The Memo: Trump and allies seek to spin Iran deal amid hazy details

A fierce battle is underway to shape public perceptions of a deal to end the war in Iran — even though no such agreement has been arrived at and progress toward it was called into question by fresh U.S. attacks on southern Iran on Monday. 

Despite those strikes, serious negotiations are plainly taking place. The question is whether they will culminate in a deal that can satisfy the combatants without inviting sharper questions, aimed at President Trump, about why the war was fought in the first place.

Trump insisted on Monday that negotiations were “proceeding nicely.” But he cautioned there would be “only be a Great Deal for all or, no Deal at all — Back to the Battlefront and shooting.”

The president was more restrained by his standards on Tuesday, merely firing off a social media post in which he complained that even the most abject defeat for Iran would lead to media headlines “that Iran had a Masterful and Brilliant Victory over The United States of America.” 

Democrats and the media, Trump contended, “have gone absolutely CRAZY!!”

The message was one more reminder about how much coverage and perception matter to Trump — and how frustrated he appears to be by the war’s unpopularity. A conflict that he thought could help him seal a history-making foreign affairs legacy is instead shrouded in uncertainty.

“We know he cares about the media coverage, we know he cares about criticism,” Negar Mortazavi, a senior nonresident fellow at the Center for International Policy, told this column. “The criticism is factual when people say he is not winning. I think that is correct.”

Trump is under pressure from several sides.

First and most importantly, Iran has not capitulated as Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thought it might, nor has the Islamic Republic’s leadership come close........

© The Hill