Negotiating With Crazy Bastards
The Madmen Theory doesn't work when both sides are using it.
Reuters (“Iran, US receive plan to end hostilities, immediate ceasefire, source says“):
“All elements need to be agreed today,” the source said, adding the initial understanding would be structured as a memorandum of understanding finalised electronically through Pakistan, the sole communication channel in the talks.
Axios first reported on Sunday that the United States, Iran and regional mediators were discussing a potential 45-day ceasefire as part of a two-phase deal that could lead to a permanent end to the war, citing U.S., Israeli and regional sources.
The source told Reuters Pakistan’s army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, has been in contact “all night long” with U.S. Vice President JD Vance, special envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi.
Under the proposal, a ceasefire would take effect immediately, reopening the Strait of Hormuz, with 15–20 days to finalise a broader settlement. The deal, tentatively dubbed the “Islamabad Accord,” would include a regional framework for the strait, with final in-person talks in Islamabad.
There was no immediate response from U.S. and Iranian officials. Pakistan’s foreign office spokesperson Tahir Andrabi declined comment.
Iranian officials have previously told Reuters that Tehran was seeking a permanent ceasefire with guarantees they will not be attacked again by the U.S. and Israel. They have said Iran has received messages from mediators including Pakistan, Turkey and Egypt.
The final agreement is expected to include Iranian commitments not to pursue nuclear weapons in exchange for sanctions relief and the release of frozen assets, the source said.
Two Pakistani sources said Iran has yet to commit despite intensified civilian and military outreach.
“Iran has not responded yet,” one source said, adding proposals backed by Pakistan, China and the United States for a temporary ceasefire have drawn no commitment so far.
Given how slim the prospects for achieving broader U.S. goals in the conflict are, this would be an ideal outcome. It would provide an offramp from either sending in U.S. ground troops or doing massive damage to Iranian civilian infrastructure.
I am, alas, highly skeptical. It’s not clear that President Trump could be persuaded to take this deal. More importantly, I don’t know why Iranian leaders, who believe they are winning, would be willing to take assurances from Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu that they won’t renew hostilities.
Trump famously reneges on deals all the time, seeing compliance with terms he’s agreed to as foolish. He already dashed JCPOA, which was as good a nuclear deal with Iran as we’re likely to ever get, given the two sides’ leverage. At the same time, IRGC and other regime leaders clearly don’t care about the well-being of the Iranian people, so threats to bomb the country “back to the stone ages” are not particularly concerning. If anything, carrying out that pledge would cement America’s status as the Great Satan for generations.
As has been the case since the war started, I simply have no idea how it ends. I strongly suspect that’s the case within the Trump administration as well.
Fatso already bombed Iran twice while in the midst of negotiating.
I have no idea why Iran would trust him.
I know I don’t.
It would be just as nuts for the Iranians to treat Trump and Netanyahu as credible negotiators. It’s not their fault they are actually fighting the Great Satan: a treacherous and deceptive foe who does nothing but lie. Why would they even believe they’re about to be bombed back into the stone age? Why not wait and see if Trump plays the market and extend the deadline for another two weeks?
It’s not Madman Theory any more — it’s Agreement Incapable Theory.
The US has shown itself to intentionally not follow any treaty.. in reality, “ceasefire” with the US now means “everyone else ceases, the US fires.”
Even if the US walks away, Israel won’t.
Note that Iran was following the JCPOA but Trump tore it up because of woke.
How many more US troops have to die because Trump has too many emotions to take the L?
As always, Republican feelings need to be handled like a baby hummingbird even though they posture as macho.
There is zero path to a US win here, the only thing that needs to change is Trump accepting it. Ground invasion is going to get everyone killed – if not in the first wave then to attrition, especially of the logistics that will resemble Japan trying to resupply Guadalcanal.
Madman theory was always a myth anyway–something that people who favor belligerence just sort of assume must be true despite there being very little evidence that this is the case.
We’d be the Great Satan beyond the borders of Iran as well – and deservedly so.
