Last week, Iran offered Donald Trump an offramp. Days later, Trump announced he was refusing to take it. The offer reportedly came after a meeting on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, where the two sides talked for the first time in months. Iran essentially offered up virtually the same deal that was agreed to in the Memorandum Of Understanding earlier this year, except with a one-week timeline. Trump turned it down.
Trump called the deal unacceptable and said he hoped that talks between the two sides would continue. This is more than a little strange, seeing as how he had indeed accepted basically the same deal earlier this summer. Perhaps he has figured out by now that the M.O.U. deal was indeed heavily tilted towards Iran’s demands, while addressing virtually none of America’s priorities. It was a bad deal to begin with, in other words, which Trump may have belatedly figured out.