The Perils of ‘The Grand Bargain’

Both the President and vice president have thrown out the term “grand bargain” in recent days to describe their aspirations for a deal with the Iranian rump regime.

It’s a term fraught with past failures that screams out Iranian deception, not the interests of America first.

Bill Clinton was the first to use the phrase toward the end of his second term to describe his aspiration to end a low intensity conflict that had been simmering for twenty years.

Just as today, among the top Iranian demands was for the US to lift economic sanctions, which at the time included a total US trade embargo, secondary sanctions of foreign oil and gas companies investing in Iran, and the release of Iranian funds held by the US Treasury.

Those Treasury funds were a carefully kept secret. At the time, I was engaged as a consultant to attorneys representing Stephen Flatow, whose daughter Elyssa had been murdered by Iranian-backed terrorists in Israel in 1996.

We queried the Treasury Department as to the existence of those Iranian funds and were told they did not exist.

And then lo and behold in late 2000, the Justice Department found that Treasury had simply destroyed all the documents. Clinton eventually released the funds — not to the Iranians, for the talks had by then collapsed – but to the Iranian regime’s US victims.

Obama later claimed he was releasing the same frozen funds when he sent pallets of cash totaling $1.7 billion to Iran in 2016. And yes, those payments were another attempt at reaching a “grand bargain” with Iran.

Here’s what you need to know. When the Iranian regime hears the term “grand bargain,” they begin to salivate. It’s better than hot mint tea after a day-long forced march in the Great Salt desert. 

To them, it means they will survive. Even better, that they will have succeeded in suckering those stupid Americas once again into a very bad deal.

That is certainly what happened in July 2015 with the Iran nuclear deal. Then Secretary of State John Kerry, whose daughter spent her honeymoon in Iran visiting her husband’s Iranian family, reminded us recently that he spent four years negotiating America’s capitulation to Iran.

As the clock ticked down to the deadline, Kerry thought he had a deal three times. And three times his Iranian partner, Javad Zarif, smiled and shook his hand and flew back to Tehran, where the Supreme Leader dictated new demands.

As I wrote at the time, Khamenei reasoned that if the US was willing to make so many concessions already, then surely they would be willing to make more. And he was right.

Kerry eventually agreed to last minute Iranian demands that removed an international ban on arms sales to Iran, removed restrictions on Iran’s ballistic missile programs, allowed Iran to continue enriching uranium and to develop higher speed enrichment centrifuges, and removed the IRGC and its overseas terrorist arm, the Quds Force, from Treasury Department sanctions. Many sources believe Kerry also agreed to give Iran 2500 green cards for the sons and daughters and nieces and nephews of regime leaders.

So grand bargain? Really?

The Islamic rump regime wants one thing overwhelmingly: to stay in power.  They will make all kinds of promises to achieve that goal. And they will lie. And they will cheat.

As Trump has said, we hold all the cards. We also have all the intel and the bombs to play those cards to our advantage, as Secretary of War Pete Hegseth reminded the Iranians on Thursday.

Any deal with the Iranian regime must include a total ban on uranium enrichment and nuclear projects in Iran. They need medical isotopes? No problem. We or the Russians or the Chinese or God forbid the French can provide them. Same goes for the tiny amounts of 3% uranium fuel rods they need for their one nuclear power reactor.

The Iranian regime has been in violation of the NPT since 2003, as witnessed by multiple UNSC resolutions. They have never resolved those issues and are still in noncompliance, which means they have forfeited their right to nuclear technology

A deal to end the war must also include real limits on the regime’s ballistic missile programs, perhaps subjecting them to a US-led disarmament commission similar to what the UN imposed on Saddam Hussein after the first gulf war, but without UN supervision.

The United States should establish a US-led monitoring board to control Iran’s oil exports to ensure that revenues flow to the Iranian people, not the IRGC and foreign terrorist groups (We did the same thing in 1906, when the US sent government accountant Morgan Shuster to become Treasurer of Iran, to ensure that the shah didn’t fritter away the people’s money on foreign concessions).

Such a deal must include ironclad guarantees for the Iranian people that the regime will not use violence against peaceful protestors and if it does, that it will face US military reprisals.

After all, Donald Trump is leaving office in January 2029, and we will never have another president like him. We don’t want to have to repeat this war in another ten years.

Let’s see if the president can turn the tables and negotiate a “grand bargain” that puts America first. If anyone can do it, he can.

I discuss this, as well as the remarkable peace talks between Israel and Lebanon, on this week’s Prophecy Today Weekend.

I also discuss the future of NATO, and the pathetic summit between “Little Cookie” Macron and UK PM Keir Starmer where they strutted around like two self-important peacocks, claiming that between them they would secure the Strait of Hormuz now that the US has already done so.

As always, you can listen live at 1 PM on Saturday on 104.9 FM or 550 AM or by using the Jacksonville Way Radio app. If you miss us live, you can catch the Prophecy Today podcast later.

Yours in freedom.

©2026 Kenneth R. Timmerman. All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Trump Gives Major Update on Strait of Hormuz

Hegseth: Blockade Will Force Iran to Negotiate or Perish

Website: kentimmerman.com

Ken Timmerman’s 14th book of non-fiction, THE IRAN HOUSE: Tales of Revolution, Persecution, War, and Intrigue, can be ordered by clicking here or by viewing my author’s page, here. 

Raising Olives in Provence, can be ordered by clicking here.