Donald Trump did the right thing in Iran, for a while. He buried their enriched uranium under hundreds of feet of dirt and rock. He destroyed for years their ability to enrich more of the stuff. He made a lot of headway in crimping their ballistic weapons. He showed others in and around the Persian Gulf that the Iranians are bad guys.

But then he stopped. We’d already lost, um, just about no soldiers, but there was a possibility that we might lose some. He stopped because he believed, correctly, that Americans were tired of the war. Or, more precisely, Americans were tired of paying fully half what they pay in Europe for gasoline to power their monster pickups.

In the meantime, Trump showed the Iranians that they can hold the world hostage at any time by simply threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz.

And so, this artist has sketched us a deal. Details are finally emerging after being hid for days, apparently because they thought we’d forget about it. (Iran who?)

Turns out, this inartful deal was available many months ago, many “we’ve already won” proclamations ago, and many billions of dollars ago.

What has changed now is the U.S. midterm elections. They are fast-approaching, and Trump’s party is in danger of losing.

The gist of Trump’s deal is that the Iranians and the U.S. agree to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Iran gets buco bucks by exporting oil. Iran can also charge a toll on non-Iranian vessels after 60 days (in time for the midterms), thereby getting more buco bucks.

There’s even more buco bucks. Trump will unfreeze Iranian assets around the world. Iran will also get about 300 billion to rebuild its military arsenal, er, I mean its civilian infrastructure.

For all those buco bucks, the Iranians will talk about discontinuing their nuclear program.

Trump has now announced for anyone who still reads his social media posts that he’s the “greatest President” in American history. Greater than Washington who earned us freedom, greater than Jefferson who negotiated the Louisiana Purchase for less than $0.03 an acre, and greater than Lincoln who saved the Union at the cost of his life.

Uh huh.

Here’s what’s going to happen. The Iranians will embarrass Trump by refusing to give him squat in the continued negotiations. The WH will put the best face it can on such refusal, but the Iranians will not cooperate. Instead, they will close the Strait again, will attack Israel again, will assault shipping again, will demand ransom from ships again, and will demand more buco bucks.

What Trump fails to understand is that the Iranians are principled thieves. Sure, those principles are bad ones – they are right out of the 12^th century. They don’t give a whit about commerce or prosperity. They don’t care about their people. They care only about their 47-year-old theocratic revolution.

Trump never encountered such principled people. Many of these people will die. The remainder will have Trump for lunch.

The Art of the Deal? Trump is about to learn that not everyone was born in Queens seeking a piece of the American pie. Midterms or not, you’re a fool to do a deal with madmen.