There’s a classic scene in “Hoosiers” where the interim coach offers to help Gene Hackman’s character. Hackman declines, and the coach delivers one of the most memorable lines in sports movie history:

“There’s two kinds of stupid in this world. One is the kind where a man gets naked and barks at the moon in the middle of the woods. The other is the man who does the same thing in my living room.”

Well, the ayatollahs in Iran have officially moved from the woods… to the living room.

And the problem is—they don’t seem to know it.

Because if you look at what’s happening right now in the negotiations involving the United States, Iran, and intermediaries like Pakistan, you don’t see strategy.

You see a regime that has completely misread the moment.

For decades, Iran’s leadership has operated under a very specific assumption: that every American president ultimately behaves the same way. Tough talk, red lines, then retreat. Pressure, followed by accommodation. Escalation, followed by relief.

They’ve watched it play out since Carter. They saw it under Obama—where red lines vanished and pallets of cash showed up on runways. They’ve learned to stall, posture, and wait out the storm. And so they assumed this would be no different.

That was their first........

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