No. of Recommendations: 10
3:00 Kent talks about the US putting "poison pills" in their demands to sabotage the negotiations. 3:50 negotiations are "theater",
Gotcha. Yeah, that’s completely unpersuasive. There’s no real argument or evidence as to why they’re labeling the talks as “theater,” other than the fact that Trump has included some maximalist wishes that Iran will never agree to. Which - has Joe Kent even *met* Donald Trump? That’s like one of his most standard moves. He always asks for insane things well outside the deal space as part of a negotiation. He seems to think it helps. So of course that’s part of these discussions.
Look, Joe Kent is all about the idea that Israel is secretly controlling US foreign policy. Which if one wants to believe that they’ll have a lot of company, since people love to believe in secret reasons why things are happening or hidden controlling cabals.
I’m more of an Occam’s razor kind of guy. Trump has been obviously and consistently claiming that the US can get a ridiculously good deal from Iran for the last eleven years, and that Obama was an idiot for agreeing to anything less than total capitulation from them. Again, that’s been the drumbeat since the JCPOA. He had the chance to test that theory in his first term with his “maximum pressure” period of sanctions, which utterly failed - but Trump doesn’t learn from failure. So after Venezuela made him think that there was an easy win just sitting in the table in Iran for any President with the balls to use force, of course he jumped at it.
That’s it. No secret plan to raise oil prices (which he gains nothing from). No hidden motive to help someone other than himself (which is literally the most un-Trump thing ever). No hidden cabal or secret deals. He thought it would be easy because he is arrogant and unthoughtful, and now that it turns out to be a complicated and no-win situation he’s doing everything he can to try to get Iran to bail him out of his mistake.
