Trita Parsi

He's either going to have a deal or he's going to have total war.

And part of the reason why he's going in this direction, and this is really important to understand.

I was on this panel with Joe Ken two days ago and he made this point.

I want to repeat it.

If there was a military option for the United States that could turn the tables, that could reverse the situation in favor of the United States, Trump would have used it long time ago.

The reason why he hasn't is because it does not exist.

And it doesn't matter how courageous Lindsey Graham or Mike Pompeo or Mark Levine sound in their tweets.

They're not the ones that are going to be fighting this war.

They're not the ones that are going to be dying if they manage to convince Trump to go on the suicide mission.

But he has had enough of a survival instinct here to recognize that despite the fact that he's issued threats of this kind, he's not actualized them because he knows it won't work.

It will make the situation 100 times worse than it already is.

When we're seeing these things coming from Levine, et cetera, I hope this is the moment when Trump goes back to what he promised the American people, which was that he was going to kick these people out of government and that he was not going to listen to them.

He was not going to go for the endless wars that they constantly are presenting and pushing on American politicians.

There's one other element, though, however, that I think is really, really crucial.

The Iranians also have to be very careful here.

They cannot repeat what Trump otherwise constantly does, which is constantly tries to humiliate the other side.

He had very little sensitivity to the fact that all of these memes and pictures and things that he said during the negotiations made it more difficult for the Iranians to come to an agreement.

Now the Iranians have to be very careful not to gloat or do anything that would actually fuel the attacks by the neocons on Trump and potentially undermine Trump's ability to deliver on his end of the bargain.

And there was a tweet yesterday by the spokesperson of the foreign minister in which he compared this to the ill-fated Roman attempt to conquer Persia back in, I think it was 200 AD something, in which they were defeated by the Sassanidian king, Shah Putus II.

And essentially said that ultimately the Romans had to sue for peace on Ivan's terms at the time.