Iran Is Smarter Than You Think — Two aircraft carriers. More than 120 warplanes. The largest U.S. military deployment in the Middle East since 2003. At the very same time, negotiations in Geneva where both sides are signaling progress toward an agreement.
So what is it — war or a deal?
In Part 1 of this talk, Shahid Bolsen argues that the question itself is flawed. The military buildup and the diplomatic engagement are not opposites. They are components of the same strategy, operating on parallel tracks.
Bolsen examines who is actually representing Iran in Geneva and explains why their IRGC background is not a contradiction to diplomacy, but central to it. He outlines the current pragmatic alignment within Iran’s leadership — from Araghchi to Pezeshkian to Shamkhani — and argues that the IRGC’s recent arrests of reformist figures have been widely misinterpreted. What many analysts see as a hardliner power grab may, in fact, signal something far more strategic.
He also highlights the most revealing detail in the entire story: the gap between what Trump demands publicly and what U.S. negotiators are quietly requesting at the table in Geneva — and what that discrepancy exposes about the enduring formula that has shaped Iran-U.S. relations for the past fifty years.
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