The TACO trade has gone kinetic. Trump Always Chickens Out began as a Wall Street acronym for tariff threats that evaporated on contact with the bond market. It now describes American Gulf policy. On Tuesday, President Trump struck Iran to “restore leverage.” On Thursday, he canceled the follow-on strikes, announced that Iran’s leadership had “approved” a draft agreement, and began planning a signing ceremony for the weekend. Iran’s foreign ministry responded that Tehran had “not yet reached a final decision.

Curious how Washington keeps circling back to the same uneasy dance with Moscow, this whole episode feels like one of those moments where you blink and suddenly the geopolitical logic has flipped without any corresponding shift on the ground. The October sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil were the only truly consequential economic pressure the Trump administration ever put on Russia to push it toward meaningful negotiation over Ukraine. Those measures hit revenue streams, strategic capabilities, and Kremlin-aligned elites in ways Moscow genuinely dislikes.