Adventures in Fantasy DiplomacyTrump says he's negotiating with Iran. Iran says he isn't. Who are you gonna believe?Another day in America’s self-immolation as a Great Power. More like this on my YouTube channel Transcript It’s Monday morning. Donald Trump has, at least for the time being, called off plans to bomb Iran’s civilian infrastructure. He has done so because, according to him, highly productive negotiations are underway involving the government of Iran, an invisible six-foot white rabbit, and his Canadian girlfriend. Hi, I’m Paul Krugman. What I just said is not strictly true, or it’s not all true. Trump did not say anything about the invisible rabbit or the Canadian, but the gist of it is true. He said that there’s highly productive talks underway. And shortly afterwards, the Iranian government and Iranian state media said, no, they aren’t. This is not happening. I’m not going to say that Iranian state media is necessarily a credible source, but the odds are that they are in fact telling the truth and the President of the United States is either lying or fantasizing or both. There’s really no reason at all to believe that anything like what he said is happening is in fact happening. Why do I say that, Aside from the fact that Trump has not exactly been truthful on a lot of things? But beyond that, there are three important reasons to believe he might be making this stuff up. First, he put himself in a very bad spot with his threat to commit a massive war crime if Iran doesn’t open the Strait of Hormuz. and must be looking for a way out. Another president at another time might say that on careful consideration, We have recalibrated the policy or something like that. Trump doesn’t do that. Trump is always winning, never admits that he’s had a setback, never admits that he’s changed his mind. So saying that, oh, the Iranians have come to the table, probably big, strong Iranians with tears in their eyes, but anyway, that the Iranians have come to the table and that’s why we’re not doing what I said we would do is a very Trumpian out. Second, Why would the Iranians be making a deal at this point? We can talk a lot about how the war is going, but it’s pretty clear that as the Iranians are likely to see it, they’re winning. I mean, they’re not winning militarily, but that was never on the cards. They are, they have successfully turned what was supposed to be a lightning decapitation of their government into a protracted contest in relative ability to bear pain and all indications are that the Iranians are nowhere near cracking and all indications are that the United States, although obviously we’re not losing thousands of people, and we are having our whole life disrupted, but the American public really doesn’t like higher gas prices, does not believe Trump. The clock is ticking for Trump on this in a way that it is apparently not for the Iranian regime. So Iran has has the upper hand here. And very hard to see why they would be wanting to make a deal until they basically humiliated us substantially more. Finally, consider possible motives. Imagine that you were somebody close to Trump, somebody close enough to actually have an influence on his decisions as well as inside knowledge. Here’s what you could have done really just between last night and now. You could have sold a bunch of crude oil futures, at very high prices, Brent was over $112 over the weekend, then bought them back immediately after Trump’s announcement of triumphal progress, but before the Iranians said that is not happening. And you could have turned a very, very nice, very large profit. To say that insider trading might be driving U.S. policy would have been outrageous. in the past. Who thinks that that’s beyond the realm of possibility now? So all of this could be happening. Last point to make here. Think about how much America’s position in the world has been weakened, not just by apparent failure to subdue a fourth-rate power, but by the fact that everybody now knows that you cannot trust anything, cannot trust any promises the United States makes, you cannot count on the United States carrying through with promises, with threats, not just promises, but threats are also incredible in the sense of not being all credible, and that the default assumption should be that anything that this administration says is a lie. That is a really, really bad thing. That is, you know, influence in the world power is not simply a matter of missiles and bombs, although we seem to be running low on those too. It’s very much a matter of people taking what you say and what you promise and what you threaten seriously. And we are not ruled by serious people. |
