Washington's Leverage Play Is Teaching Everyone to Stop Listening

The clearest picture of how the leverage play is failing came this week, and it wasn't a missile. The administration had tried to open a secret channel to the IRGC — through the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and the president of Iraqi Kurdistan, Nechirvan Barzani, aimed at the IRGC general Ahmad Vahidi ^[1]. The summit never happened. Not because Iran rejected the terms, but because Iranian officials feared Israeli intelligence would assassinate their envoys if they showed up ^[1]. Washington could not guarantee the safety of its own diplomatic channel, because an ally's behavior made the offer-track physically unsafe. That is the whole problem in miniature. A squeeze play only works if three things hold. The threats have to be credible. The offers have to be believable. And the two have to come from the same mouth. None of the three is holding. Start with the threats. The president demanded that every official use one word, "obliterated," and told them to copy him ^[2].

Everyone needs to say the word obliterated. — Donald Trump

His vice president went on Joe Rogan's show the same month and made the opposite case, that bombing alone cannot hold the strait.

I don't like giving deadlines, but they pretty much know--they know the story. They better behave. — Donald Trump

This is not a coordinated good-cop/bad-cop routine. It is two men in the same administration publicly contradicting each other about the central question of the war. Then the offers. On June 14, as the US and Iran were finalizing a peace deal, Israel bombed Beirut ^[3]. Trump was furious.

I was so pissed off. I let him know. He has no fucking judgement. I let him know that. — Donald Trump

Iran's parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, read the strikes as proof the US could not be trusted to deliver ^[3].

if Hezbollah does not stop firing at our cities and citizens – Israel will strike terrorist targets in Beirut — Benjamin Netanyahu

The coalition partner sabotaged the diplomatic track, and Washington could not stop it. Then the mechanism that connects the two. Trump himself described what the alternating pattern produces ^[4].

Every time they agree, the next day it's like we didn't even talk. — Donald Trump

That is not leverage. That is non-compliance, described by the person running the strategy. Iran has not just noticed the contradiction. It has reverse-engineered it. Ghalibaf named the pattern outright ^[5].

Using bullying + broken promises + fake news as leverage is a failed strategy. — Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf

And from that diagnosis he drew a conclusion about what currency actually works: that Iran gets concessions through missiles, not through dialogue ^[6]. The adversary didn't just see through the double-game; it extracted a lesson about how to respond to it. The Gulf states reached the same diagnosis from the other side, and they reached it early. Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan signed their mutual defense pact in September 2025, months before the war ^[7]. What has changed since is the hardening: the pact is now formalized ^[8], the pipelines to bypass Hormuz are being built ^[9], and the roughly $2 trillion in US assets is under review ^[10]. Each of these is a party that has stopped treating Washington's communications as signal. The leverage theory has a prerequisite nobody in Washington seems to have stated: it works only if every counterparty believes your threats and your offers at the same time. The result is that nobody does. The adversary has concluded missiles are the only language that works. The allies are building their own security and trade routes. And the coalition partner acts on its own agenda, leaving Washington unable to guarantee the deals it is trying to strike. The ceasefire expires tomorrow ^[11]. Whatever Washington says next, the question is no longer whether it means it. It's whether anyone is still listening.