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How To Analyze The Unknowable – HotAir

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May 26, 2026
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Predicting the Next GOP Scandal and Opportunity — and How Trump Could FINALLY Crush the Mainstream Media – PJ Media

Until Friday, whenever the Trump administration indicated a deal might be close to ending the 47-year war Iran has waged against us, the news generally wasn’t taken seriously, because key figures on the Iranian side, who most likely were the ones negotiating in private, contradicted themselves with the wildest possible denials publicly. 

All that changed in the last 96 hours or so, because for the first time since kinetic action destroyed most of the IRGC’s offensive capabilities, and virtually all of their defenses as well, indignant leaders in the regime shifted their rhetoric, albeit subtly at times, into overtures of opening up the Strait of Hormuz without collecting tolls, turning on the internet in Iran for the first time in months, and yes, turning over all of their enriched uranium. 

While there still is no deal or memorandum of understanding – a list of agreements to keep a ceasefire in place until all the formalities and provisos for sanctions relief take place – this “deal” feels more real. Why? Partly because of the threat of crippling air strikes against Iranian infrastructure – refineries, electrical generation facilities, bridges, and the like, and partly because of the economic impact of the naval blockade, Operation Economic Fury. Among many effects of the blockade, one of the most worrisome to regime remnants is the visions of angry Iranian mobs in the streets convulsing against the regime. That terrifies them more than the Americans and Israelis blowing up targets of value and killing junta members again.

As a radio producer for the last 30-plus years, if there’s one thing that gets pounded in your head in media over and over again, it’s that when there’s a mass casualty event, natural or man-made, first accounts are almost always wrong. Estimates of damage and death are often wildly inaccurate. You always have to be on guard to report only what you know as well as report what you don’t know, the latter often being more important. 

And if you don’t learn your lesson to pause a beat before reacting on that front, the same peril of being discredited awaits you with election results. If you have heard it once, you’ve heard it a thousand times. Do not believe exit polls. They are almost always wrong as well, and yet they have been used to sway elections by juicing same-day turnout if the candidate is the beneficiary of a favorable exit poll. But as we also saw with George W. Bush and Florida in the 2000 election, when exit polls were released showing Al Gore cruising before the rest of the state’s precincts in the Panhandle closed, it caused a depressed turnout late in the day for would-be Bush voters. 

With regard to the Iran deal being negotiated by the Trump administration, outside of the Oval Office, no one honestly knows what’s in or out of it, who are the Iranians in a position to enter into a deal, whether the Pakistanis are serving as an honest broker between the two sides, and how many iterations of the deal there have been in this latest round of talks between Washington and Tehran. Anyone not named Donald Trump or Marco Rubio who tells you they know what’s in the deal doesn’t. 

By mid-day Friday, people who are hawks on Iran, meaning they want the bombings to resume, continue, and increase until an IRGC janitor raises a white flag on a stick, were beside themselves with disappointment. They were crestfallen that President Trump had gone this far to end the Iranian regime once and for all, but was attempting to call it a day, declare victory, and get out, leaving business unfinished. 

Meanwhile, Trump detractors, including Obama foreign policy hands that got us into the position where action against Iran became necessary, claimed that Trump’s ‘deal’, again, something no one has seen, was exactly what Barack Obama achieved without having to go to war first. 

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, very much a hawk on Iran, feared that the deal being leaked out, if true, would be a capitulation by Trump. 





I like Secretary Pompeo immensely. He no doubt has better intel than I do as to what’s in the proposed deal, but the Trump administration shot this tweet down pretty hard Friday night, claiming the former SecState had no clue what was being negotiated. 

As for those from the TACO camp – Trump Always Chickens Out, their mantra was predictable, if not tiresome. Trump was getting cold feet after looking at his poll numbers with the upcoming midterms, and was seeking the fastest offramp possible while still declaring victory. And yet, a funny thing happened. The deal is still being negotiated. For this Trump-hating theory to be true, wouldn’t the President have capitulated already? Here’s current Secretary of State Marco Rubio, from India. 

