Where this was said
Ben Rhodes: Trump's Iran Dead End & the Lebanon Trap
At 14:55 · chapter starts 14:08
Ben unpacks the structural logic of the Iran impasse. Trump keeps spinning a best-case deal on Truth Social before the agreement is finalized, causing the IRGC to yank back its negotiators, then scrambling to reassemble. The real hangup is sequencing: Trump wants Iran to open the Strait before receiving money, but Iran holds all the leverage and won't move first. Ben argues that the eventual deal will be JCPOA lite — Iran ships HEU out, accepts inspections, gets money in tranches — because Trump has no alternative. The Netanyahu dimension is equally alarming: facing an election with no war objectives met, Netanyahu cannot afford to look like he lost, which means he may try to heat up Gaza or the West Bank once the Iran front goes quiet. Tommy and Ben also react with disbelief to NYT reporting, attributed to Ronan Bergman, that the US-Israel plan was to install Ahmadinejad — who crushed the 2009 Green Movement — as Iran's post-war leader via targeted airstrikes.
The US and Israel apparently planned to spring Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from house arrest via targeted airstrikes and install him as Iran's post-war leader. This is the man who crushed the 2009 Green Movement and threatened to eradicate Israel — the absolute nadir of regime-change fantasy planning.
A Frank Luntz tweet claimed the Iran deal was 95% done, with the remaining 5% covering Iran opening the Strait of Hormuz and turning over all nuclear materials — i.e., the entire substance of a deal.
