In place sanctions in december. they were not strong enough. that s also one of the points of the washington post article. in fact some of the obama s inner circle also believed the reaction should have been stronger. what s also ironic is as meager as those sanctions are, trump wants to roll those sanctioning back. he wants to do even less. so it s quite on the that he s not criticizing obama and claiming that he needs an apology. it s also very important to know that we have just started this special counsel investigation. we don t know what the either left, pete hoekstra doesn t know what the evidence will be. only the fbi knows some of the evidence, and they haven t even collected all of the evidence. so for trump to say there s no empty of collusion is incorrect. the fact is we don t know what the evidence is, and sean spicer also try to do make this logical leap today in his press conference saying because the obama administration knew about
I think they are feeling each other out. it s also part this is clear. i think everybody was expecting an asymmetrical response from putin. here is your asymmetrical response. he could have gone all the way sanctioning back and expelling half of the american embassy or he could have said, oh, come to the christmas tree celebration at the kremlin, it s a wonderful thing. so he chose that kind of softer, kinder putin, thinking that that will bring the so what is the mind-set in doing so? i remember 24 hours ago, most of the analysis was saying russia is going to probably reciprocate by doing something similar to what we did to them. that s kind of been diplomatic standard protocol over the year between many countries, but you re introducing something different here. he saw this, analyzed it, and he said, i m going to totally do some reverse psychology on this whole thing. and he does. he often, you expect something, and everyone talks about his unpredictability. i think it s actu
This does rep a paradigm shift in tehran. it would be the first that the hardliners have lost any substantial issue inside that government. and so i think kerry is seeing progress being made and understanding it may take a few days for the supreme leader and zarif to finally put pen to paper. he said today the negotiations aren t going to go on forever. at some point basically you have to wrap this up or walk away. at the same time he said they re not open-ended. he didn t exactly say they re closed in a way, that there s no timetable for when he would say, you know what? enough is enough. the consequences of the negotiations falling apart are potential catastrophic. you re going to have elections coming up. the hardliners would likely win to put the country back on a path. it would be difficult to get the sanctioning back in place.