Saagar Enjeti

And so, look, it's one thing if you're using hardball tactics in some sort of a development deal.

But...

The words of a president, even this president, they are consequential.

Yes.

You know, now you have normalized the idea of us overtly threatening genocide.

Yes.

And acting like that is fine.

And, you know, and insulting religion here, you know.

And we have, you know, millions of Muslims who live in this country.

I'm referring to the, like, praise be to Allah tweet.

And the more you frame this war as some sort of religious blood feud,

the less likely you are to be able to get out of it, which is why it's so troubling, you know, from the Israeli side, from the U.S., all of the insertion of all this religious language and use of religious imagery into, you know, what is a political dispute is, I think, a really, really troubling development in this, too.

In real time.

And by doing so, let's put A12 up on the screen, because this is true to Parsi's analysis, which I think really speaks to what Emily was just saying there.

In doing so, with all of his bluster, he is actually undercutting the negotiations that he himself desperately wants to succeed.

So what Dr. Parsi says here is, to understand how Trump is undermining his own diplomacy by quickly declaring victory and trying to humiliate Iran whenever Tehran takes a de-escalatory step, it's instructive to remember what happened when Iran and the GCC had negotiated new guardrails for the war.

That was early on when there were some strikes against the GCC,

There was a moment where it appeared there was going to be an agreement between GCC member states and Iran, okay, we're not gonna attack each other.

And then Trump undercut that and said, oh, Iran's surrendering, and his triumphalist rhetoric humiliated them, and they walked away.

So what Trita goes on to say is, in short, Iran and the GCC were in the process of agreeing to a deal that would see the end of Iranian attacks on the GCC as long as their territory ceased being used for attacks on Iran.