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Paul Edwards
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Negotiating is a complex and difficult process, at best, because the interests of the parties are in conflict. In a negotiation that is equitable, it is impossible for either party to get all it wishes. This is understood by both as the basis for making the effort.
In the case of people or businesses, even giant corporations, the consequences of failure to agree may be disappointing, damaging, or even devastating. In the case of failure to come to agreement between states, they can be catastrophic.
There are understood parameters and ground rules that govern negotiations. A fundamental one is adherence to the question at issue, which means it has to be defined to mutual satisfaction.
Another is the tacit understanding that the parties will argue in good faith, that is that they will be honest in what they seek. To conceal a goal is to undermine the possibility of it working at all.
In private, civil negotiation, although the parties have different strengths and weaknesses in their positions, and one may have distinct advantages, it is accepted that intimidation or force of any kind can not be permitted to influence the outcome.
In negotiations between states, there may be no such constraint, and no limitation on elements of force enforced, although overt threatening may end a nation’s intent to proceed. Nothing but self-interest inclines states to negotiate, and each must weigh the likelihood of gain against the risk of loss. If one or both parties see no prospect of gain, negotiation has no basis.
It has to be assumed, then, that both Iran and The Empire are negotiating because they each see a prospect, however remote, of a good outcome. If so, one, or both, are deluded.
The abrogated treaty, the JCPOA, was based on limiting and defining the permissible use of nuclear material by Iran, and only on that. The current demand articulated in Trump’s proposal, is for a much broader, completely different, comprehensive plan.
In it, Trump makes demands outside those for nuclear limitation, and altogether dissociated from it. One is weaponry related and another is socio-political. The one regarding weapons requires elimination of all missiles, offensive and defensive, and the other requires humane treatment of violent dissidents.
What Trump wants—and that is all that matters in The Empire now—is a totally revised treaty that disarms Iran, disempowers it completely, and makes it subject to his will. This is a complete departure from the central issue—restriction of Iran’s nuclear material—and Iran has declared those issues not negotiable. In effect, the states are not agreed even on the matter that is to be negotiated, so the effort is, by definition, DOA.
It is difficult to understand how Iran’s leaders have any hope of an understanding with Trump. One has to believe they don’t, and will meet knowing it is useless, but desiring to insure an attack on Iran can not be justified by their resistance to a deal. It is not as if they had no previous experience with the man and his word.
Trump, in his ludicrous, infantile, performance art presidency, has shown to the world at large a wide range of bizarre, outlandish, contemptible behaviors, and made a dingy series of idiotic and unrealizable demands that have proven what he is. As if any emphasis were needed, he has given and broken his word so often in matters of consequence that it is what is expected now.
It can safely be said that there is no political leadership anywhere that would ever take his tarnished word for anything. He is unbalanced, erratic, and fundamentally dishonest, and evidently proud of it, as only a demented deviant could be.
Having bombed Iran once, as prelude to this latest parley he has moved a carrier strike force off its coast, after months of beefing up The Empire’s bases in the Gulf in so flagrant a way that the whole region knows it. It calls to mind watching a Texas Hold’em hand in which a player flips his pocket bullets face up on the table.
This obvious aggressive preparation has so shaken many of The Empire’s ostensible Arab allies—the corrupt, dictatorial punks and grifters that exist under its power—that they have thrown their slight weight into a serious effort to prevent the inevitable.
What must be borne in mind is that this psychopath had all his training in the sleazy, brutish world of shyster chiseling hustles and scam black bag finance, where dirty leverage always won.
His Capo act has had wins with weak victims, but none with A Players, but his torqued ego tells him he has the cards in this hand. Like Don Corleone, he thinks he’s made them an offer they can’t refuse. He’s put the horse’s head in their bed, is all in, and expects them to fold. He’s wrong. Iran will call.
Iran knows him and what he will do, and its leadership is united. They know that submission will not buy security or even respite, and that they must risk all this time, or they will surely lose all.
There will be war. Soon. With great consequences. Military minds have had their say, but Trump does not have the humanity to imagine the horror. As Cassius said of Caesar, “Ye gods, it doth amaze me that a man of such a feeble temper could so get the start of the immortal world and bear the palm alone”.
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