Jon Lovett

You can see your way to something like, look, you're right.

They're so far apart.

We have no idea what the actual

like contours of a negotiation would look like.

But the truth is both Iran and the United States would benefit from the conflict ending.

That is like the undergirding truth of this entire war that never should have been fought in the first place.

But that can often be true while a war escalates and spins out of control.

Yeah.

Trump has this like belief in this strategic ambiguity and I'm not imputing secret method and like magic to Donald Trump's ability to negotiate, but he absolutely believes that there's value to being ambiguous, that that gives you leverage.

But eventually, eventually you have to actually say what you're for, right?

Like lay out what the actual end game would look like and accept some kind of a deal or the conflict goes on forever.

threats from the White House press secretary that you're going to kill more people unless you get a deal that has favorable terms.

All of that is the stick, but what is the carrot?

What does the deal look like?

What would you accept?

It can't look like Obama's deal because that's the dreaded Obama deal.

It has to be favorable enough that Iran's willing to accept it.

So what does it look like to be a real world actor here?

Well, I don't even... Like, he's just thinking of it as something very hard to rebuild quickly, something that would exact a great price for the government.

But on the other side of it, that's...