This rings true. The President took an extraordinary step, both in the build-up and the execution, to hit Iran hard for six weeks. He was willing to do what none of his predecessors would dare to tackle. And now that we’ve had the opportunity to reload, adjust tactics, glean from intel gathered during those six weeks, and Iran choking to death from the consequences of the blockade, Trump is ready to give away all that leverage in order to cut and run? That doesn’t add up. 
On 
Sunday morning, President Trump responded to critics on both sides. 

A little later on Sunday, the White House gave a background briefing to a handful of people in conservative media, without giving too many specifics, about how the deal was shaping up, contingent on Iran living up to all of the demands being put on them by Trump, before they would see any relief from the economic stranglehold in which we currently hold them. 

Keep in mind, President Trump’s red lines for what has to be in a deal have not wavered one iota. Iran has to turn over all of their enriched uranium. Not some of it, all of it. That’s really the game-changer. Without it, having to start all over, the regime would have to rebuild the infrastructure and find new people to begin from scratch. And both the United States and Israel would see them doing it and hit them again. Israel certainly wishes to see regime change, but if Trump’s deal oversees the removal of all Iranian nuclear material, that’s a solid win they would take any day of the week, including Shabbat.  And the Strait of Hormuz has to be returned to being the international waterway of free navigation it was. 

At Arlington for Memorial Day, President Trump repeated the same demand. 





This follows two different social media posts. 

On the return flight from signing a rare earth deal with India, Secretary Rubio spoke about Iran to a media gaggle traveling with him. 

There is no TACO. This is no capitulation. There are only terms of surrender, or else military action resumes if diplomacy fails. 

Iran’s puppet president, Masoud Pezeshkian, just announced he’s calling for Iran to turn the internet back on. Yet Cardboard Mojtaba Khamenei, purportedly the one running the regime, just waved the red cloth in front of the bull. 

I have no idea if Khameneito 2.0 is among the living. I have serious doubts. His account could be run by a regime loyalist who doesn’t know anything other than bluster. Here’s what I do know. Iran is hurting, and they’re about out of time to make any sort of deal. 

With Trump’s permission, Israel is about to finish removing Hezbollah from the battlefield. Iran claimed a ceasefire had to include inside Lebanon, too. Trump has other ideas, and those ideas do not include what Iran wants. Again, this is not the sign of a President about to capitulate. This is a signal he’s the one squeezing and ratcheting up pressure. 

And speaking of pressure, remember that whole issue of Iran’s oil pipelines to Kharg Island becoming a problem without boats to accept the oil flowing? 





This is thermal imagery from Sunday night on Kharg Island, showing multiple signs of flare-ups. President Trump said weeks ago that if Iran waited too long and had to cap the wells and stop the flow of oil, it would more likely than not explode. This satellite imagery is not a healthy sign if you’re in the Iranian oil business. 

On Monday, a couple of Iranian speedboats tried to lay a couple more mines. Not only did the stunt not work, but it was also met with overwhelming force in response. 

Meanwhile, IRGC commanders hiding out in Iraq are suddenly returning home – in pieces, and in boxes.

The talk coming out of Iran is that for members of the Basij and IRGC forces, instead of pay, they’re being offered a decent-sized potato and a couple of pickles for food. That’s it. And for that, they’re expected to fight to the death for a regime run by a picture of a guy stapled to a cardboard cutout. There were reports of mercenaries and/or proxy groups from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan coming into Iran to bolster the ranks of the IRGC. They also are receiving no pay, but do qualify, for now, to get their standard issue decent-sized potato and two pickles. Needless to say, morale isn’t very high amongst the forces the regime needs in order to continue in power. 

Morale, like gasoline, food, and pharmaceuticals, is in short supply all over the country. 

