{"id":181,"date":"2026-05-30T08:38:56","date_gmt":"2026-05-30T08:38:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/urbaneconomynews.com\/?p=181"},"modified":"2026-05-30T08:38:56","modified_gmt":"2026-05-30T08:38:56","slug":"we-are-only-in-act-iii-of-the-iran-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/urbaneconomynews.com\/?p=181","title":{"rendered":"We Are Only in Act III of the Iran War"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

There are days they wake up in a state close to wonderment. Friday was one of those days.<\/p>\n

Read more F Around and Find Out: Hasan Piker Could Finally Be on His Way to Jail<\/a><\/p>\n

There was Steve Witkoff, President Trump\u2019s real estate buddy and negotiator in chief, offering them a $300 billion international investment fund. The Ayatollah must have been rubbing his eyebrows or what\u2019s left of them, wondering if he was dreaming. The Iranians had been demanding war reparations but never thought they would get them, and certainly not on this scale.<\/p>\n

Will somebody please give Witkoff the cane? You have to wonder sometimes what he\u2019s thinking.<\/p>\n

And then you have the president, one day reassuring Americans that he won\u2019t make a \u201ccrummy\u201d deal, won\u2019t make a bad deal, will only make a \u201cgreat deal,\u201d and if the Iranians don\u2019t like it, he\u2019ll turn it back over to Pistol Pete.<\/p>\n

That was Thursday, at the Cabinet meeting in the White House. And then on Friday, the president\u00a0says on Truth Social\u00a0that the U.S. and Iran are close to a deal.<\/p>\n

Iran must agree that they will never have a Nuclear Weapon or Bomb. The Hormuz Strait must be immediately open, no tolls, for unrestricted shipping traffic, in both directions. . . . The enriched material, sometimes referred to as \u201cNuclear Dust,\u201d. . . will be unearthed by the United States in close coordination and conjunction with the Islamic Republic of Iran and the IAEA.<\/p>\n

No mention of that $300 billion \u201csweetener,\u201d as Witkoff reportedly called it.<\/p>\n

But if you examine what the president said, it\u2019s pretty clear he has not changed his negotiating demands.<\/p>\n

What about the Iranians? Are they coming any closer to the deal President Trump wants to make?<\/p>\n

Earlier this week, Ayatollah Mojtaba\u2014or what\u2019s left of him\u2014tweeted that \u201cDeath to America\u201d and \u201cDeath to Israel\u201d remain the regime\u2019s rallying cries and would become \u201ccommon slogans\u201d for Muslim youth across the world. \u201cThe region will not return to past conditions, and Washington will no longer have a safe place to station military bases in the region,\u201d\u00a0he added.<\/p>\n

Does that sound like a mullah who has changed his spots?<\/p>\n

How about the \u201cmoderate\u201d Parliament speaker, Qalibaf, the former commander of the IRGC Air Force? \u201cWe get concessions not through talks but through missiles,\u201d he tweeted on Friday. \u201cIn negotiations we only clarify them.\u201d<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t sound terribly conciliatory either, if you ask me.<\/p>\n

Now about that \u201cnuclear dust.\u201d Iran has 450 kilograms of 60 percent enriched uranium, which is enough for at least 11 bombs with just a few more spins of the centrifuge. Trump says that the deal must include the turnover of that material, which the Iranians have never agreed to, at least not in public.<\/p>\n

Trump has also said they cannot have a nuclear weapon in the future. What does that mean? It means they must also give up the 9,000 kilograms of low-enriched uranium in their stockpile and destroy their enrichment centrifuges.<\/p>\n

I think Trump is deliberately blowing hot and cold on the negotiations and not just because he wants to drop the price of oil and bump up the stock market.<\/p>\n

I think he is playing mind games with the Iranians. He is in no hurry to close a deal, and this has caught the Iranians off guard. They think the midterms will force Trump\u2019s hand, but so far they haven\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Read more The Myth of Slavery as an Engine of Growth<\/a><\/p>\n

Instead, oil field geology has trapped the Iranians, and they have begun dumping oil into the Persian Gulf to put off the day they must shutter their oil fields, doing long-term damage to fields and to their economy.<\/p>\n

In other words, Trump is beating them at their own negotiating game, and it\u2019s making their heads explode.<\/p>\n

Remember, best beloved, that the annual five-day Hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, ends on Friday night. The Saudis reportedly asked last week that the United States abstain from combat operations against Iran during the hajj.<\/p>\n

I call these negotiations Act III of the Iran War. Even if President Trump says that the U.S. and Iran have agreed to the outlines of a deal, I am willing to bet the Iranians will say no. They can\u2019t help themselves. It\u2019s how they\u2019re wired.<\/p>\n

And if their negotiators say yes, but . . . ? I\u2019m willing to bet the IRGC will launch more drones against ships in the Strait of Hormuz, or against Israel or the UAE. It\u2019s just their nature.<\/p>\n

Those provocations, which violate the ceasefire, will lead directly to Act IV.<\/p>\n

Act IV is the resumption of kinetic operations. This round of the war will be tremendously violent, if brief, and will shut down the entire country. The goal will be to convince the Iranian people that the regime cannot possibly survive.<\/p>\n

And that will lead directly to Act V.<\/p>\n

This is where the genius of Trump\u2019s long-term strategy will become apparent. Act V is where the Iranian people finally rise up and, with US and Israeli help, seize control of the vast armories of weapons stockpiled by the IRGC and the Basij in every part of the country.<\/p>\n

The violence will unfold under US and Israeli overwatch, which means that whenever we see an IRGC or Basij mobilization that threatens the uprising, we take them out. I would imagine we would also take down the Iranian regime broadcasting networks or hack them and turn them over to the insurgents.<\/p>\n

The president said on Thursday he wanted the Saudis, the Omanis, the Kuwaitis, and the Qataris to join the Abraham Accords. Almost jokingly, he added, \u201cI think they owe it to us . . . In fact, maybe I won\u2019t do the deal if they don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

If Act V is as successful as I believe it will be and the Iranian regime falls to a popular uprising, there will be no more roadblock to expanding the Abraham Accords.<\/p>\n

The Islamic regime in Iran has been the source of violence and terror for 47 years, not just in the Middle East but around the world. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum called them \u201cterrorists with an oil field.\u201d<\/p>\n

We humans are troublemakers by nature. Just read the Old Testament.<\/p>\n

But a world without the Islamic Republic of Iran could become one of those periods you read about in a single sentence in the Bible. \u201cAnd for forty years, Israel knew peace.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is a goal\u2014a generational goal, as the president likes to say\u2014that is worth the effort.<\/p>\n

Read more \u2018God and Country\u2019 vs. \u2018Secularism and State\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are days they wake up in a state close to wonderment. Friday was one of those days. There was Steve Witkoff, President Trump\u2019s real estate buddy and\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":180,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-iran"],"yoast_head":"\nWe Are Only in Act III of the Iran War - Urban Economy news<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/urbaneconomynews.com\/?p=181\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"We Are Only in Act III of the Iran War - Urban Economy news\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There are days they wake up in a state close to wonderment. 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