Things are going as badly as I thought they would with Trump II. And that’s worrying because my job, the thing I’m good at is plotting. I mostly write spec fiction and not romance, so my groove is conflict. I will almost always be darker, more dire than reasonable people because my brain is constantly running scenarios that start from, ‘OK, what horrible shit can happen next?’ *
I’m not surprised by what’s happening, and that’s not good. Reality should not be a story written by Michael Grant or KA Applegate.
*Almost literally true. One of the reasons I am so much fun at parties is because while normal people are chatting I’m thinking gunfire, disease, panic, madness, and wondering if I shoved a martini glass in someone face would the bowl shatter but the stem remain intact to plunge deep into their eye?
@Gavin: The Madman Theory presumed at least one of the parties had moral and/or ethical lines that could not be crossed, as well as an obligation to the populace they represented. When both sides are being led by “crazy bastards” the theory is rendered null. It’s too bad that the International Criminal Court is a paper tiger, or Trump and Netanyahu could share a cell with Putin.
Jamelle Bouie:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVnFTrohaP4
I would note that Iran is actually acting more like a rational actor. It is leveraging its tactical advantages to try to preserve the regime. They are behaving like international relations theory would more or less assume.
This is simply a dispassionate assessment, not an endorsement of the regime.
@Steven L. Taylor: Absolutely. The only sense in which they’re “irrational” is a non-technical one: they’re extremely insensitive to the death and/or misery of their civilian population. But that’s rational in the context of IR theory and an authoritarian, arguably totalitarian, regime.
@James Joyner:
It’s also not surprising when the majority religion favors martyrdom. It’s like fighting the Japanese in WW2. It’s hard fighting people who see death as, in many ways, a good thing.
The most exigent factors:
This
And this
Iran has more leverage to achieve their foreign policy aims now then ever before, having been pressed into a corner with little left to lose. And America has become the quintessential “not an honest broker” under Trump. Too much stick, not enough carrot. We overplayed our hand.
Yes, Trump will break agreements, but only when he isn’t worried about the consequences.
For instance, he will decline to pay bills he is legally obligated to pay, because the worst case scenario is: He has to pay the bills, plus a little bit. Best case is he never has to pay.
In the thing with Iran, they have an ongoing threat on the Strait of Hormuz. That can be shut down at any time. He appears as though he doesn’t want to/can’t commit the necessary forces to keep it open. So that’s the threat that keeps him complying. I’m not so sure if Israel cares as much.
Saddam pretty much lost the Iraq-Iran War very early on, and knew it. Within two years, Iran had invaded his country. Then there followed years of war of attrition. Largely because Iran refused peace overtures and offers to negotiate an end to the war. So we had the tanker war, the missile war, chemical weapons, human wave attacks, until pretty much both sides were done by 1988.
Iran is causing the US, Israel, and the Gulf countries a great deal of economic damage, disproportionate to the size of its armed forces. I don’t see them giving up any time soon, especially since, as has been noted, the regime has little issue with paying the price with the lives and blood of its citizens.
Unfortunately they are also causing a great deal of damage to the rest of the world as well, especially to low income countries.
To think El Taco might have “renegotiated” the JCPOA by adding a few touches and extracting minor concessions, declared it the best deal ever!11!!111, and passed it as a formal treaty in the Senate and plastered his hideous name on it.
Arab capital flows into the U.S. are at risk:
“Dropsite“
I wouldn’t bet money on it but it’s plausible the Iranians would want a ceasefire even though they know all terms agreed to are not worth the paper they are written on. They are taking a pounding, China is a rational actor with massive resources and wants this to end. China might be able to talk the Iranians into accepting a truce in exchange for aid. Particularly if Iran continues to accept yuan in payment for oil.
I wish journalists would also keep from whitewashing Iran. The Mad Mullahs are not collecting tolls for passage through Hormuz. They are collecting protection money for safe passage. After all, the only thing that prevents passage is the threat of being attacked by Iranian drones or missiles.
Clarity aside, El Taco says it should be the US charging “tolls.”
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
@Kylopod:
The “good cop/bad cop” gambit isn’t 100% effective but proven to be effective in a lot of cases, and it’s pretty much what Kissinger and Nixon tried to play with the North Vietnamese. IMO, this isn’t relevant to the current situation, as it’s not a gambit when one or more players are genuinely insane. I suggest a listen to Trump’s rantings of today.
