“Maybe me and the ayatollah.” Five words that just changed the balance of power in the Middle East.
I was up at 4:30 this morning. Patton was already awake—he senses tension before it arrives, which is a trait we share. I checked my phone and saw the president’s Truth Social post about productive conversations with Iran, and I will tell you this: I have studied every major negotiation from Yalta to Camp David to the Abraham Accords, and Trump’s Iran diplomacy is operating at a level that most analysts are simply not equipped to understand.
Let me walk you through what happened, because the mainstream coverage is—predictably—missing every important signal.
The 48-Hour Ultimatum Was a Masterclass
On Saturday evening, the president posted that Iran had 48 hours to fully open the Strait of Hormuz or he would obliterate their power plants, “starting with the biggest one first.” Liberal historian Heather Cox Richardson called this a “threat to commit a massive war crime.” Economist Paul Krugman, in a piece he titled “Adventures in Fantasy Diplomacy,” suggested Trump was “looking for a way out.”
I want to be clear about something. I have read both of these analyses. Richardson’s reporting is detailed. Krugman’s observations are, in places, technically competent. But they are looking at a chessboard and seeing checkers.
Watch Krugman’s video above. Listen carefully. He opens by comparing Trump’s negotiation to an “invisible six-foot white rabbit” and a “Canadian girlfriend.” He says Iran is “winning” and questions why they’d want to make a deal. He even floats the idea that insider trading might be driving U.S. foreign policy. And then, almost despite himself, he arrives at the critical insight buried at the end: America’s position in the world depends on whether people take what we say seriously.
Exactly. And what did the president do this morning? He made everyone take what he said seriously. Iran. The markets. The media. Every intelligence service on the planet woke up Monday morning trying to figure out what Donald Trump was going to do next. That is called strategic unpredictability, and it is the most undervalued asset in the American arsenal.
Iran’s Denial Is the Strongest Proof That Trump Iran Diplomacy Is Working
Richardson documents that Iran’s foreign ministry denied having any contact with U.S. negotiators. Krugman treats this as proof that Trump fabricated the whole thing. With respect to both of them, this analysis is embarrassingly naive.
Of course Iran denied the talks. In every negotiation I have studied—and I have studied hundreds—the weaker party denies engagement to preserve domestic credibility. Iran’s parliament speaker, Ghalibaf, said no negotiations had occurred, and CNN reported that his denial was “carefully worded” and did not refute that messages had been passed. That is diplomatic language for “we are at the table but cannot say so.” I recognized it immediately. Krugman, who is an economist and not a strategist, did not.
Richardson notes that Axios reported Witkoff and Kushner have been communicating with Ghalibaf through intermediaries in Egypt, Pakistan, and Turkey. She presents this as though the negotiations are somehow less real because they’re happening through back channels. I would respectfully submit that back-channel negotiations are how every significant diplomatic breakthrough in modern history has begun. Richardson is a historian. She should know this.
“Maybe Me and the Ayatollah”
Now. Let me address the moment that I believe will be studied in strategy seminars for the next fifty years.
When CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked who would control the Strait of Hormuz, the president said: “Maybe me. Maybe me and the ayatollah, whoever the ayatollah is.”
Krugman thinks this is incoherent. Richardson embeds it in a litany of quotes designed to suggest the president has no plan. My assessment is the exact opposite. What Trump communicated in that one sentence was a willingness to personally guarantee the most important shipping lane on Earth—not as a bureaucratic abstraction, not through some multilateral framework that would take eighteen months to negotiate and collapse on day two—but as a direct personal commitment between two leaders.
This is the kind of thing that makes the foreign policy establishment uncomfortable, because it bypasses every institution they’ve spent their careers building. And I understand their discomfort. But comfort has never won a war.
Some will note that Trump also said “whoever the ayatollah is,” which critics interpret as ignorance about who runs Iran. I see it differently. The previous supreme leader’s entire command structure was destroyed in the air strikes. The new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, is still consolidating power. When Trump says “whoever the ayatollah is,” he is signaling that the identity of the specific leader is irrelevant to him—what matters is the deal. That is pure transactional negotiation at the highest level. It is intimidating. It is meant to be.
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