Iran Has Trump “By The Balls,” Say Senior U.S. Officials
By Asawin Suebsaeng Photos: Wikimedia Commons One long year ago, I was talking to an appointee in Donald Trump’s new administration who, as many of Team Trump’s senior and mid-level officials are wont to do, felt like anonymously complaining to a member of the media about something blisteringly moronic the president had done. This official, who sounded deeply annoyed by Trump’s first bombing of Iran, said something that has rung in my brain for the past 12 months: The Trump appointee called the U.S. president “a lazy warmonger.” To this day, I cannot think of a more fitting term to describe the policies and the global vision of the Trump-Vance era. Yes, the self-described “Peace President” is actually very good at starting wars. But he’s often unwilling to put in the hard, blood-caked effort exhibited by work-ethic genocidaires who came before him. Does that laziness ultimately save some lives? Maybe. But it also gets a ton of people killed, as the world waits for Trump’s laziness to evolve into gratuitous imperial humiliation. In his absurdly fascistic second term, he is now doing the most characteristically fascist thing he could do – surrendering, after starting a fight with what he thought was a much weaker nation. And like the sore-loser bully that he is, he can’t bring himself to admit he got his ass handed to him. Last night, he even chose to sign the surrender document, sorry, memorandum of understanding, at… wait for it… the Palace of Versailles. Earlier in the day, at the G7 summit in France, President Trump had again tried to sound tough, saying of the deal: “No, it’s not final. It’s a memorandum of understanding, and if I don’t like it, we’ll go back to shooting at them, dropping bombs on their head.” He also said: “If they don’t behave, we’ll go back to dropping bombs right smack in the middle of their head.” The problem? Trump has threatened mass slaughter, genocide, and ground invasions so many times, only to sheepishly pull back, that senior government officials both in Tehran and Washington now simply don’t believe he has the stomach to restart his war in any substantial way. This is true of many officials and aides I’ve spoken to lately at the Pentagon, White House, and elsewhere. Furthermore, numerous Trump advisers and administration officials have told me the same thing within the past week and a half, which boils down to: We cannot afford to keep this war going much longer. We are weeks away from it plunging the global economy off a massive cliff. And not only is it shredding the Republican Party’s chances ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, but it’s been tearing apart this administration and could very well bring it down. We do not have the leverage that the Trump White House keeps publicly pretending that we have. There was one quote – from one senior U.S. official – that stood out, given how briskly it got to the point of where Trump is at in negotiations with the Iranians: “They’ve got him by the balls,” this official – who, like others, is remaining anonymous because they don’t want to be fired or jailed by Team Trump – noted. “We want out, and [the Iranians] know we don’t have all the cards.” It’s such a shame… for Trump. No one believes the U.S. is negotiating from a position of strength, no matter how many times JD Vance says we are. Trump lost this one, badly. He will soon have more time to focus on his administration’s true top priority: His war on the American people.
Black News 
Photos: Wikimedia Commons
One long year ago, I was talking to an appointee in Donald Trump’s new administration who, as many of Team Trump’s senior and mid-level officials are wont to do, felt like anonymously complaining to a member of the media about something blisteringly moronic the president had done.
This official, who sounded deeply annoyed by Trump’s first bombing of Iran, said something that has rung in my brain for the past 12 months: The Trump appointee called the U.S. president “a lazy warmonger.”
To this day, I cannot think of a more fitting term to describe the policies and the global vision of the Trump-Vance era. Yes, the self-described “Peace President” is actually very good at starting wars. But he’s often unwilling to put in the hard, blood-caked effort exhibited by work-ethic genocidaires who came before him.
Does that laziness ultimately save some lives? Maybe. But it also gets a ton of people killed, as the world waits for Trump’s laziness to evolve into gratuitous imperial humiliation.
In his absurdly fascistic second term, he is now doing the most characteristically fascist thing he could do – surrendering, after starting a fight with what he thought was a much weaker nation. And like the sore-loser bully that he is, he can’t bring himself to admit he got his ass handed to him.
Last night, he even chose to sign the surrender document, sorry, memorandum of understanding, at… wait for it… the Palace of Versailles.
Earlier in the day, at the G7 summit in France, President Trump had again tried to sound tough, saying of the deal: “No, it’s not final. It’s a memorandum of understanding, and if I don’t like it, we’ll go back to shooting at them, dropping bombs on their head.”
He also said: “If they don’t behave, we’ll go back to dropping bombs right smack in the middle of their head.”
The problem? Trump has threatened mass slaughter, genocide, and ground invasions so many times, only to sheepishly pull back, that senior government officials both in Tehran and Washington now simply don’t believe he has the stomach to restart his war in any substantial way. This is true of many officials and aides I’ve spoken to lately at the Pentagon, White House, and elsewhere.
Furthermore, numerous Trump advisers and administration officials have told me the same thing within the past week and a half, which boils down to: We cannot afford to keep this war going much longer. We are weeks away from it plunging the global economy off a massive cliff. And not only is it shredding the Republican Party’s chances ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, but it’s been tearing apart this administration and could very well bring it down. We do not have the leverage that the Trump White House keeps publicly pretending that we have.
There was one quote – from one senior U.S. official – that stood out, given how briskly it got to the point of where Trump is at in negotiations with the Iranians:
“They’ve got him by the balls,” this official – who, like others, is remaining anonymous because they don’t want to be fired or jailed by Team Trump – noted. “We want out, and [the Iranians] know we don’t have all the cards.”
It’s such a shame… for Trump. No one believes the U.S. is negotiating from a position of strength, no matter how many times JD Vance says we are.
Trump lost this one, badly. He will soon have more time to focus on his administration’s true top priority: His war on the American people.
