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For more than three months, Trump has been personally immersed in the Iran confrontation, overseeing 38 days of strikes, a push to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and the announcement of a naval blockade on Iranian ports. Yet on Monday, after days of indirect bargaining over a preliminary framework, he told CNBC’s Eamon Javers that he “couldn’t care less” if the talks collapse, insisting, “If they’re over, they’re over.” His comments came as Iranian officials, angered by continued Israeli strikes in Lebanon and low-level clashes with U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf, threatened to walk away from the table.
Behind the bravado lie mounting pressures at home. Gasoline prices have surged since the war began, with senior oil executives warning that they could climb significantly higher, and Republicans are increasingly alarmed at how unpopular the conflict has become with their voters. In recent weeks, Trump has also adopted a broader posture of feigned indifference toward issues with major political consequences, from the midterm elections to Americans’ worsening financial strains, a pattern Sanger notes in his analysis.
The president’s latest brush-off is especially jarring given his own shifting narrative about Iran. He has swung from threatening Tehran with annihilation, to prematurely suggesting the Iranians had already accepted U.S. terms, to now portraying the process itself as tedious. Just hours before calling the talks “boring,” he had boasted on social media that negotiations were “continuing, at a rapid pace, with the Islamic Republic of Iran,” amid reports he personally toughened conditions for an initial accord over frozen Iranian funds and control of highly enriched uranium stockpiles.
Those technical disputes — who releases the money, who handles the nuclear material — may sound like details, but they are crucial to any sustainable agreement. They also underline the gap between Trump’s public posture and the intricate, grinding work of crisis diplomacy. Only months ago, in March, he dismissed the notion that he would grow tired of confronting a long-time U.S. adversary, declaring of the Iran conflict, “There’s nothing boring about this.” As the war drags on, the president’s attempt to project boredom may mask not only fatigue with the negotiations, but also the growing political and economic costs of a confrontation he once predicted would be over in a matter of weeks.