The Week: Iran, IPO Mania, and the New American Dream

The episode opens with a sobering assessment of the Iran conflict from two of the sharpest foreign policy minds alive: Anne Applebaum and Fiona Hill. After more than 100 days of war, neither is optimistic. Fiona Hill describes the dynamic as a disastrous negotiation in which Trump has revealed his hand so completely that Iran has no incentive to deal. "He's always telling the Iranians what he would do," she says. "In real time, he's laying out everything that he is thinking. So of course there is no incentive whatsoever for them to make a deal on any kind of basis right now because they have no certainty, no assurances of what the outcome is going to be." The IRGC, she adds, is like a car dealership, and Trump is a buyer who has accidentally let the dealer know he needs a car to get home. Hillary Clinton, speaking at the Prof G Markets tour in New York, echoed the assessment. She approved of the original strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities a year ago, but now sees the U.S. in a weakened position. "I think Iran is in a stronger position than it was before we did this," she said. Trump, she added, seems flummoxed, bored by the peace negotiations, and unsure how to extricate himself.

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