@dazedandconfused:
The Trumpists say their foreign policy is based on downplaying Europe to focus on China. Depriving Asia of oil, gas, fertilizer, and helium seems a poor way to strengthen our hand there. Everybody’s going to want to partner with whoever can provide stability. What a fuckin’* disaster.
* If Trump can say it in his official (what do you call a Truth post, a dump?), I figure I can in an adult comment thread. I did see someone say the dump was obviously ghost written, everything was spelled correctly.
We keep saying that both sides, President Trump, and the Iranian leadership are showing through their rhetoric that they are crazier than shit house rats, but I think the Iranian leadership is well aware of what they are trying to accomplish with their words. I feel that the Iranians want to push Trump into using a Nuclear bomb.
The last time a nuke was dropped from one country onto another was of course back in WWII, and I have to say that Trump is no Truman. We can talk all day long about how he seems to be all powerful, but Truman he is not. He can be taken down and while it is an extremely dangerous gambit to push Trump to the point of outright saying I am going to nuke you, I do believe the Iranians feel they have no choice but to push Trump to this point.
If they simply give up and let the U.S. control all the oil in their region their days as a country are numbered, whether or not a truce is declared (what is to stop the U.S. and Israel from saying, we control all the oil in this part of world, and to make sure Iran does not at some future date try to take back this control we need to bomb them into the stone age).
If they agreed to let Trump control the SOH, if I were SA and other countries in that nation I would say hell no to that idea.
If Trump continue to bomb them “into the stone age,” Iran has no incentive to not f up as much infrastructure in other countries in the that area of world, but a nuke drop would pretty much render Iran impotent. I say this because all this talk of only using “tactical” nukes is so laughable (in the sense that by using smaller yield bombs we can “control” the fallout), more than one nuke would need to be used, and regardless of the size of the nuke, using so many nukes in such a relatively small area of land would create fallout that will impact not just Iran but many nations that are a hop, skip, and a jump away from Iran (such as Israel).
You would need to drop at least 1-2 tactical nukes per identified hardened sites, so Iran could not recover what they are protecting in these sites for the next 10,000 years, then you would need to discourage the rest of the population of Iran from getting their dander up and resisting the U.S. post nuke drops by dropping a few nukes on population centers so as much as 25-40% of the population of Iran would be pretty much killed instantly or shortly thereafter due to the bomb’s fallout effects.
Of course, pretty much the entire planet would have to pray that most of the fallout from nukes being used ends up blowing out over our oceans (hey, the meat council will be able to go wild with slogans like eat more Texas grown cow flesh unless you too want to end up a mutant due to eating 3 eyed fish), but hey…most folks could finally agree that Iran would no longer be a problem.
There was time a time when I would apologize for the above by saying I am just spazzing out and ranting about issues of which I offer no expertise, so feel free to ignore my ignorant rant but I feel like we are in a calm before the storm situation. Things feel weird and we really are in uncharted territory when the President of the U.S. uses his social media platform to tell another nation to effing open the Strait of Hormuz or else on Easter Sunday of all days.
The GOP should be universally condemning the President for his rant on Truth Social, but instead…crickets. Or maybe I am just looking in the wrong places (please tell me I am looking in the wrong places, unlike a certain President I have no qualms if I am told I am wrong).
@gVOR10:
I call it a lie.
But dump will do as well.
Perhaps all this military action over the past 6 months has prevented Iran from building a nuclear weapon, but nothing stops them from acquiring a nuclear weapon. It is possible they possess one, or the components to assemble one now. This is the scenario that worries me most — stealthy nuke weapons that can be delivered by non conventional means. We would never see it coming.
That is why I have been less concerned about Iran’s visible, nuclear program, other than the destabilizing effect it would have on regional geo-politics. If they had a monitored program, as the Obama Administration had put in place, then we would have kept tabs on their progress, and most importantly they know that we know, and that we have the capability of a complete nuclear response far in excess of their own capability. We know who and where they are. Now we have driven their nuclear ambitions to complete secrecy, with possible cloaked proxy involvement.
It would have been far wiser to have negotiated a return to the global fold without forcing them into a corner to fight this out.