Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian says trust is the reason nothing has gotten done. Iran doesn’t trust the United States to follow through on a deal, but no side in this conflict trusts the other. The real question is whether each side can be trusted to honor whatever agreement it makes. Iran’s leadership remains divided between what I’ve called the crooks and the death cultists. The crooks want money flowing again because they’re worried about what happens when it doesn’t. The death cultists believe any deal that fails to impose a deterrence price on the United States amounts to a slow suicide for the regime. To be honest, both sides have a point.
I’m surprised the two countries are even seriously talking because it doesn’t benefit Iran to reach a deal before the midterms. Iran only has so many cards to play, and one is creating domestic chaos for Trump. Its leaders have dined out for decades on the idea that they tanked Jimmy Carter against Ronald Reagan — that Iran made Reagan — and they’d like that lesson to reverberate through American politics again. Trump was cruising, and then he decided to cross Iran.
