Richard Miniter

But does Trump feel pressure?

It doesn't appear that he does.

A man under pressure would do things differently than he's doing at the moment.

A man under pressure would either escalate in the hopes that that might somehow work or urgently take any deal.

We don't see either one of those things happening.

What amazes me about observers of President Trump is they never go and read his three books, especially The Art of the Deal.

if he was under pressure, he would be acting in the ways that he would outline how to get out of bad deals in The Art of the Deal.

Instead, he still thinks that he has all of the important cards, and he does.

There are things that his critics don't seem to be able to imagine, which are obvious next steps.

Here's two of them.

One, start sinking the Shadow Fleet.

Instead of interdicting them and chasing them around the world, just torpedo them and let them sink in the middle of long, cold, dark oceans.

Iran will immediately notice that because if they can't turn crude into cash, they can't keep paying off their internal constituencies and stay in power.

The second thing he could do is to tell Qatar, you will no longer pay the $500 million rent for the South Pars gas field to Iran.

Instead, you will pay it into a fund the US will control and hold an escrow for the rebuilding of Iran after this unpleasantness.

if either one of those things or both of those things happen, which there are other things Trump could do that are not kinetic military activity to increase the pressure on Iran.

Also, I see that the public diplomacy of the State Department is finally moving forward with more Farsi language messaging, more messaging in Kurdish and Baha'i, and more attempt to now talk to the Arabs in Awaz.

That's the little bit of Western Iran that borders the southwest of Iraq.

So they're becoming a little more sophisticated in trying to connect with Iranian opinion.

There are various points of leverage.