is the one who's kind of backed himself into a corner here just in the short term.

Yeah, I mean, as I said at the onset, I think it was a factor.

And you have to remember also that right now there's a competition between and a jockeying for prime position in the Gulf between the Saudis and the Emiratis.

And the tensions and the conflict between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates also goes back to the civil war in Sudan.

You know, the United Arab Emirates is widely seen around the world as facilitating massive war crimes in Sudan.

The Saudis were back channeling and trying to get Trump involved with that in a deeper way.

The Emiratis, by exiting OPEC, you know, recently won Trump's praise.

They are increasingly overtly and openly intense in their praise of Iran.

Israel and their claims that they're going to start deeper military cooperation.

And I think that, you know, the Kuwaitis and the Saudis, I mean, Kuwait in particular took a massive beating in this war.

And it's the place where the single largest number of American soldiers were hit.