37 Times Trump Promised a Deal With Iran. Now He's Saying 'Two Weeks' Again.
CNN counted it so you didn't have to: Trump has claimed an Iran deal was imminent 37 times. He's still at it.
At some point, "two weeks" stops being a timeline and starts being a punchline.
CNN published an analysis today (Tuesday) documenting what many had long suspected but nobody had quite bothered to count: President Trump has made at least 37 public statements since the start of the Iran crisis claiming that a deal was imminent or that Tehran was desperate to reach one. In every single case, no deal materialized.
Thirty-seven times. The war grinds on. Iran still hasn't signed anything. The Strait of Hormuz remains a geopolitical pressure point. And President Trump, undeterred by the minor inconvenience of being wrong three dozen times, is still at it.
On Tuesday, Trump told reporters that a deal ending hostilities with Iran could be finalized "in two or three days," that it would prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, and that the Strait of Hormuz would open "immediately - right after the signing."
The pattern, as CNN documented, is nothing if not consistent. On April 7, Trump announced a ceasefire saying the two sides were "very far along" and needed just two weeks for the agreement to be "finalized and consummated," concluding that "it is an Honor to have this Longterm problem close to resolution." There was no resolution.
What followed was a greatest-hits tour of imminent dealmaking. He said the administration was "getting a lot closer." He said the deal was "largely negotiated, subject to finalization." He said it would be announced "shortly" and that the "final aspects" were being discussed. On May 28, in an interview with his daughter-in-law Lara Trump, things were "close to a very good deal."
On Sunday, he assured the world that the two sides were "very close to a final deal," but that Iran and Israel were jeopardizing it with a "side scuffle." It was at least the third time he told Axios that a deal was imminent.
Then on Monday, at a tele-rally for Sen. Lindsey Graham, Trump upped the ante entirely. "We're negotiating now, and they want to make a very good deal. They're willing to give us everything, they're willing to give us no nuclear weapon," Trump said. "I think we are winning that battle, but you're really going to win it over the next two weeks when we declare total victory - it'll be a total victory, it'll happen very soon, and oil prices will come tumbling down."
Two weeks. Again.
The first such claim came on March 23, less than a month after the conflict began, when Trump told reporters there were "significant areas of convergence on nearly all issues." At the time, Iranian officials denied any negotiations were even underway.
To be fair to the President, predicting imminent victory is not entirely without precedent in the annals of American leadership. What is somewhat novel is doing it 37 times without interruption, across two months, through a ceasefire that wobbled, a new round of missile exchanges, armed Israeli jets sitting on a runway, and Iran still very much in possession of both its uranium and its opinions.
The deal, sources close to the situation confirm, remains just around the corner. As it has been since March.