Washington, D.C.

The Order from the Top

On Thursday, President Trump told the country he was done hunting a bargain with Tehran, and he told his vice president to change jobs. In a Truth Social post, reported by CBS News and others, Trump wrote: “We don’t need a deal with Iran. Those days have long since passed. We’ve got their money, Hundreds of Billions of Dollars, and we’ve got their Strait!” He directed Vice President JD Vance “to focus his complete and total attention” on what the president describes as crime and corruption in Democratic-run cities and states.

The instruction landed a day after the Wall Street Journal reported that Vance was considering a new meeting with a senior Iranian official. Vance had been the administration’s lead negotiator in the eight-month war. He traveled to Pakistan for talks and, after twenty-one hours, said the discussions had been substantive and that no agreement had been reached, per NPR. Vance has also been blunt in blaming the war—and its economic aftershocks—for last week’s Republican midterm losses, CBS noted. The president, earlier this week, said the war was militarily “effectively over,” while adding that it was a question of when Washington wanted to end it.

The Status Quo Has a Name

What has replaced a deal, for now, is pressure. Trump met Qatar’s prime minister this week and said Gulf Arab allies prefer the “status quo” of continued economic pressure, according to NPR. He wrote that the United States remains “locked and loaded,” but that an attack at this point “seems to be quite unlikely.” Meanwhile, Reuters and CBS reported that the U.N. nuclear watchdog is increasingly concerned that Iran is refusing inspectors access to an underground enrichment site in Isfahan, where highly enriched uranium is thought to be buried. A war can be “effectively over” in a speech and still unfinished in a tunnel.

Peace Is Not a Midterm Tactic

Lucid’s opinion is not that every negotiation is wisdom, or that Vance should ignore corruption at home. A republic ought to notice both. The trouble is the sequence. If the war helped cost the Congress, the honest response is to end the war rightly—by a settlement that can be defended, or by a policy that can be sustained—not to change the subject and call the subject a victory. Money frozen overseas and a strait under watch are instruments, not a peace. Instruments rust when no one will say what they are for.

The vice president can hunt fraud in American cities and still owe the country a clear account of Iran. The president can claim the military work is done and still owe the inspectors a door in Isfahan. A strait is a fact of geography. A deal is a fact of politics. A victory is a fact only when the shooting, the centrifuges, and the story all agree.

References

• CBS News: Trump says a deal with Iran is unnecessary; IAEA seeks access in Isfahan
• NPR: Trump redirects Vance from Iran to alleged fraud in Democratic-led states
• NPR: Gulf in limbo as Trump says no Iran deal is needed
• ABC News (Australia): Trump says the U.S. does not ‘need’ an Iran deal

Photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Matthew Riggs, U.S. Navy, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain; cropped and color-adjusted.