Is a Deal Nigh? What’s Iran’s Endgame? Mamdani to Titans of Industry: Drop Dead. Or Just Go Away. FBI Raids Legislators’ Cannabis Shops. Butchery: Serkis’ Adaptation of ‘Animal Farm.’ And More

As news of a potential deal with Iran emerges, several influential voices seem to be echoing Margaret Thatcher’s fabled advice to a previous leader of the free world: Don’t go wobbly.

President Trump is eager to get a deal to extricate the U.S. in time to help his party in the midterms (a perfectly legitimate goal). “Tehran would love to keep it vague, then drag out the implementation,” warns a Wall Street Journal editorial on a possible deal. The editors write:

President Trump abruptly paused Project Freedom in the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday night, citing progress in nuclear talks. Now the Iranians are reviewing a U.S. framework, which if accepted would lead to 30-day negotiations on a detailed agreement. …

The attacks on Iran’s nuclear program have already made the proposed terms more effective than those of the 2015 deal. The strikes also suggest a willingness to attack again, which is the true deterrent. Still, this regime thrives on delay and ambiguity. Key details have to be spelled out, even in the initial framework.

On Wednesday Iran’s state media criticized the U.S. offer, and a senior U.S. official told us the regime is still likely to resist U.S. red lines. It will be essential for Mr. Trump to hold firm, knowing that Iran has no need for domestic enrichment other than for a bomb, and that he can’t count on a change in regime behavior over time, a mistake Mr. Obama made.

Meanwhile, Hugh Hewitt recalls that there have been rumors of deals before, but this time it seems more likely. Hewitt doesn’t like the reported details of the deal, however:

That would be a terrible “deal,” one that would draw fierce criticism from the GOP’s Iran hawks who want President Trump to “finish the job” and do so in dramatic fashion.

The “end game” doesn’t have to be humiliation of the remnants of the rump regime atop the ruins of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps atop the shattered Iranian “government.” But they are “lunatics” as both President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have called them — “insane in the head” Rubio added Tuesday from the White House press podium — and that’s generous.

The “leaders” left standing in Iran (the ones with the guns at least) are fanatical killers who cannot be trusted…. Special Envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner don’t want their names on a “second Munich agreement,” and they have walked away before. President Trump should not want to risk the victory he has won that is one for the ages by letting Iran off the floor.

Israeli journalist Amit Segal, writing at The Free Press, says the deal would save Iran’s regime: “An Israeli official says the economic noose tightening on Tehran can force a change in government, unless a settlement is reached with America.”

Mister Market likes what he sees. This Just In: Feeling the pinch, China, which has suffered from the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, is ordering corporations to ignore U.S. sanctions against Iran.

Not Going Wobbly. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani isn’t wasting time in achieving his goal of driving billionaires out of his nascent socialist paradise. The cover of the New York Post, always an early stop on Ms. Must’s daily quest for truth, reports that “titans” are moving as Mamdani “vilifies” Wall Street. “We Are Zo Out of Here!” the headline declares. Hedge fund titan Ken Griffin is scaling back his job-creating ventures in New York in response to Mamdani’s “antics”:

“We will add far more jobs in Miami over the next decade as an immediate and direct consequence of the mayor’s poor decision here with respect to his posting of that video,” Griffin said.

“Investors and job creators have options and they will go where they’re treated well. Increasingly New York City has treated them inhospitably. New York City leaders have assumed they can’t do business elsewhere, even though we have seen in the last several years a dramatic expansion of the financial sector’s activities in states like Florida and Texas.”

You might recall Mayor Mamdani’s standing in front of Griffin’s Manhattan residence and calling out Griffin by name, which arguably is not a safe thing to do. Griffin had choice words for Mamdani’s stunt. An editorial at the Washington Post highlights Mamdani’s “creepy” and “weird” antics. Meanwhile, an opinion piece at the New York Post says that New York’s education officials are waging war on parents.

But goodness gracious—let’s give credit where credit is due. Mayor Mamdani isn’t the only politician doing his bit to drive the very rich, not to oblivion, but to Texas or Miami. In “Northwest Blues,” City Journal’s Steve Malanga argues, “Oregon and Washington were two of the most popular U.S. destinations before the tax man arrived.” Meanwhile, in Seattle, home to Mayor Katie “Bye” Wilson, a City Council member demands “a black budget,” alongside the regular city budget.

The FBI has raided the office and cannabis business of a top Virginia state legislator. She’s Louise Lucas, an ally of Governor Spangberg and an advocate for the currently in limbo redistricting plan. I had no idea who she was, but National Review enlightens me:

While details surrounding the ongoing federal investigation remain unclear, this is not the first time that Lucas’s business dealings and ties to the cannabis industry have faced scrutiny. Local outlets have previously reported that Lucas’s cannabis shop has sold mislabeled products containing illegal levels of controlled substances, such as the intoxicant delta-9 THC. A 2022 report in the Virginia Mercury noted that Lucas’s business practices were “typical of the black and gray market for retail marijuana that has exploded in Virginia since lawmakers legalized possession of the drug but not sales.”

Some Pig. Andy Serkis has made a new animated adaptation of “Animal Farm,” George Orwell’s classic 1945 novel about the perils of communism, especially the Soviet Union. Writing in The Free Press, Nicholas Clairmont spots some problems:

In the film, we experience events through the eyes of a pig character named Lucky, who doesn’t appear in the book. In an opening scene, as the animals break out of a slaughterhouse truck, it becomes clear that their revolution is not ultimately against Farmer Jones, as in the original text. Rather, it’s against a bank to which Jones owes unpaid mortgage payments. 

Uh oh.

We seem to be reading quite a bit about the closings of various colleges, including Hampshire College, the alma mater of documentarian Ken Burns. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Roland Fryer has a counterintuitive take on the closures:

Is it just me, or is this good news for America? Closing these institutions means students are slowly ceasing to overpay for scant added value. If more market correction is to come, that tells us something important—about higher education and about other education sectors we have built to avoid correction altogether. The question isn’t how to save these institutions. It is how to accelerate market forces.

The private-college sector didn’t rise in a laissez-faire market. It was built by federal loan programs, the postwar college wage premium and decades of expanding demand. In that environment, “more college seats” and “more social value” came to mean the same thing. They weren’t.

Must Be Noted: Benign tumor vs. malignant Nazi tattoo. Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins acknowledges a medical condition.  … Karl Rove throws cold water on Trump triumphs in Indiana. … Elections lawyer Cleta Mitchell says that it’s about time the DOJ investigates Fulton County ballots. … Joe Klein celebrates the late Ted Turner as “the Optimist Who Built CNN.”