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Donald Trump's Iran negotiations are collapsing under the weight of incompetence with Middle East experts openly dismissing the negotiating team of Manhattan real estate developers Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, saying they're completely out of their depth on one of the world's most complex geopolitical stages.

According to interviews with Time, diplomats are unanimous in their assessment: the team lacks the fundamental understanding necessary to navigate Middle East complexities.

"Iran and the U.S. under [Trump son-in-law] Kushner and Witkoff? Failure. They get an F in diplomacy," observed former U.S. State Department Middle East negotiator Aaron David Miller.

Their track record speaks for itself, Miller explained as he pointed to Kushner and Witkoff's failed Russia-Ukraine negotiations and their stalled efforts between Israel and Hamas as evidence of unrelenting incompetence. "While even the most experienced negotiators would face steep challenges in such conflicts, Kushner and Witkoff failed to convey to either side the sense of urgency that a desirable deal was within reach—an essential condition for pushing negotiations forward."

"You accept the notion that a successful negotiation, if you have urgency, is based on finding some balance of interest between the parties. If you want out of this, I think they're going to have to come up with something that allows the Iranians to say they won something," he elaborated.

Former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey David Satterfield outlined what actual competent negotiations require, telling Time, "Not only does the U.S. need to make clear what its goals were, and to know internally where it was prepared to concede, and where it was not prepared to concede, where the line would be held, the red lines, but to have a realistic sense of what the other side was bringing with it."

A grasp of nuclear diplomacy also brings a whole new level of complexity.

Former senior State Department official Robert Einhorn warned that "the negotiator at the table has to think about how the domestic audiences will affect the outcome. And I think the negotiator on a nuclear issue is more constrained by his or her government bureaucracy and by public opinion."

The deepest problem is systemic: Trump surrounds himself with yes-men incapable of honest counsel, which Miller identified as Trump's fatal flaw in personnel selection:

"There is a discussion in which the president's advisors talk truth to power and basically say to him…'You've got the ultimate control. But if you're going to do this, this is exactly what is likely to happen. And in my judgment…if you do this, you might fail.'"

But such candor requires advisers willing to risk consequences. "Trump had four secretaries of defense in his first term. He had six national security advisors [during his two terms]. They know what happens if they embarrass the president or they become a problem."

Donald Trump's relationship with the evangelical community that delivered his presidency is fracturing under the weight of his increasingly erratic behavior and blasphemous rhetoric, according to new reporting.

According to an analysis from the Washington Post's Karen Tumulty, the Christian right's legendary patience with Trump's apostasies has reached a breaking point. His latest offense — comparing himself to Jesus — has appalled even his most devoted religious supporters.

Conservative evangelical radio host Erick Erickson addressed the crisis plainly, explaining, "Trump is forcing his supporters into awkward places, and if they don't support him, he attacks them. This is not a way to sustain a coalition. These things add up in a way that begins to alienate evangelical voters."

The calculus for religious conservatives is shifting. While Trump can still draw from a reservoir of trust and loyalty built on concrete victories, that well has limits. "Still, Trump can draw from a deep well of trust and loyalty among religious conservatives. He has put them at the forefront of his coalition and produced victories on issues that Republican presidents before him had only talked about, including the overturning of Roe v. Wade, made possible by his appointments to the courts," Tumulty wrote.

However, she warned that past support has reached the point of withering away.

"Gratitude for what Trump has done in the past can go only so far. His religious supporters may grow less tolerant of his antics and volatility as his impotence as a lame duck becomes more pronounced and his poll numbers continue to sink," she explained before concluding, "Which means, increasingly, that they will be looking to a future beyond his presidency — and perhaps beginning to pray for someone who won't constantly put their faith to such tests."