Trump’s bargaining position has been: stop raising foreign armies to attack Israel; stop trying to sneak into the nuclear club, because we know what you’re going to do.
Translated to human terms: stop threatening the US and its allies.
The US position is not sadism, it’s how every nation except Iran tolerates one another, live and let live.
Russia and the US— they competed strongly with one another during the Cold War but generally respected red lines. Russia withdrew its kinetic threat from Cuba, the US knew circa 1998 that expanding NATO through the old Warsaw Pact would make no friends in Moscow. Strong, rules-based brinksmanship all the way around.
Iran is just about ideological extremism. Sometimes there are rules, or used to be, but the IRGC signed up a bunch of unprofessional clowns to wage total war on its behalf and, at core, talks like “mutually assured destruction” would be a total “win”, provided Israel was on the other side. If either superpower exposed that kind of philosophy in the Cold War can you imagine the calamity? It’s inherently destabilizing.
Translated to human terms: stop threatening the US and its allies.
The US position is not sadism, it’s how every nation except Iran tolerates one another, live and let live.
Russia and the US— they competed strongly with one another during the Cold War but generally respected red lines. Russia withdrew its kinetic threat from Cuba, the US knew circa 1998 that expanding NATO through the old Warsaw Pact would make no friends in Moscow. Strong, rules-based brinksmanship all the way around.
Iran is just about ideological extremism. Sometimes there are rules, or used to be, but the IRGC signed up a bunch of unprofessional clowns to wage total war on its behalf and, at core, talks like “mutually assured destruction” would be a total “win”, provided Israel was on the other side. If either superpower exposed that kind of philosophy in the Cold War can you imagine the calamity? It’s inherently destabilizing.