Trump's Maximalism Fails Again

When one side demands the other’s capitulation, negotiations tend to end in failure.

Reuters reports that Iran is preparing to reject the Trump administration’s unreasonable proposal on the nuclear issue:

Iran is poised to reject a U.S. proposal to end a decades-old nuclear dispute, an Iranian diplomat said on Monday, dismissing it as a "non-starter" that fails to address Tehran's interests or soften Washington's stance on uranium enrichment.

Iran’s rejection of extreme U.S. demands was entirely foreseeable. Iranian diplomats have been very clear from the beginning that they could not accept an end to domestic enrichment, but the U.S. side kept insisting that Trump would settle for nothing less. This intransigence on the Trump administration’s part is why these talks were never likely to succeed. When one side demands the other’s capitulation, negotiations tend to end in failure.