Trump Keeps Claiming Iran Is Desperate For A Deal Weeks After Explaining Why It's Not

The “dealmaker-in-chief” told the world last month how close the economy is to collapse if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, giving Iran plenty of incentive not to give in.

Senior White House Correspondent, HuffPost

WASHINGTON — While President Donald Trump continues to claim on a nearly daily basis that Iranian leaders are desperate to end the war he is waging against their country, the self-branded “dealmaker” explained to the world just weeks ago why they actually are not, and in fact continue to hold the upper hand.

“We’re talking right now. Their people, they wanted to talk,” Trump said on Monday en route to a taxpayer-funded political rally in Michigan.

Frequently, Trump suggests that the country’s leaders or their emissaries are calling him directly. “They want to make a deal so badly. They called a little while ago. They want to make a deal so badly,” he told reporters traveling back to the United States with him from the NATO summit aboard the luxury 747 he solicited from Qatar.

Tuesday morning, Trump was pressed in a call-in interview with Fox News about who, exactly, Trump was speaking with in Iran. Trump evaded the question. “We’ve had some very good talks,” he said instead.

For Americans, the bottom line is that a full five months into a war that Trump said would last “four to five” weeks and which thus far has left 18 US service members dead and more than 600 injured, the public still has no reliable information about when it might end.

John Bolton, one of Trump’s national security advisers in his first term and a longtime proponent of attacking Iran, said the country no longer has a coherent government to negotiate with and, in any event, that Trump has no coherent strategy.

“The part of the regime that really matters, the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps],........

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