When bargaining about war and peace, the strategist Thomas Schelling wrote, you’re more likely to win concessions “if you get a reputation for being reckless, demanding, or unreliable.”
By that measure, President Donald Trump and Iran’s hard-line leaders both deserve what we might call the Schelling Prize for negotiations. They scrambled up the ladder of escalation without clearly defined objectives or a strategy for climbing down. Their recklessness was believable. But they seem to have come back from the brink.
This game of chicken paused Monday morning, just hours before the expiration of Trump’s ultimatum to “obliterate” Iran’s power plants unless it agreed to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Trump made a surprise announcement that he’d had “very good and productive conversations regarding a complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East.” He said he would delay the power plant strikes for five days.
Trump has made similar claims about negotiating breakthroughs before, only to reverse course and attack. He did that in late February, on the eve of this war, and back in June 2025 before the 12-day conflict. But an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman confirmed that messages had been received through “friendly countries” seeking negotiations to end the war.
The trick to the game of chicken is to make the other guy believe you are truly ready to crash the car. As Schelling observed more than 60 years ago, a winning strategy would be to remove the steering wheel and brandish it out the window as a sign you’re totally out of control. Except that the “winner” might end up dead. Trump is convincing as a risk-taker, but not a suicidal one. He has an instinct for self-preservation amid the chaos he inflicts.
The Iran war, to me, has been a lesson in the limits of brinkmanship. As Schelling put it in “The Strategy of Conflict,” his classic work, “Brinkmanship involves getting onto the slope where one may fall in spite of his own best efforts to save himself, dragging his adversary with him.” Trump approached the brink — but not so close that he might slide off.
That’s the problem with Trump’s way of war: You can’t bluff your way to a decisive victory. After Iran closed the strait, it became increasingly clear that Tehran had a potentially ruinous squeeze on the global economy. Trump has a high risk tolerance, until he reaches an unacceptable pain threshold.
Critics call this TACO, for “Trump always chickens out.” But the real lesson is one that the president never seemed to learn in business: Don’t bet more than you’re willing to lose.
Even before Monday’s announcement of peace negotiations, there were signs that a diplomatic track was reemerging. One was the almost frantic signaling by Trump that he wanted to end the conflict — as he moved from demanding “unconditional surrender” to announcing that the war was over to threatening destruction of Iranian power plants.
Another telling sign was that Trump quietly encouraged mediation efforts by two nations that Israel regards as adversaries: Qatar and Turkey. Qatari officials explored settlement terms last week until Israel’s strike on Iran’s South Pars gas field triggered a reciprocal Iranian attack on Qatar’s Ras Laffan gas facility. Then Turkey’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, announced Sunday that he was talking with Tehran, Washington and Brussels about a possible deal.
A third signal came from Iran itself. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi posted an intriguing message Sunday: “Strait of Hormuz is not closed. Ships hesitate because insurers fear the war of choice you initiated — not Iran. … Freedom of Navigation cannot exist without Freedom of Trade. Respect both — or expect neither.”
When a crisis becomes as dangerous as this one — and there is no clear path to victory at an acceptable cost — then de-escalation makes sense. But nobody should pretend that the kind of deal Trump and Iranian leaders are exploring will resolve the fundamental issues in this conflict. The Iranian nuclear program may be shattered, but not the malign regime that spawned it.
What worries me as this war is cresting are those caught in the crossfire. The United Arab Emirates, for example, cautioned Washington against going to war, but the UAE took more missile and drone hits than Israel. It wanted Trump to “finish the job” but seems likely to get something considerably less.
And the Iranian people, who marched in the streets to protest a regime they detest, died by the tens of thousands in January as the regime cracked down. Everyday Iranians are the real victims: They shouldn’t be left on the precipice much longer.
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