Saagar Enjeti

Tehran would first message steps in that direction, followed by GCC reciprocity.

But before the GCC got a chance to respond, Trump declared victory on true social, insulted and humiliated Iran, even issued further threats of complete destruction.

On top of that, U.S.-Israel also attacked a water desalination plant at Keshem Island.

Needless to say, this sabotaged the sensitive de-escalation talks and a promising opening was destroyed.

Trump's need for the optics of victory trumps what should be far more important, advancing U.S.

interests by ending this war and reaching a longer-term deal with Tehran.

It appears the same phenomenon occurred in the past few days.

When the Iranians, in a very vague tweet, declared the Strait as open as a de-escalatory step, in their terminology it's never been closed though, Tehran is only determining who can pass and who cannot while charging tolls, Trump failed to reciprocate and instead could not resist the temptation to declare victory and insult the Iranians.

What was designed to become the beginning of a mutual off-ramp

was instead turned by Trump into an escalatory ladder, resulting in additional threats by him this morning to knock out every single power plant, every single bridge in Iran.

Trump's lack of discipline and focus and his infantile prioritization of optics over reality are becoming significant obstacles to him achieving his own goals, exiting the war and striking a strong deal with Tehran.

This is not art of the deal, it's art of the self-sabotage.

So whenever there's sort of a tentative step taken by Tehran in the direction of, okay, let's deescalate, let's get back to the table, or let's have some sort of step rather than right up the escalatory ladder, let's take a step back.

Trump has to go in and tweet something insane and threaten them more and humiliate them and declare, oh, my God, see, they're surrendering, blah, blah, blah.

And so, of course, they're like, OK, we'll screw you.

We're going to go right back to it.

And that's kind of where we find ourselves now, where I think it was looking very plausible, especially with the sort of ceasefire in Lebanon, that that gave Iran enough cover.

Their negotiators, who were under a lot of pressure, by the way, from the IRGC, to not

come to some sort of deal at this point that gave them enough cover to say basically like, look, this was our demand.

They met our demand to get back to the negotiating table.