Investment Strategies / Mechanical Investing
No. of Recommendations: 17
Just to recap…
Iran Deal By Obama:
•Strait of Hormuz open for free
•Iran limits Uranium enrichment
•Iran agrees to make no nuclear weapons
•Iran allows Int'l inspectors to ensure compliance
•Inspectors confirm Iran's full compliance
Iran Ceasefire By Trump:
•Strait of Hormuz closed, only open for $2M Per Ship
•Iran makes no guarantee of limit on uranium enrichment
•Iran makes no guarantee of no nuclear weapons
•Iran makes no guarantee to allow Int'l inspectors
Iran Deal by Obama:
•0 Americans killed
•0 Iranians killed
•0 bombs dropped
•$0 spent on war
Iran Ceasefire by Trump:
•15 American soldiers killed, ~700 injured
•1900 Iranian civilians killed, 26,000 injured
•$45 BILLION in taxpayer money wasted
•18 countries bombed or involved in war
MAGA: Trump Playing 5D Chess! Art Of The Deal!!
No. of Recommendations: 11
I'm as skeptical of the Iran war as the next guy. And I remain skeptical of the Administration's position now.
However....we don't know any of the details of the "deal" yet.
Hegseth and Trump are claiming that Iran has agreed to stop enrichment altogether (not just stay below a threshold) and allow the U.S. to remove all their enriched material. The former would be a shift past where the JPCOA had us (though no mention of monitoring), and the latter would be a really significant achievement.
Iran has confirmed none of that, however. It's not in their 10-point plan, and in their Farsi statements (though not the English ones) they stated that the agreement allows them to keep enriching uranium. The 10-point plan contains such provisions as:
The lifting of all primary and secondary sanctions on Iran.
Continued Iranian control over the strait of Hormuz.
US military withdrawal from the Middle East.
An end to attacks on Iran and its allies.
The release of frozen Iranian assets.
A UN security council resolution making any deal binding.
Those all seem....unlikely to be agreed to by the Administration. Which makes it puzzling that Trump would say that the 10-point plan will be the basis of the final agreement.
So I think we're in a position where anything might be going on. We might be heading into a deal that's very favorable to the U.S. We might be heading into a deal that's very favorable for Iran. We might even be in a position where there isn't any deal at all - the parties might just be mistaking each others' positions and think there's been an agreement where there actually hasn't, because they weren't engaged in the sort of actual diplomatic discussions that have clear lines of communication that minimize such misunderstandings. Or the parties might know that there's no deal, but find it mutually beneficial to act as though there is one so that there can be a ceasefire for a bit.
We don't know. I find Trump's adoption of Iran's 10-point plan as the basis for negotiations baffling, since it really has nothing in it that he wants, but I also wouldn't be shocked if he just made a mistake in his social media post (the dangers of conducting diplomacy through that medium). Certainly it's got Lindsay Graham vibrating. I doubt he thinks Trump has given away the store in exchange for setting up a toll on the Straits but letting the U.S. wet its beak with that sweet, sweet oil and gas money....but he might be concerned that Iran isn't agreeing to give up its nuclear program.
Anyway, we'll see in the next two weeks. It's always two weeks....
No. of Recommendations: 3
Certainly it's got Lindsay Graham vibratingAnd also, apparently, Laura Loomer:
Conservative influencer Laura Loomer sharply criticized the temporary ceasefire agreement reached by the U.S. and Iran on Tuesday evening, railing against diplomatic negotiations as a “negative for our country.”
Loomer slammed the deal repeatedly in a flurry of social media posts, starting shortly after President Trump announced the two-week pause on escalating strikes in the Middle East.
“We didn’t really get anything out of it and the terrorists in Iran are celebrating,” she wrote in one post on social platform X.https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/582168...Again, she doesn't know what "the deal" is going to be any more than we do. But it's interesting to see whether the Iran hawks that went out on a limb to support the war end up satisfied with what the end result is.
No. of Recommendations: 11
We might even be in a position where there isn't any deal at all - the parties might just be mistaking each others' positions and think there's been an agreement where there actually hasn't, because they weren't engaged in the sort of actual diplomatic discussions that have clear lines of communication that minimize such misunderstandings.Replying to my own post, it's beginning to look as though this is actually a pretty likely scenario. Iran has been claiming that the ceasefire covered Lebanon, allowed them to impose a toll on Hormuz, and allowed them to enrich uranium; the Administration has said that they were perfectly clear that none of those things is accurate. Given the informal, unstructured nature of the deliberations - and the lack of any direct high-level diplomatic engagement - it's entirely possible that neither side really understood what the other side thought the deal was.
Hopefully the ceasefire holds anyway. But Iran's asserting that the U.S. is violating the deal:
Iran’s parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf accused the U.S. on Wednesday of violating the two-week ceasefire agreement.
“The deep historical distrust we hold toward the United States stems from its repeated violations of all forms of commitments — a pattern that has regrettably been repeated once again,” Ghalibaf said in a statement posted on social media.
Three parts of Iran’s 10-point ceasefire proposal have been violated, Ghalibaf said. The violations are Israel’s continued attacks on Lebanon, the entry of a drone into Iranian airspace, and the denial of the Islamic Republic’s right to enrich uranium, he said.
“In such situation, a bilateral ceasefire or negotiations is unreasonable,” the parliamentary speaker said.https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/08/ceasefire-iran-war...
No. of Recommendations: 6
Anyway, we'll see in the next two weeks. It's always two weeks....
Yup. Two Weeks Again Trump.
Perhaps include in your analysis that neither side trusts the other... at all. And both are correct to not trust the other because they are equally untrustworthy.
"What's the point in calling shots, the cue ain't straight in line. Cue ball's made of styrofoam, and no ones got the time." - Grateful Dead.
