OPERATION ECONOMIC OUTCAST: IRAN GETS THE EMPTY CUP

The White House named it in plain English: Operation Economic Outcast — total isolation of the Iranian regime. Not a strongly worded letter. Not a seminar. Isolation. The kind of policy you can explain at a diner counter without a glossary.

Asked this week when he expects Tehran back at the table, President Trump told Al Jazeera he has no timetable. 'I have no time schedule, none. I'm not in a hurry.' That is a man who has watched the same movie for forty years and is done buying popcorn for the other side.

Maximum pressure was never a slogan on this desk. It was a method. You dry up the money, you dry up the mischief. You do not send a fruit basket to a regime that treats American sailors, Israeli civilians, and its own people like extras in a hostage video.

The Sunday shows will call it reckless. They called the first-term pressure campaign reckless too, right up until the money got tight. Americano Strong's view: a country that begs for talks on the other guy's clock is not negotiating. It is waiting tables. The President is not waiting tables.