Three weeks. That's how long it took for Trump's historic Iran peace deal to go from signed memorandum of understanding to 'they're scum.' The New York Post reports that Trump, speaking Wednesday from Ankara, declared the preliminary agreement dead after ordering overnight airstrikes on 80 Iranian targets, calling Iran's leaders 'liars,' 'cheats,' and 'sick people' in the same breath he said he maybe wants his negotiators to keep talking anyway.
From 'Deal of the Century' to 'I Think It's Over' in 21 Days
On June 17th, Trump signed a 14-point memorandum of understanding with Iran. It was a genuinely significant document, according to the New York Post's coverage: a 60-day reopening of the Strait of Hormuz while both sides hammered out the final status of Iran's nuclear program. That was the whole ball game. The core war aim, supposedly achieved.
By Wednesday morning, Trump was in Ankara calling the whole thing a waste of time. 'To me, I think it's over. I don't want to deal with them anymore. They're scum,' he told reporters. This is the kind of diplomatic language that does not appear in the Geneva Conventions.
What happened in between? Iran attacked three commercial ships on Monday and Tuesday. The dispute was over shipping routes: Iran wants vessels to use an Iran-approved sea lane, the US prefers a different route along the Omani coast. That disagreement triggered overnight US airstrikes on 80 targets, and apparently convinced Trump that the entire enterprise of Iranian diplomacy is irredeemable.
The Strait of Hormuz, One Fifth of Global Oil, and a Guy Who 'Doesn't See It'
Here's the thing about the Strait of Hormuz. About a fifth of all global oil exports move through it, per the New York Post. Iran has been trying to assert new control over international shipping in that waterway, including financial fees on vessels that transit it. That would be an enormous post-war strategic gain, essentially turning one of the world's most critical chokepoints into an Iranian toll booth.
The memorandum of understanding was supposed to hold that off while nuclear talks continued. Now Trump says it's over, but then added, in the same answer, 'I'll let our wonderful negotiators keep talking if they want, but I don't see it.' So the deal is dead, except the negotiations might continue, except he doesn't want to deal with these people anymore. Clear as mud.
Iran's lead negotiator, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, responded Wednesday morning with a statement that read, 'The era of bullying and extortion is over. It leads nowhere. We don't fold.' That is not a de-escalation statement. Two sides that just lobbed bombs at each other are now exchanging chest-thumping press releases. This is going great.
The Assassination List Detour
Trump also used the press availability to note that Iran has put him on assassination lists. All of them, apparently. 'I'm on every single one of their lists,' he told reporters, adding, 'So far, I guess I've been a little bit lucky. But that maybe doesn't last very long.'
Look, Iranian threats against American officials are real and well-documented. This is not a made-up grievance. But announcing in a press conference that your own luck at staying alive might be running out is an unusual rhetorical move, even by the standards of this particular president. He also called Iran 'evil, sick people' and said 'we have to rid their cancer,' which is language that tends to complicate the part where your negotiators keep talking.
A Flare-Up That Wasn't Supposed to Be Fatal
The New York Post notes there was a similar prior flare-up over this exact same shipping route dispute before Wednesday's strikes. Same disagreement, different outcome. That earlier incident apparently got resolved, or at least didn't blow everything up. This one did.
The difference, the Post reports, is that Trump's response Wednesday was more emphatic and turned personal, with the assassination list comments entering the picture. Somewhere between the first flare-up and the second one, the calculus changed. The 80 airstrikes changed. And now the president of the United States is publicly declaring a deal he signed less than a month ago to be dead while his negotiators are apparently still permitted to show up to work if they feel like it.
The Strait of Hormuz remains contested. Iran remains defiant. The 60-day window for nuclear talks that the memorandum of understanding was supposed to buy is now apparently closed after roughly 21 days. If this was a chess match, somebody flipped the board.
The Dingo Take
Let's be honest about what just happened. The Trump administration spent months building toward a diplomatic framework with Iran, got a signed document, announced a 60-day process, and then watched it collapse in three weeks over a shipping lane dispute that had already nearly derailed talks once before. You do not need to be a fan of the Iranian government, which is brutal and genuinely dangerous, to recognize that 'we signed a deal and then bombed 80 targets and called them scum' is not a foreign policy success story.
The 'scum' and 'sick people' language is worth sitting with for a second. This is the president of the United States, speaking officially from a NATO ally's capital, describing the government he just signed a nuclear agreement with. Diplomacy has always involved dealing with people you find repugnant. That's the whole point of diplomacy. If you only negotiate with governments you like, you're basically just having a nice chat with Canada.
The Strait of Hormuz carries a fifth of the world's oil exports. Iran appears to be trying to consolidate permanent leverage over it as a fait accompli while nuclear talks either continue or don't, depending on which sentence of Trump's statement you're reading. The airstrikes may or may not have changed that calculation. What they definitely did is leave the US with no signed agreement, no clear negotiating framework, and a president who says he doesn't want to waste his time. Meanwhile, the clock on Iran's nuclear program keeps running. Hope the 21 days were worth it.