In four different cities – Tehran, Tabriz, Ahvaz, and Isfahan- there are reports of clashes between the IRGC and Artesh, the regular standing army. 





Apparently, the decent-sized potato and two pickles aren’t sitting well, and IRGC factions are now fighting it out with Iraqi militias that have entered Iran. 

How many Iranians do you think would rather trade their chance at 72 virgins if they could have chicken for dinner? 

And then, just to show that far from being someone looking for a quick exit ramp and caving on a deal, Donald Trump raised the stakes, going all-in with the other Middle East countries. 

Knowing full well that kinetic activity may be required in order to force Iran to bend the knee to his will, Donald Trump just demonstrated his killer instinct to Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the rest of the Arab neighbors that have not signed onto the Abraham Accords with Israel. He called each one of the leaders of those countries, including Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, and told him to quit playing footsies and choose the right side. The Saudis reportedly were speechless. Trump is going big before going home. He is like the car dealer with someone mildly interested in a car they really can’t afford. He’s got them in the box, and he is grinding them until they not only buy the car, they agree to the extended warranty nobody ever truly wants or needs. And by doing so, he’s setting Iran on the path of extinction or cooperation. 

By forcing the Arab countries to sign the Abraham Accords, they will now be invested in the defense of Israel. We’re sailing right past that whole ‘right to exist’ nonsense. Now, if Iran attacks Israel, with financial investments and partnerships at stake, it forces accountability upon all the other signatory nations to defend Israel and their own interests. The Abraham Accords will eventually turn out to be the Middle East’s version of NATO, except more efficient and accepting that Israel is the region’s hegemon, holding everything together. 

Donald Trump also floats that sometime in the distant future, once he’s forced Iran to bend the knee, he foresees them becoming a Middle Eastern version of Venezuela, and suggests they might eventually seek an accord of their own, finally uniting the Middle East. 

Fantasy? To Trump’s detractors, naturally. Except that MBS in Saudi Arabia is entertaining the idea, according to the Jerusalem Post. 





Let me conclude exactly where I began. Nobody knows anything when it comes to what a finalized deal will resemble. And even President Trump acknowledges that the whole negotiation could still collapse. And if so, Iran is not going to be as recognizable as it has been when he’s done with it. But if they do cooperate, it is painfully obvious that it’s going to take a lot more than words or an autopen signature by a two-dimensional sheet of recycled wood pulp with a Scissors Sisters taped to the wall of his hideout cave. It’s going to take verifiable action, unlike anything we’ve seen from this regime, and cooperative action that is sustained. And only then will they begin to see any financial relief from the sanctions that are crushing them. And even that might not save them from the mobs that are coming. 

Here’s what else we know the deal is not. It’s not Trump folding a four-ace hand. Turning the armada around and bugging out while declaring victory is actually a pretty easy set of commands. Were Trump to seek that course of action, the carrier groups would already be on the move away from the Gulf. Instead, the ambitiousness of an Iranian deal coupled with unifying the rest of the Middle East against them simultaneously in order to keep Iran in check by their neighbors for years to come seems a brilliant move. 

I have no idea whether I will like the final deal or not. But it certainly seems prudent to wait until we know what it is we’re analyzing before pronouncing judgment. And in the arena of dealmaking and foreign policy, going back to his first term in office, Donald Trump has shown a flair for thinking outside of the box. He’s also shown tangible results that are positive for the United States and its allies. Perhaps the grown-up in the room this whole time with a vision for the future that is both bold and achievable has been the President of the United States. I’m willing to give him a little more time to see if he can close the sale. 

If not, he also indicated this weekend what awaits the regime behind door number two: 







Editor’s Note: For decades, former presidents have been all talk and no action. Now, Donald Trump is eliminating the threat from Iran once and for all. 

Help us report the truth about the Trump administration’s decisive actions to keep Americans safe and bring peace to the world. Join HotAir VIP and use promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your VIP membership.





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