{"id":247391,"date":"2026-08-13T10:24:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T10:24:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/247391\/"},"modified":"2026-08-13T10:24:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T10:24:16","slug":"what-does-trump-mean-when-he-says-the-us-is-low-keying-negotiations-with-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/247391\/","title":{"rendered":"What does Trump mean when he says the US is \u2018low-keying\u2019 negotiations with Iran?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n After Iran intensified its demands<\/a> over the weekend before it would reopen the Strait of Hormuz, President Donald Trump didn\u2019t threaten new strikes but instead indicated that he planned to choke Iran economically. \u201cWe are low-keying it,\u201d he told Axios<\/a> over the weekend. \u201cWe are only semi-negotiating with them. We are just watching Iran with its huge inflation and the fact they have no money.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n This broke with Trump\u2019s usual rhetorical pattern in talking about Iran, in which the president generally declares that a conclusive deal with Iran is imminent, threatens to annihilate Iran if it doesn\u2019t comply, then calls the attacks off at the last minute \u2014 only to do it all over again.\n <\/p>\n

\n What, precisely, does it mean to \u201clow-key\u201d the events of a war? It\u2019s not the first time the president has employed this peculiar turn of phrase, transforming a word typically used as an adjective or adverb into a verb. In early April, as Israel\u2019s continued bombing of southern Lebanon threatened negotiations with Iran, Trump used it to describe a phone call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. \u201cI spoke with Bibi and he\u2019s going to low-key it,\u201d he told NBC News<\/a> at the time. \u201cI just think we have to be sort of a little more low-key.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n EDITOR\u2019S NOTE:\u00a0 CNN\u2019s \u201cWord of the Week\u201d brings you the meaning behind the words in the news.\n<\/p>\n

\"20260810-culture-word<\/p>\n

\n The modern sense of the word \u201clow-key\u201d has evolved over time. The earliest iteration of the word appears to be the adjective \u201clow-keyed,\u201d first recorded in 1786 to describe a voice or piece of music in a low musical key. Beginning around the early 1800s, \u201clow-key\u201d was also used to describe visual art, and later photography, that was marked by dark or muted colors. The English poet Peter Bayley used it in an 1803 poetry collection to describe a painting of Jesus. \u201cIt was originally painted in a low key, and the drapery of the Saviour, which was then white, formed the principal light,\u201d he wrote.\n <\/p>\n

\n It was around the mid-1900s that \u201clow-key\u201d came to signify subtlety or restraint. The word appeared in a 1941 Frederick Post story to illustrate filmmaker Orson Welles\u2019 proclivity for melodrama: \u201cWelles likes strong histrionics and has no patience with the prevailing style of underplaying everything in movies,\u201d the article read. \u201cIn fact, he believes that low-key acting is used mostly because it\u2019s the only way Hollywood knows of avoiding clashes in emotional continuity.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n This sense of \u201clow-key\u201d to mean understated might be one way to read Trump\u2019s remarks. Trump saying the US is \u201clow-keying it\u201d could mean that the administration is taking a more subdued approach in the face of an emboldened Iran. US officials have indicated that they believe Iran\u2019s leverage in the Strait of Hormuz would give way to the significant economic pain<\/a> that the US stands to inflict.\n <\/p>\n

\n Newer, slangy uses of \u201clow-key\u201d offer other interpretations.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cLow-key\u201d took on additional meanings as it passed into Black culture, one being a sense of secrecy or discretion. Usher\u2019s 2004 hit \u201cYeah!\u201d depicts him trying to \u201ckeep it down on the low-key\u201d lest his girlfriend find out what he\u2019s up to at the club. Another is the adverbial sense, used as a mitigator to mean \u201csomewhat\u201d (\u201cCommuting in this humid weather is low-key annoying\u201d) or to mean \u201cmodest\u201d or \u201clow profile\u201d (\u201cShe acts low-key, but she\u2019s actually a big deal\u201d). \u201cLow-key\u201d also functions as an interjection, as in \u201cLow-key, what is even happening with the US and Iran?\u201d (The hyphen is often dropped in informal, contemporary use.)\n <\/p>\n

\n These uses of \u201clow-key\u201d eventually spread beyond Black English and were adopted by young people more widely throughout the 2010s and 2020s. Today, \u201clow-key\u201d is part of a Gen Z vernacular marked by deflection and ironic detachment, said Adam Aleksic, a linguist known online as Etymology Nerd<\/a>. To say, \u201cI low-key like Drake,\u201d for instance, suggests that the speaker enjoys the musical stylings of the Canadian rapper but understands that it\u2019s uncool to admit it. (To say, \u201cI high-key like Drake,\u201d meanwhile, is to unabashedly proclaim one\u2019s affinity for the artist.)\n <\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

\n Trump saying the US is \u201clow-keying\u201d talks with Iran is also a kind of hedging. (See also: His remark that \u201cwe are only semi-negotiating with them.\u201d) To Aleksic, the president\u2019s comments convey that he isn\u2019t particularly worried about Iran holding steadfast to its demands. \u201cTo admit that they\u2019re too concerned would be to make a geopolitical blunder,\u201d he said. \u201cSaying \u2018low-key\u2019 is a way of addressing to the public that he\u2019s doing one thing and signaling to Iran that he\u2019s doing another thing.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Jamaal Muwwakkil, an assistant professor at the University of Washington who teaches anthropology and linguistics, notes that using the word \u201clow-key\u201d can also be a marker of youth or coolness. And at least on the surface, Trump\u2019s use of \u201clow-keying\u201d might come off as an octogenarian repeating a bit of internet slang without fully understanding its context.\n <\/p>\n

\n But Trump is known for taking liberties with language. When the war first started, Trump repeatedly referred to it as an \u201cexcursion<\/a>,\u201d a word typically used for a brief leisure trip. He also made repeated references to \u201cnuclear dust<\/a>,\u201d a nontechnical term that belies the process of uranium enrichment. And earlier this month, he announced that \u201cthe perimeters of a deal<\/a>\u201d had been reached.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThere\u2019s this way of playing with language that he does that still allows it to be communicative,\u201d Muwwakkil added.\n <\/p>\n

\n In that respect, Muwwakkil said, Trump\u2019s use of \u201clow-keying\u201d allows him to evade more substantive questions about where negotiations stand. The US and Iran have each raised the bar<\/a> to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, suggesting that they\u2019re even further from a deal than before. The world\u2019s most critical waterway remains functionally closed, despite the president insisting<\/a> that the US retains total control of it. And the war that Trump initially said would last \u201cfour to five weeks\u201d has now stretched on for months, with no clear end in sight. When the president says that the US is \u201clow-keying\u201d talks with Iran, he avoids committing to answers about the path forward.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThis is, I think, foregrounding that there\u2019s going to be a marked lack of details again,\u201d Muwwakkil said.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After Iran intensified its demands over the weekend before it would reopen the Strait of Hormuz, President Donald…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":247392,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[61631,34],"class_list":["post-247391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iran","tag-ctt","tag-iran"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/117087716534831204","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247391\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/247392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}