On Thursday and Friday, there seemed to be progress toward a war-ending deal. President Trump went along with an Iranian demand that Israel must cease bombing Lebanon as a precondition to talks. On Thursday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu complied, validating those critics who have argued Israel’s aggressive moves have all been done with Trump’s tacit consent or approval. Then on Friday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi posted on X that the Strait of Hormuz was “completely open.” Trump claimed that a deal was at hand, leading the stock market to jump and the price of oil to fall.

In ordinary diplomacy, this is how a deal unfolds. Each side offers the other something constructive, a process that builds confidence and trust, until eventually a firm agreement can be signed.

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But Trump is not a ordinary diplomat. Only a few hours after Araghchi proclaimed the strait open, Trump closed it again, announcing that the U.S. would continue its own blockade of the strait “until such time as our transaction with Iran is 100% complete,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. This confused all parties, including European leaders who had been gathering in Paris to push for progress on reopening the strait. On Saturday, Iran announced that it would not be reopening the strait after all, and several ships were turned back.

Finally, late on Sunday, a U.S. Navy destroyer enforcing Trump’s blockade fired on an Iranian cargo ship in the Arabian Sea, disabling its engine room. U.S. Marines subsequently boarded the ship and took control. If Trump wanted to sabotage his own deal, he could not have done better. Netanyahu did his part by resuming “defensive” bombing of Lebanon.

All this put the trust-building process into reverse. The Iranian side is divided into the civilian leadership, which is more inclined to negotiate a deal, and hard-liners in the Revolutionary Guard who want much tougher terms. Trump’s bizarre action strengthened the hand of the hard-liners once again.

Now Trump has dispatched his negotiating team—led by Vice President Vance, whose record of experience in high-stakes diplomacy is nonexistent—back to Islamabad to see what might be salvaged. Talks will supposedly begin Tuesday, the day that the two-week cease-fire is set to expire. But the Iranian Foreign Ministry has told reporters that Iran has not yet decided whether to participate at all, and the Iranian military has vowed retaliation for the U.S. seizure of its cargo ship.

The deal that Trump touted Friday was always going to be a heavy lift. Reopening the Strait of Hormuz was always going to be the easy part. It was open before Trump launched the war on February 28, and Iran would stand to benefit so long as it could get its shipments out too. Its willingness last Friday to reopen the strait as an initial gesture makes that even clearer.

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The hard part is Iran’s determination to be a nuclear power. The sheer viciousness of so many of Trump’s actions redoubles the influence of those in Tehran who want Iran to keep its uranium and capacity for enriching it, so that Iran can use nuclear capacity as a deterrent.

Indeed, Trump’s behavior has been so erratic that any deal might be metaphysically impossible. One cannot make a bargain with an entity that is categorically incapable of behaving in a consistent manner.

At any rate, in the short run, the best that Vance can hope for is an extension of the truce while talks continue. As far as an actual agreement, the best that those talks might achieve is the reopening of the strait combined with some sort of fig leaf that allows Iran to keep its uranium, while Trump can claim that it won’t be enriched for some number of years—an agreement that looks uncannily like the Obama deal that Trump tore up, except worse.

A worse case is that an agreement will leave Iran where it was before Trump’s war, but with harder-line leaders, zero prospect for regime change, and a weakened democratic opposition to the clerics and the Revolutionary Guards, who are also exacting tribute from everyone shipping in or out of the Persian Gulf.

But Trump could well screw up even that deal, and the current status quo of blockades, counter-blockades, and bombings imposed at random via social media posts will continue so long as he is president.

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Robert Kuttner is co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect, and professor at Brandeis University’s Heller School. His latest book is Notes for Next Time: Surviving Tyranny, Redeeming America. Follow Bob at his site, robertkuttner.com, and on Twitter.