Trump Debunks His Own ‘Imminent’ Iran Deal 12 Hours Later—Proving He Has ZERO Credibility Left
Iran didn’t have to call the president a liar. It waited half a day and let him do it himself.
Donald Trump announced that a peace deal with Iran was not just imminent, but that negotiations toward it had been scheduled. Sunday evening, aboard Air Force One, he confidently told reporters that negotiations would begin Monday afternoon and that the deal would not only fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz but also guarantee that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon.
“Now what we’re doing is we’re talking to them in the form of a negotiation,” he said. “It begins tomorrow afternoon.”
On Monday morning, however, Iran’s foreign ministry countered Trump’s story, announcing that it was not negotiating with the United States at all. Its only talks were with Oman, spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said, about securing passage through the strait, and whatever came of them “would not amount to reopening” it.
The Monday morning cable news shows were curiously aligned across the partisan divide on this, as I wrote in Monday’s Morning Frame newsletter. Both Fox & Friends and Morning Joe noted that it was becoming difficult to take the president at face value at this juncture, though they said so in different ways.
Just before noon, Trump went on Truth Social and called the Iranian leadership “unbelievably duplicitous,” claimed they “beg” for meetings, and invoked something called “The United States Wall of Steel.”
Trump wrote:
Iranian Leadership is unbelievably duplicitous! They ask for a meeting, some would say “beg,” talks begin, with more scheduled in the immediate future, and they say, openly and proudly, that they’re not having any discussions, that nothing is being talked about, and they’re only dealing with “Oman.” They then go on to give their usual blather in saying, the Strait of Hormuz will be operated powerfully by them, when it is already completely controlled by the United States Navy and our “Blockade” or, as some say, “The United States Wall of Steel!” Nothing gets through to Iran, unless we want it to, and nothing will get through, unless a Deal, or Total Surrender, is accomplished. Whether Iran wants to admit it or not, we are, in fact, talking of a solution to a problem that they have caused, for decades. It is very simple, IRAN WILL NEVER HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP
Buried in the middle of all that rage is a clear and enbarrassing admission that he’d overstated his promise of an imminent deal: Iran, he complained, says it’s “only dealing with ‘Oman.’”
Trump didn’t disprove Iran’s version of events. He revealed just how far his own telling had drifted from what was transpiring. It is somehow entirely predictable and jaw-droppingly stupid at once!
This is what a credibility collapse looks like, and it’s worth being precise about, because this is not the well-worn problem of a president who consistently exaggerates.
Trump announced a concrete diplomatic event with a start time and deliverables during a time of war. Within roughly half a day, he was reduced to treating a much smaller set of events—messages between Iran and a Gulf sultanate about shipping lanes—as basically the same thing. The president’s announcements no longer need investigative reporting to fall apart. They come with their own corrections, written by Trump.
In classic Trump fashion, he feebly tried to cover the embarrassing, less-than-24-hour backtrack with his usual bluster. The cries of “duplicitous,” “beg,” and “Total Surrender”—all of it was camouflage for a retreat from his previous claim. The question Sunday evening was whether negotiations between the United States and Iran were beginning Monday afternoon. By noon the next day, Trump had swapped it for an easier one: Doesn’t communicating through Oman count as talking? It’s the same broken logic a seventh grader uses to explain why his homework wasn’t done.
The most charitable interpretation of Trump’s initial claim of an imminent deal aired Monday morning on his favorite show. Asked on Fox & Friends whether to believe the president or Tehran, naval analyst Brent Sadler gave the honest answer: “I think both things are true.” Iran plays to a domestic audience, back-channel messages are almost certainly moving, and Fox News’s own correspondent has reported that people around that very foreign ministry have called Trump directly.
Fine. But Trump didn’t say messages were moving. He announced negotiations, at a stated hour, with the strait’s full reopening attached. The possibility that a narrow back channel exists does not vindicate him. It shows how aggressively he inflated it.
Let’s review the timeline over the past three days. On Friday, Trump insisted that America would hit Iran “very hard.” Saturday saw claims that the biggest attack since World War II had been canceled. By Sunday night, negotiations had been scheduled, and a sweeping deal was imminent. By noon on Monday, Iran was duplicitous, even though its narrative proved more accurate than Trump’s. Huh.
Morning Joe put its own count on the record Monday morning, reporting that Trump had threatened attacks and walked them back nine times over the past five months. A Fox & Friends host compared it to a child’s “seesaw.” If these two networks are asking the same question, the question can no longer be dismissed as biased or partisan.
Trump has long operated on the belief that unpredictability is his greatest asset. But unpredictability and unreliability are completely different things. A credible madman makes adversaries fear he might follow through. An unbelievable one trains everyone to ignore his bullshit until the missiles are airborne. Iran probably doesn’t know whether Trump is bluffing. What it can see plainly is that his declarations can be reversed by a phone call from Riyadh, a note through Oman, or even his own next Truth Social post.
The president’s credibility on this war is dangerously close to zero. The broader collapse didn’t happen overnight, nor did it occur only after months of scrutiny. But in this most recent example, his claim lasted only about twelve hours. Then he posted the correction himself!
Iran has figured out that it no longer has to call him a liar. It can wait until noon and let him contradict himself.