Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, believes President Trump’s on-again, off-again threats against Iran are quietly eroding any hope of a lasting negotiated peace. A president who chooses restraint over further bloodshed, he noted, is preferable to one who plunges the region into deeper war. “This cannot go on forever,” Parsi cautioned, pointing to a slow but corrosive erosion of trust on all sides. And every incentive offered at the table becomes harder to believe, since promises, like warnings, now seem negotiable. It’s the slow bleeding of trust itself the invisible currency without which no negotiation, however well intentioned, can ever truly succeed.