The Reasons Behind Our Prediction of Trump’s Iran Ceasefire

(SeaPRwire) –   Throughout the 1980 presidential race, Ronald Reagan repeatedly said of President Jimmy Carter, “There he goes again,” to suggest Carter’s actions were foreseeable.

With Iran, there goes Trump again.

Analysts, financial markets, and allied governments were all surprised by Trump’s apparently sudden shift on Iran. He announced a two-week ceasefire on Tuesday, just hours after vowing to bomb Iran into the Stone Age and destroy its bridges, infrastructure, and power plants. Following the ceasefire news, markets reacted sharply, with oil prices plunging 20% and U.S. stock futures jumping almost 3%.

Yet this reversal should not have shocked anyone. In our book, Trump’s Ten Commandments, we accurately and frequently forecast this very result, as it aligns completely with Trump’s well-documented behavioral patterns. As we state in the book, whether you admire him, despise him, or prefer to ignore him, Trump is the most impactful individual living today, and to predict his moves, you must comprehend his thought process and motivations.

Here is why Trump’s Iran reversal was entirely foreseeable.

A punch to the face

Trump’s second commandment is to open negotiations with a punch to the face. Regarding Iran, this involved threatening to obliterate civilian infrastructure and warning that a “whole civilization” would perish, “never to be brought back again.”

Although many interpreted Trump’s threats against Iran’s power plants and civilian infrastructure, along with his 8 p.m. deadline, as serious, we correctly foresaw that these were more about show and intimidation than real intent. While some critics argued the deadline trapped him, we saw it precisely as Trump meant it: simply the initial move in backchannel peace talks, aided by Pakistan and several other Arab mediators.

This is a staple of Trump’s negotiation handbook. Rather than gradually establishing trust, he begins every deal by punching you in the face. His philosophy is to escalate in order to de-escalate; by taking the initiative, he believes he can maximize his leverage immediately.

The Trump market

Trump’s fourth commandment is that he treats money as a scorecard. Here, the market was loudly demanding peace.

Trump is the most business and market-oriented President in history. He frequently treats financial markets as a live gauge of his performance. For weeks, he adeptly influenced market conditions by provoking tensions on Friday or Saturday and then calming them on Monday, sparking rallies at the week’s start. However, this tactic lost effectiveness as traders became familiar with his methods and noticed a gap between his words and deeds.

When oil prices soared above $100 a barrel, 30-year bond yields approached 5% alongside spiking mortgage rates, and U.S. stocks fell into correction territory, the market accomplished what many of Trump’s opponents could not—it acted as an undeniable constraint on his power.

Flips galore

The seventh commandment is that the world consists of winners and losers. From this perspective, sudden changes are routine.

Largely free from ideological constraints, Trump has no patience for folly and shows scant lasting allegiance to any group or creed. His fluid, adaptable pragmatism was evident over the past two weeks. What many perceived as indecision between Iran hawks and doves—threatening catastrophic bombing one day and expressing optimism about peace talks the next—was actually Trump’s method of preserving maximum strategic optionality.

Trump considers his shift from heeding Iran hawks like Senator Lindsey Graham to empowering doves like JD Vance as an advantage, not a flaw.

Rewriting history through the sleeper effect

Always claim victory, regardless of the result. This is Trump’s eighth commandment.

By persistently and unequivocally reiterating his narrative, Trump tries to reshape reality. The sheer force and frequency of his claims lead his supporters to accept them as truth, irrespective of their accuracy.

It was always evident that Trump would find a reason to proclaim victory, as he invariably does, and then tirelessly promote that story. Through constant repetition of a winning narrative, strategic shortcomings—like failing to eliminate Iran’s 440 kg of 60% enriched uranium, Iran’s retention of major ballistic missile and offensive capabilities, and the lack of meaningful change to its theocratic government—are sidelined. It is contradictory that both critics and supporters of Donald Trump are so frequently unprepared for his seemingly sudden policy turns, when the basis for these shifts is often visible to anyone who knows where to look. Trump’s Ten Commandments demonstrates that his Iran ceasefire was not at all unexpected and reflects the instincts he has exhibited throughout his career in politics, business, war, and peace.