Trita Parsi

But if the aim was that, you know, he needed to do something more aggressive because, you know, his other interventions are starting to lose force, it achieved the opposite.

Because essentially what people took away from that is that he does not have a plan.

He didn't say anything new.

And that's reflective of the fact that he doesn't have anything to say.

He doesn't have a plan.

And that led the markets to, you know, oil prices shot up again because the expectation that he himself had set was that this would be a statement, a speech in which he would talk about a winding down of the war.

And that is not what people took away from that speech.

The Iranians are expecting Trump to go in with ground troops.

They believe that this was a speech aimed at confusing everyone about his actual intent.

But because of the Easter holiday and a couple of days in which the markets will be closed, they believe that he is likely to attack this evening or tomorrow and that

Essentially, everything that Trump does, the Iranians interpret it in the worst possible way.

That is partly because of long-term paranoia, but also because of recent experience, given everything that Trump has done in terms of bombing them in the midst of negotiations.

I think these statements are two sides of the same coin.

On the one hand, you have the president coming out.

essentially declaring they have no enmity with the American people.

This is a long standing framing that they have.

They want to put the blame on this on Israel and essentially say, why is the U.S.

attacking Iran?

There's no enmity that necessitates this type of a conflict.

This is all because of Israel.