Paul Musgrave: The funny thing is that Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada has much the same incentives, despite the obvious differences between Canada and Iran.

Carney is elected, but has years left to run on his mandate, so there’s little time pressure on him compared to Trump’s own foolish self-imposed deadlines. And although the U.S. aggression against Iran has been bloody and that against Canada “merely” economic (although with threats of much worse!), Carney has seen, just as Tehran has, that Trump is mercurial and difficult to sustain an agreement with.

Put those together, as U.S. Democratic operative Dana Houle conjectured on Twitter, and you have a strikingly similar strategic situation in which Carney also has incentives to suspend talks until after the midterms. A more favourable balance on Capitol Hill could not only work to Ottawa’s long-term advantage but it could also help deliver a stinging blow to Trump personally.

The other similarity is that both Trump’s frustrated diplomacy with Iran and his floundering approach to Canada were wars of Trump’s choice. In neither case is it clear that Trump ever embarked on an analysis even as superficial as this one. In both cases, Trump seems to have assumed that U.S. military and economic resources would allow him to prevail without any need to take into account reactions of others. What will be the costs of these decisions? Time will tell.