1. Old Man’s War
Yesterday in the comments someone recommended an OSINT Substack called the Omission. I’m always wary of anonymous intelligence analysis, but this post makes some points worth considering, because they speak to an underlying logistical problem Trump is about to have: Even if he wants to end the war, it’s going to take longer than he thinks.
The short version is: If Trump wanted a negotiated settlement with Iran tomorrow, he could not get it tomorrow. Because the Israeli/American policy of decapitation makes engaging with his counterparty slow.
Which means that:
Ending the war will take longer than it otherwise should.
The longer the war goes on, the more economic damage America will absorb.
And thus the bigger the bribe Trump eventually has to offer the Iranians.
The man who says his entire life is a negotiation does not seem to understand the corner he’s bombed himself into.
Walk with me.
Negotiation or Intelligence Collection?
The first dynamic the Omission post points out is that prior to the February 28 strike that decapitated the regime, the United States was deep into negotiation with the Iranians.
Simultaneously, America’s ally and partner in the war, Israel, was organizing a strike to kill all of the guys on the other side of the table.
Which suggests that the negotiation was at least partly an intel-gathering op. That the Americans and their Israeli partners were analyzing how the Iranian negotiators communicated with leadership to figure out how to get to the leadership.
We shouldn’t cry about this—all’s fair in love, etc.
But this action did create a problem for America. If you genuinely want to negotiate and your counterparty understands that you have a history of killing your negotiating partners, then he has to go to extraordinary lengths to preserve operational security.
Translation: Everything takes longer than it should.
Trump and Witkoff and Jared can tweet at each other on Truth Social and go back and forth a hundred times in an hour.
The Iranian leadership has to remain dispersed. They have to employ runners, cutouts—God knows how many relays and countermeasures with each exchange of communications.
But that’s just the beginning.
This is what we do here: We look deeper and try to help you see around corners. Come be part of a community working to understand what’s happening, why, and how to fix it.
The Iranians have also learned that American negotiations might not be genuine. That when the Americans say they want to negotiate, they might just be stalling for time or sandbagging.1
Again: Don’t cry for the Iranians. This is what war looks like.
But from our perspective—if you’re looking to further American interests—you have to ask yourself: Is the advantage gained from these tactics outbalanced by the costs imposed when you want to negotiate for real and the Iranians have to move slower, and are more reticent, than you might otherwise want?
This is a pretty straightforward calculation, believe it or not, because all you have to do is tally up the per-day cost of the war and the oil shock on the American economy. The econ nerds are working on it as we speak.
Point is: Giving the Israelis the green light to whack the guys we were negotiating with might have seemed clever at the time. But it carried real risk, because once you kill your counterparty, his replacement (1) will be less convinced that you want to deal and (2) will need to impose OPSEC that creates logistical limits in how quickly he can communicate with his confederates.
I wonder if anyone in the Trump administration thought about this tradeoff before they pushed the button.
New Guy Needs a Win
The next problem created by killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was that it created a succession crisis for Iran. The internal power structures settled on Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei. (We’re just going to refer to him as “Mojtaba” to avoid confusion.)
Mojtaba does not have any popular legitimacy; his position is new and may not be consolidated. One imagines there are other power centers around him—the parliament, the IRGC, Guardian Counsel—jockeying for position. People are people and governments are governments. This is the way of the world.
As the Omission notes, Mojtaba needs to consolidate power, which means that he has less leeway to impose his own preferred settlement than his predecessor did. Any settlement decision from the Iranian government will need buy-in from multiple power centers.
I suspect that, relative to whatever Trump might have offered Khamenei, Trump will have to give Mojtaba more—because the new guy will need more to get the rest of his government onboard.
Think about these two dynamics as you sift through reporting on the proposed negotiations between Washington and Tehran.
One more thing: The oldest rule in negotiating is that the guy who reveals his ask first, loses.
You’ll never guess which side revealed its ask today. 🙄