Thomas Small

Where is President Trump really sort of standing?

He makes a big sign about wanting a deal.

He's been flattering the Supreme Leader.

Now, Mustafa Khamenei calling him a genius, calling him a man of courage, all of these things, very strange language, given that two months ago, that's not the language he was using.

I believe the language before was something like an animal who who deserved to be utterly destroyed along with Iranian civilization.

So the tune has changed.

desire for a deal is clearly at the forefront of the president's mind maybe the iranian regime is trying to make sure that the president is you know is as irenic at the moment as he seems to be that's just that's just a guess

Trump must know that.

I think Richard...

probably can speak better to what might be going on in President Trump's mind.

I find it to be almost impossible to make sense of much of what Trump does or thinks.

I'm a little bit, I'm sure compared to Richard, a little bit less inclined to be generous to Trump.

He doesn't seem to me to be anything like a strategic genius at all.

I think it's all pretty ad hoc.

I think it is just possible

that President Trump may feel that the political consequences of liberating the Strait of Hormuz and as it were finishing the job, which the hawks

within the American security establishment still wish to happen, which his allies in the region wish to happen, certainly Israel, but also in the Gulf.

He may feel that the political consequences are just too costly to bear and that the world will adjust.

You know, it is obviously catastrophic to the global economy that the Strait of Hormuz has been closed for as long as it has been.

It will not reopen, probably.