Because in the Trump regime there is no policy agenda as such, only expedients meant to enable, support, further, and protect the goals of the personal enrichment of the "president" and his proteges, the suppression of the "president's" perceived opponents, and the "president's"
legal impunity, its activities appear as a constantly flowing, ever-changing, incoherent mishmash, compounded of aggression, mendacity, bullying, bribery, and pandering. It's all pretty transparent, once you learn to stop fooling yourself into buying the regime's pretense that anything of substance is at the core.
Thus, the peace deal with Iran so recently trumpeted by the"president" as "nearly fully negotiated," a claim amplified by the media's uncritical, robotic megaphone. It's important to remember that this announcement of imminent diplomatic triumph was motivated, as I argued in my previous post "Why Now?", by the need to avoid the imminent prospect of the House of Representatives passing a measure to force an end to the war. But certain Republican "hard liners," so-called, object to the proposed deal, based on their not incorrect perception that it constitutes a complete surrender to Iran and that the U.S. has gained nothing from its expenditure of funds, arms, lives, treasure, and credibility. (A truer perception would be that Trump has completely succeeded in his primary war objective, which was to distract everyone from the Epstein files.) This, as much as the movement from the other direction to end the war, threatens the "president's" grip on Congress, which he needs to achieve his real goals, particularly that of continued impunity. So, all of a sudden, he is warning us not to be too hasty in our expectations of a negotiated settlement, there's a lot of negotiation yet to be done. To demonstrate which, he starts throwing out demands such as that, as a condition of a settlement, all Middle Eastern countries must sign the Abraham Accords and recognize and make peace with Israel. He insists that he will sign only an agreement which completely eliminates the Iranian nuclear weapons program and frees the Strait of Hormuz from any threat of Iranian interference with navigation.
The absurdity, unachievability, and complete unacceptability to Iran of these demands is beside the point. Trump's adjustment of posture, or swerve indirection, serves several purposes. It answers the movement in Congress towards a restrictive war powers resolution by holding out the prospect that such an act would be unnecessary, would perhaps snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. It positions Trump to restart active warfare with the claim that Iran rejected his
peace proposals. (Note that despite the"ceasefire," which Trump earlier claimed had terminated hostilities so that the War Powers Act no longer applies, within the past 24 hours American planes have bombed a number of sites in Iran, supposedly for "defensive" purposes. You don't interrupt a ceasefire to bomb someone with whom you are negotiating in good faith.) Most importantly, it prolongs the time during which the media's attention is firmly focused on foreign relations and not on the "president's" sexual and other misdeeds.
I can confidently predict only one thing: the mainstream news media, including national public radio, will play along with the charade and soberly and earnestly will discuss all of this as if it were motivated by ideas about foreign relations and military strategy.
