The Return of the Echo Chamber

“If they could get Iran to suspend for even a few years, that is superior to what we got,” said Robert Malley, the former Obama official who negotiated the 2015 Iran deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Malley funded an Iranian influence operation while working at the International Crisis Group and then pushed its operatives into the State Department when he rejoined the government in the Joe Biden administration. He managed the Iran file until he was suspended for allegedly mishandling classified intelligence. Here the seasoned bureaucrat was trying to bait Trump by appealing to his vanity: Wouldn’t the president jump at a deal with Iran that’s better than the one Obama got?

Malley uses honey to try to lure Trump back into the agreement he withdrew from during his first term, and others think vinegar is the way to go. “Trump’s failed war has eliminated the power of America’s military threats,” says Trita Parsi, the U.S. green card-holding Iran lobbyist. According to the head of the Quincy Institute, funded by Charles Koch and George Soros, which served as a conduit between Iranian officials and Obama aides during the lead-up to the 2015 Iran deal, Trump doesn’t have any other choice but the Iran deal. The onetime JCPOA publicist David Ignatius agrees with Parsi. “Trump has no appetite for further armed conflict,” writes the Washington Post columnist who played a leading role in promoting the Russiagate conspiracy theory. “He knows that the upsides are limited and the tail risk, as financial traders like to say, is large…