If Trump really cared about Iran’s nuclear issue, he wouldn’t have torn up the agreement unilaterally at a time when Iran was fully complying. An imperfect agreement is better than no agreement. “Not good enough” is just his excuse, and the reason he broke it was only to erase all of Obama’s achievements and prove that he’s stronger than Obama.

So the nuclear issue is merely a pretext Trump uses to attack Iran. Venezuela has no nuclear issue, yet he still found an excuse to turn it into a semi-colony. As early as 11 years ago, he said he wanted to take Iran’s oil—the oil is the thing that makes him feel like he’s really made a big profit.

Now that he has realized he can’t turn Iran into a second Venezuela at low cost, he settles for the next-best option: the nuclear agreement becomes the only way for him to exit in a dignified manner. As long as the agreement he gets has a few more clauses than Obama’s, he can claim he’s a hundred times better than Obama.

For Iran, the nuclear issue can also be negotiated. Khamenei long ago, from the perspective of doctrine, classified nuclear weapons as unclean—so in truth, they never really intended to develop them. They just want to use it as a card, and the card is meant to be played.

But even if Iran wants to make concessions, seeing the Venezuela “model home” built by Trump, it would be forced into not conceding first. So it can only show itself to be tougher than him. Trump has been used to playing at bankruptcy and acting like a deadbeat for so long that he hasn’t received any substantive punishment, so his country’s reputation is not constrained by anything. Crude oil must fall$CL .