When bargaining about war and peace, the strategist Thomas Schelling wrote, you’re more likely to win concessions “if you get a reputation for being reckless, demanding, or unreliable.”
By that measure, President Donald Trump and Iran’s hard-line leaders both deserve what we might call the Schelling Prize for negotiations. They scrambled up the ladder of escalation without clearly defined objectives or a strategy for climbing down. Their recklessness was believable. But they seem to have come back from the brink.