It's a sad sort of commentary on the times we live in when the leaders of a country we are at war with sound more believable than the American president... but here we are. Donald Trump continues to flail around and issue blustery statements, but as always you have to wonder how much of it is bluster, how much of it is wishful thinking, and how much of it is just sheer delusion.

This weekend, Trump issued what certainly sounded like an ultimatum to Iran: open the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours, or we would start destroying their power plants. Us doing so would be a war crime (attacking civilian infrastructure), but that sort of nicety isn't going to stop Trump (or Pete Hegseth, for that matter). The deadline was supposed to be tonight.

Today, however, Trump apparently had second thoughts. Or the whole thing was just a bluff from the get-go. Either way, Trump completely reversed course and said that the U.S. and Iran were having "very strong" negotiations and were nearing agreement. Because this was so, Trump said, he was going to stop bombing the country for the rest of the week.

That's a pretty major flip-flop, you've got to admit -- from a take-it-or-leave-it ultimatum to a unilateral ceasefire in less than two days. The only problem with this new plan is that these negotiations with Iran seem to only be happening inside of Trump's head. The Iranians expressed surprise at Trump's statements and said no negotiations were taking place at all. The Israeli leader tried to split the difference, by just sort of vaguely alluding to negotiations without confirming or denying they were even happening. So it's impossible to know who to believe, but the Iranians certainly sounded pretty certain, while Trump seems to just be flailing around and making stuff up.

Maybe it was all due to Trump finally getting rattled by the high price of gas in America and the stock market continuing to slide downwards. Trump is very sensitive to the stock market, and his own approval numbers are heading way down as well. Announcing negotiations with Iran (whether real or imagined) did have the immediate effect of lowering the price of oil worldwide, and stocks were up for the day as well. Which has to have pleased Trump.

Trying to figure out what Trump's objectives are in this war are is a tough job, because they keep shifting and changing day to day. At the moment, the biggest objective seems to be to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which is having the largest effect on oil prices worldwide.

Or maybe this is all just buying time, as Trump prepares to escalate the war by putting American troops on Iranian soil. As with just about everything in this war, this was not initially planned, so ground troops had to be shuffled around on a global scale -- which takes time. Marines and their landing craft have to travel to get to the Middle East, so perhaps Trump is just buying a week's worth of time for them to get there?

Us bombing Iranian power plants or invading their territory would be a serious escalation of the war. Iran could retaliate in various ways, most likely by targeting Gulf oil states' energy infrastructure. This would all lead to the price of oil continuing to skyrocket, though, which is why perhaps Trump is looking for some sort of offramp to the whole thing.

No matter what his fervent supporters like to think, Trump is just not some master of multidimensional chess. The entire war has been thrown hastily together with no real overarching strategy to it. This is just one more episode in a string of them that shows how poorly planned this entire exercise has been, really.

Trump started this war on a whim. He could end it on one too. At some point, he might just get tired or bored with the entire enterprise and decide it is time to declare victory and come home. He would declare that the safety of oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz was now Europe's problem to deal with (changing the old "Pottery Barn" saying to now read: "We broke it; now you own it"). Or Asia's. Or Israel's -- anyone but us, really.

Trump did virtually nothing to prepare the American public for this war, and he hasn't done much of anything to justify it since. Many of his MAGA supporters consider it a patriotic duty to pay much higher gas prices for now, but as time goes by and the prices stay high (and inch closer towards the $4-a-gallon mark), more and more of them are going to drop their support (this is already happening to some degree, polling shows). Trump is already paying a political price for his war of choice, and the longer it goes on the steeper that price is going to get.

Even though Donald Trump is known for how easily he lies about things, it is still rather extraordinary when he does so in the middle of a war of choice, when his lies can so easily be disproven. He can insist until he is blue in the face that negotiations are ongoing, that Iran and the U.S. have agreed to almost everything on the table, and that the war will soon be over. But if none of it is true, eventually the oil and stock markets are going to realize he's not being honest with them. This may well diminish the power his announcements have to move those markets in the near future. So far Trump's statement has indeed influenced them, but if he doesn't have anything to back it up with soon then these gains will likely reverse.

So it comes down to who do you believe? Donald Trump? Or the Iranians? Decide for yourself -- here is what they are currently saying:

Iranian officials denied that Tehran is in talks with the president shortly after [Donald] Trump made the claim. Iranian Parliament speaker Mohammad Qalibaf also said that "reports claiming otherwise are fake news aimed at influencing financial and oil markets and distracting from the challenges facing the U.S. and Israel," according to state media.

Normally in a time of war, the American public would take the word of their own president over the word of a leader of an enemy country. But these are not normal times, and Donald Trump is not a normal president. So we're at the point where the Iranians' take on things sounds a lot more plausible and believable than Trump's. That is some sort of bizarre milestone, when you stop and think about it.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant