You remember President Ronald Reagan’s famous line, trust, but verify, concerning nuclear disarmament negotiations with the Soviets?
For President Reagan, that phrase served a dual purpose. It signaled a gesture of good faith toward the Soviet leadership, while reassuring critics of the talks that the US would insist on strict verification procedures, such as on-site inspections, to ensure compliance.
Did you hear the 2026 version of that famous line uttered this past week by Vice President JD Vance about the peace talks with the Iranians? Vance said, we will not be receptive if Iran tries to play us.
We will not be receptive if Iran tries to play us. No gesture of good faith there. It is a declaration that Vance, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner won’t allow the Iranians to stall, to hem and haw, as if they were haggling over a rug in the Tehran sook.
Well, I have news for JD, Steve and Jared. Yes, the Iranians will play them, because that’s the way they operate.
Playing for time is in the Iranian DNA. They believe they can outlast the infidels. They’ve been promising one thing and doing another for decades. They cheat, they lie, they obfuscate.
They also know it will be hard for President Trump, despite his belligerent social media posts, to restart the war after the two-week ceasefire, no matter how many violations occur.
Remember, we’ve been told by the US administration, Iran has no navy, no air force, no air defenses, no nuthin.’ Victory! What’s left to bomb? (Did anyone really believe Trump was going to blow up every bridge and power plant in Iran?)
On the domestic front, Trump is trying to slap down and put a lid on a wing of his party that believes his war with Iran is a betrayal of MAGA.
Trump also knows a major issue for the midterm elections will be affordability. The inflation numbers that came out this past week aren’t good and with crude oil prices soaring due to the war, Americans are feeling the pinch in their pocketbooks every time they fill up their cars with gas.
Remember, it’s always the economy, stupid.
The Iranians also see that America has been abandoned by its purported NATO allies. That there will be no relief for the American warfighters coming from Britain, France or Germany. The Iranians live in that neighborhood and sooner, rather than later, they know the Americans will have to go home and the gulf states don’t have enough military might to clear the Strait of Hormuz on their own.
The Iranians also know they have enough of their regime left in tact to continue to subjugate their population, as brutally as they want. They’re not too worried that the baby Shah will be riding on a white horse into Tehran anytime soon.
So, after five weeks or so of intense, intense aerial bombardment from the United States and Israel, I bet the Iranian leadership, all the way to the talks in Islamabad, Pakistan, were singing their version of that famous Frank Sinatra classic, I did it My Way;
The record shows, we took the blows and did it our way.
Of course, Iran may want to play the long game and make a deal for now, knowing it won’t be forever. Trump isn’t forever. You can bet your very last kebob that a JD Vance presidency or a Democrat in the White House, won’t go to war with Iran.
So now, for Vance and the Iranians, unlike for Reagan and the Soviets, any deal has to be linked, not to trust, but to tit for tat. If Iran sends its enriched uranium out of the country, it will get some sanctions relief. If Iran opens the Strait of Hormuz to unrestricted maritime passage, it’ll get some more.
In the 1980’s, Ronald Reagan dealt with a Soviet leadership that allowed him to believe there could exist a level of trust between the two nations because both sides knew there would be no winner in a nuclear war. Nevertheless, Reagan knew there could be no agreement without verification. The stakes were high in those disarmament talks and Americans trusted Ronald Reagan not to be taken to the cleaners by the Soviets.
The stakes are high in the talks that began this weekend as well; for the United States, for Israel, for our Persian Gulf allies, dare I say for the world? But the stakes are also high for Vice President Vance.
He’s the point person for our side. He’s made himself the face of the negotiations.
Vance says he’s going into these talks with his eyes wide open, that he knows what the Iranian regime will try to pull.
But he’s also the guy with no foreign policy chops, What has he ever negotiated? He didn’t write The Art of the Deal, he wrote Hillbilly Elegy.
So JD, be careful for what you wish for, because when you’re so far out front, you’re going to own the results. If you think you’ve reached a deal, you’d better be damned certain you haven’t been bamboozled by the bazaar bargainers. Because if you were, your hopes of being Trump’s heir could fly away in a flash like a trip on a turbo-charged magic carpet.