President says Iran just has to sign a paper, bombs them instead.

I have worked the counter long enough to know the type. A man tells you the deal is done, the check is handled, everybody is square. Then you watch him follow the other guy into the parking lot and take a swing at him. When he comes back in, he says the other guy made him do it by being slow.

Yesterday the President posted that Iran had taken “too long to negotiate a deal” and “now they will have to pay the price!!!” Three exclamation points. I counted twice. Hours later, US Central Command said it was striking multiple targets in Iran. This was one day, one single day, after the President told reporters outside a basketball game that the deal could be wrapped up in two or three days.

So the timeline runs like this. Monday: deal in two or three days. Wednesday: pay the price, with punctuation. Wednesday night: airstrikes. You do not need community college for that math, and I only got a few semesters anyway.

The paper.

Here is the part I keep chewing on. The President also said all Iran has to do is “start signing a paper.”

A paper. Like it is a gym membership. Like there is a clipboard by the register and Tehran keeps walking past it. Sixty days of negotiations, a closed shipping strait, missiles landing in three countries that host our troops, and the official description of the holdup is that the other fella will not sign a paper.

I have seen men describe things this way before. It is always the man who does not understand the thing, describing it to people he hopes understand it less.

What the regulars would say.

At the diner we have a rule about guys like this, and it is not a complicated rule. When a man says the deal is basically done, you look at his hands, not his mouth. If his hands are dialing the military, the deal is not basically done.

Nobody disputes the helicopter. Iran shot down an Apache and there are men who fly those things who have mothers, and I am glad the pilots came home. Countries respond to that. Fine. That is the serious part and I will leave it to serious people.

The unserious part is selling both stories in the same week and expecting nobody to lay the receipts side by side. The deal is days away. Also, pay the price. Also, just sign the paper. Also, multiple targets. A man can have a war or he can have a signing ceremony, but when he promises both by Friday, the regulars start betting on neither.

Coffee is fresh. The paper, I am told, remains unsigned.