“I think part of this may be bluff on their part. They think the president’s desperate for a deal, and if they put an artificial time constraint on it, they may think they’re going to get a better deal. We’ll just have to wait and see,” he said.

“But this is all part of the North Korean playbook. They’ve successfully jived the three prior American administrations, and they plan to do the same with this one.”

And he thinks the administration is making a “big mistake” if — as reported by The New York Times — it stymied attempts by the United Nations Security Council to hold a discussion on North Korea’s human rights abuses, for fear of upsetting North Korea and thereby derailing nuclear negotiations.