Bouvard on Political Deals and Domestic Enemies

Those who will attack you now for opposing the deal will attack you later for insisting that the deal be enforced because any unpleasantness upsets all those who have acquired some kind of interest in being guardians of "the deal." This is why all deals are bad except for those

that barely need to be made because they merely smooth out some rough edges in existing exchanges and clarify broadly recognized power relationships. The kind of deal we're looking at here serves mostly to set up new friend/enemy relationships internally.

We can already see that those in favor of the deal are not defending it on the merits, or even explaining what the deal is, why it's good, etc.--they are just realizing that this provides them with an avenue of attack on some of their domestic enemies.

None of this precludes the possibility that other things are going on--again, the only real question is the degree of fragility of the regime--but it's a lot harder to see those other things, whatever tehy may be.

The fact that those defending the deal don't seem to want to talk about the deal is a good sign that it's pretty bad. Right now it's looking more like a lifeline to the regime than choking the regime but more information will be incoming. The boasting and hype might not last.