If you don't like this ultimatum, I have others.

To issue an ultimatum to the enemy, find it doesn't work, and then postpone it for five days in the name of "very productive" negotiations with a "very important" personality from the opposing side, only to have the enemy deny these talks, should be a loser's move, according to the language Donald Trump uses to refer to everyone.

But Trump says he wins even when he loses. In fact, he must be immensely pleased to see how a word from him can make the stock market rise and oil prices fall. Although he hasn't threatened to bomb Wall Street and the headquarters of major Western oil companies for having had the cowardice to crash the stock market, send the price of a gallon of gasoline soaring, and threaten him with inflation impossible to disguise.

This ultimatum episode isn't a plot twist, because it's clear that in this Iran-Contra war, there's no solidly structured script on the American side (the systematic determination of the Israeli side is another matter). What exists here is the need to occupy all the space. Trump thrives on being the news chief, the commander-in-chief of thebreaking newsthe editor who decides which news story will open the newscasts and theanchor which will announce him to the world. Trump is dependent on having the world hanging on his every word, and he does so according to a simple mechanism: if you're politically incorrect, the channels will give you coverage for as long as you can keep talking. If it worked for him when he was a candidate, why shouldn't it work now, when he commands the most powerful army in the world?

That's why the US president's favorite activity is talking—talking in the Oval Office behind the desk or in front of the fireplace, walking to the helicopter, at the foot of the plane, inside the plane, wherever he is, saturating the world with his intuitions and his language. Even if he has to swallow an ultimatum.