The dealer meets the negotiator

Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, earned his PhD in government from the University of Kent, one of a dozen or so universities that Britain established or upgraded in the 1960s to accommodate its postwar baby boom. He later wrote a book, whose title is translated as The Power of Negotiation, in which he explained:

"The main principle of bargaining is ... repetition, repetition, and repetition, combined with steadfastness and persistence. Insisting on positions and repeating demands is a necessity that must be done each time with different rhetoric and reasoning." (Italics added.)

On the other hand, Donald Trump famously wrote a book titled The Art of the Deal, and we now see what happens when the dealer meets the negotiator: he gets taken to the cleaners. The president likes to say that Barack Obama's 2015 agreement with Iran was "probably the worst deal we've ever done as a country." That may have been true at the time, but no longer. Mr Obama paid $1.5 billion for a nuclear agreement that meant nothing, but Mr Trump has multiplied the payoff by many times just to open the Strait of Hormuz and engage in 60 more days of repetition, repetition, and repetition.

Oh, and the president is required to lean on Prime Minister Netanyahu to let Hezbollah send rockets into Israel's towns without responding to them.

Well, congratulations, Mr Trump. The 2015 JCPOA has been reduced to second-worst deal in American history. And you're not done yet!