Spy's Guide

John Braddock, author of A Spy's Guide To Thinking, A Spy's Guide To Strategy and A Spy's Guide To Taking Risks -

[Spy's Guide @spysguide]

All purpose is driven by what follows...

[Spy's Guide @spysguide]

The most difficult issue in the Iran talks:

Pressure doesn't create compliance for revolutionaries who want to suffer.

[Spy's Guide @spysguide]

You don't weaken a revolutionary by making them suffer more - that only helps them play their status game.

You weaken them by exposing the lavish lives their children and loved ones are living elsewhere.

[Spy's Guide @spysguide]

Revolutionaries like the ones in Iran want to suffer in public - it helps them play their status game.

But they want to benefit in private - they want their children to live lavish lives in the West.

[Spy's Guide @spysguide]

Revolutionaries have a status game - but it's different from most status games.

What drives status in a revolution is suffering. And sacrifice. And earning scars.

When you make revolutionaries suffer, you're handing out promotions.

[Spy's Guide @spysguide]

Trump's team plays one kind of status game: Who closed the biggest deal. Who built the biggest thing.

The revolutionaries in Iran play another kind of status game: Who suffered the most. Who sacrificed the most for the revolution.

Strength to one side is weakness to the other

[John Solomon @jsolomonReports]

Iran says no direct talks scheduled with U.S. as Witkoff and Kushner leave for Pakistan https://t.co/DnN9AAgruc

[Spy's Guide @spysguide]

Sanctions make the other side suffer until they come to the table.

Works great on your regular autocrat.

Doesn't work on revolutionaries.

Revolutionaries want to suffer - sanctions give them what they want.

[Spy's Guide @spysguide]

How do you know the other side of a negotiation are revolutionaries?

They celebrate martyrs.

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Does Trump's team understand that "revolutionaries" like to suffer?

Revolutionaries that suffer win the status game against the revolutionaries that don't.

[Spy's Guide @spysguide]

The problem with negotiating with revolutionaries: They like to suffer.

[Mario Nawfal @MarioNawfal]

🇺🇸🇮🇷 Kushner and Witkoff are flying to Islamabad. Iranian media says Araghchi won't meet them and called it "desperate."

An Iranian journalist on the ground just made it worse:

"We have no idea why they're coming. Araqchi will likely already have left by the time they arrive."

Iran really grew some balls didn't they

Source: J Post

[Spy's Guide @spysguide]

@shaneparrish "Reasoning backwards" as strategists say: https://t.co/SRLLPnM9e6

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The Endgame is everything: https://t.co/4dRCqAkRz4

[Spy's Guide @spysguide]

All purpose is driven by what follows...

[Spy's Guide @spysguide]

...if you can't imagine what follows, you can't have a purpose.

[Spy's Guide @spysguide]

@tferriss If you organize the games into positive-sum and zero-sum games, you'll see that they tend to have a structure: https://t.co/SRLLPnM9e6

[Justin G. Cramer 🇺🇸🇺🇦 @yazheirx]

4 of 5 stars to A Spy's Guide to Strategy by John Braddock https://t.co/FflSRi36on

[Spy's Guide @spysguide]

@normonics Some experts won't recognize the limit of their expertise: https://t.co/Bl3oTNRlrL

[Spy's Guide @spysguide]

"Once you fully apprehend the vacuity of a life without struggle you are equipped with the basic means of salvation." - Tennessee Williams https://t.co/sPmGZh06OG

[Spy's Guide @spysguide]

@ole_b_peters Or they've been burned by experts talking about things outside their expertise: https://t.co/Bl3oTNRlrL

[Spy's Guide @spysguide]

Mirroring the strategic framework here: https://t.co/4dRCqA3gHw

[Spy's Guide @spysguide]

"We co-operate in our group—our family, community, club, church, party, ‘race,’ or nation—in order to strengthen our group in its competition with other groups.” - Will and Ariel Durant