The Real Reason Iran Hasn’t Struck a Deal

On Monday, Iran made Donald Trump an offer: It would open the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for lifting the U.S. blockade while nuclear negotiations continued. On Wednesday, Trump rejected this offer, promising to keep the blockade in place until Iran agrees to America’s terms on the nuclear issue. The blockade “is genius,” he said, and “now they have to cry uncle. That’s all they have to do. Just say, ‘We give up.’”The Trump administration’s explanation for this standoff is that there is an “absolute fracture” in the Iranian regime between the military and the negotiators. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Fox News that “unfortunately, the hard-liners with an apocalyptic vision of the future have the ultimate power in that country,” especially because the new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, is “untested” and “has not been seen.”The administration now appears to be gaming out a new course of action: strikes targeting not Iran’s military capacity but the faction inside the regime that it believes is blocking a deal. The president recently reposted a video of the Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen calling for an aerial campaign to do exactly this. According to Axios, the military has prepared options for a