IRAN ADOPTS A TRUMPIAN NEGOTIATING TACTIC
BY DAN VALENTI
PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY
(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, MONDAY APRIL 20, 2026) — Unlike the rest of public Commonwealth, THE PLANET does not take Patriot’s Day off. Instead, we will keep bees as more than 30,000 halfwits prove their manhood, women included, in the Boston Marathon as the Red Sox lose their annual 11 a.m. start. We have more serious shish kabobs to barbecue.
Namely Iran.
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STOPY BY & MEET DAN VALENTI @ BARNES & NOBLE PITTSFIELD 2 p.m. SAT., APRIL 25 BOOK SIGNING OF DAN’S NEW BOOK, SANITY MADE SIMPLE
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Looks like the mullahs have learned a lot over the last 52 days. At least they’ve learned from the best. Taking a page from the Donald Trump, Iran pulled the rug from under the United States and Israel by suddenly reversing itself on the Straight of Hormuz. Trump, as we have seen in this war that isn’t a war, “negotiates” by being mercurial. He says one thing and does the opposite. He does one thing and claims he never did it. It keeps the other side off balance, unsure of what he’ll pull next. Well, Iran decided to try out the tactic.
On Friday, Iran announced it would open the straight, a key U.S. sticking point in determining war or talks. The price of oil dropped to below $85, Trump sounded upbeat, and the world sighed half-a-breath easier. The headlines harped happy. The war would end in a couple of days.
Then on Saturday, supreme leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Kahmenei announced the straight closed to traffic under control of Iran’s military. “We stand ready to inflict bitter defeats on [our] enemies.” Traffic stopped and Iranian gunboats fired upon a couple of ships that tried to move.
———- ooo ———-
An emboldened Iran also balked at U.S. demands that it turn over its enriched uranium.
Seen from the Iranian point of view, something any analysis must do to understand motivations of the other side, why should it give away this precious commodity. If anything, the ill-conceived joint Israeli-U.S. offensive has made Iran more determined than ever to acquire nuclear weapons. The logic is simple. America doesn’t attack any country with nukes.
“I can tell you that no enriched material is going to be shipped to United States,” Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Saeed Khatibzadeh told AP on Saturday. “This is non-starter and I can assure you that while we are ready to address any concerns that we do have, we’re not going to accept things that are nonstarters.”
What a difference from the day before, when Trump said the U.S. will go into Iran and “get all the nuclear dust,” referring to the 970 pounds (440 kilograms) of enriched uranium believed to be buried under nuclear sites damaged by U.S. military strikes last year.
As for the resumed negotiations that Trump touted Friday, the U.S. debate team is heading back to Islamabad. Looming is Tuesday at 8 p.m. EST (early Wednesday in Tehran), when the umpteenth “final deadline” for the two-week ceasefire expires. THE PLANET wonders. Does Trump again extend the ceasefire?
———- ooo ———-
Khatibzadeh called U.S. demands excessive.
From AP:
“We are still not there yet to move on to an actual meeting because there are issues that the Americans have not yet abandoned their maximalist position,” Khatibzadeh said. Iran was seeking the finalization of a “framework agreement” before moving to an in-person meeting, he added.
The Iranian official would not go into specifics of the negotiations with the United States or say which issues remain unresolved but called on Washington to address Iran’s concerns, including sanctions imposed on Iran.
“The other sides also should understand and address our main concerns, which are illegal unilateral sanctions that Americans have imposed on Iranians and this economic terrorism which has targeted Iranian people to suffocate them and make them to revolt against the political structure inside Iran,” Khatibzadeh said.
There’s no way to predict the outcome here. There’s not even a way to predict the developments of tomorrow. The situation could be resolved overnight and the tempest will have retreated into the teapot. On the other hand, Israel could launch a nuke on Tehran and usher in the End Days. Who knows?
No one. That’s who … not even THE PLANET.
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“If you’re going to strikeout, at least go down swinging” — Sir Donald Turpentine, Knight of the Bath.
“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”
LOVE TO ALL.
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The aftermath of war is sometimes even WORSE than the war itself. Even if Iran agrees to a peace treaty, it will take a long time for things to normalize in the Middle East region. Iran is isolated there, meaning that they have no regional allies.
On a separate subject, over the next two months, Pittsfield politics is going through crises of leadership. Mayor Peter Marchetti’s fiscal year 2027 budget proposal may spend up to one-quarter of one-billion-dollars beginning on July 01st, 2026. That means that Pittsfield politics will spend a record-breaking amount of taxpayer dollars beginning in less that 2.5-months time.
It is a series of crises because Pittsfield doesn’t have the money to cover its new annual budget. The City’s Commercial Tax Rate in the 2nd highest of any municipality in Massachusetts; Holyoke is 1st. It will mean that the City’s Residential Tax Rate will increase to record high levels, which will be borne primarily by the middle-class and up homeowners in Ward 4. The city’s fees will be close to double-digits, too.
Peter Marchetti said that he has decades of financial management experience and budgeting skills. Now is the time for him to prove it to the taxpayers. But unlike many other cities in Massachusetts, nobody knows anything about the Mayor’s would-be new budget proposal because he has yet to put one forward. What is he waiting for?
With what airforce and with what navy is the ORGC taking a Trumpian strategy? They promised $200 / barrel oil
Maybe for Irani, not on the world market however.
Don’t you find it interesting the interesting the eagerness the UK displays for policing the Strait the moment it becomes evident the ORGC is losing its capacity to do so? History speaks to this. The mercantile experience of the american colonies : divide and aggravate. Napoleon observed that the British were a crafty lot.
Declaring the Straight open on Friday then closed on Saturday, without pre-notice, is classic Trumpian upending.
What is predictable Dan, is that the American economy will be a fully engaged dumpster fire before Christmas. (can I say Christmas?) And if you are buying into the shitsoup the Whitehouse and its talking heads are spewing you will worse off sooner than those who are getting real life information.
But unless you are billionaire, there is not really much you can do except to stave off disaster for a shot while longer.
Read some of this highly engaged economists take on reality.
https://www.youtube.com/@lenapetrova
also
Just Broke: FAILING US Debt Auction Sends a HUGE Warning to the World — What It Means
Defeatist Dan’s TDS induced psychosis, leaves him ignorant to reality. .
Iran doesn’t control the Straight, America does.
Trumps magnanimity in allowing humanitarian aid and supplies, all the while gaining intelligence, choking off funding, war supplies and starving China of needed oil.
Encouraging the long tortured citizens of both countries to revolt,
Trump can and will press his bet, Iran and China, hold now poorer hands.
That Trump, executed this so perfectly, cannot be by chance- America is just that God damned good.
Even with the Demonrats, treasonous acts.
Dan what happens?
When Kurds are released, killing IRGC and supporters to extinction. Iran is now a powerless, unsympathetic & broken regime.
The Fanatics are now in the last throes of a dying regime.
Dans delusion denial of the fanatics fate of death by stoning, proves he slept through 2011 when Gaddafi‘s head was kicked around Libia, after 42 years of his tyranny.
How’d Mussolini fair?
Seeing the pattern yet?
“Those who fail to learn the lessons of history, are Doomed to repeat it “
Watching the self destruction of Evil, on our 250th birthday is wonderful.
With Vance’s taking lead in fraud prosecutions, SCOTUS becoming more originalist, and red wave in midterms, Trump is truly going to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.
Good guys win this round, like they always do!
4/20/26@8:45am
Tom
TOM
I hope you are correct with your closing sentence. Thanks for the feedback.