Comment by small_model

"because you said <that>, I won't do <this>" is rarely an issue in these matters. What people say, and what people do, are divorced.

This isn't contract law. The WH can declare victory and stop, or declare victory and continue, or declare defeat and stop, or declare defeat and continue, or declare nothing and {stop, continue} and what the Iranian government say is not relevant. But, stopping or not stopping sending up UAV and sending over missiles and aircraft, IS relevant.

ie, this is just speech. we judge on outcomes not on words said.

[edit: that said, under this administration, the reverse is also true - "because I heard you said <this> I will now do <that> which is totally irrational, but I now have an excuse in my own mind, for what I intended doing anyway." ]

I don't really disagree, but I just want to observe there is no neutral arbiter here. There isn't some platonic ideal "he won, they lost" outcome.

What I think, is that a french metric tonne of value has been sucked out of the world economy, a lot of future decisions are now very uncertain, power balances have shifted, and none of this is really helpful for american soft or hard power into the longer term.

The Iranians have lost an entire cohort of leadership and are going to spend years reconstructing domestic infrastructure, and a rational polity. But, the IGRC has probably got a stronger hand on the tiller. Their natural Shia allies abroad are in shellshock, but still there.

I'd call it a pyrrhic victory for America, on any terms. Wrecked the joint, came out with low bodycount in the immediate short term, have totally ruined international relations (which they don't care about) and probably won't win the mid-terms on some supposed "war vote" -But who knows? Maybe the horse can be taught to sing before morning?

A lot of very fine bang-bang whizz devices got used, and they learned how much fun that is. A lot of european and asian economies learned how weak they are in energy and fertilizer and will re-appraise how to manage that, and there's a lot of fun in that. A big muscly china is watching quietly and we're pretending there's nothing to see there, and meantime the tariff "war" continues to do .. 5/10ths of nothing.

The pace of worldwide alternative energy adoption has gone up. Is that an upside?

The Iranian PR on this is like the DPRK. Except the DPRK wear Hanbok not Chador. The Iranian citizenry has been badly let down. No green revolution on the horizon.

I genuinely do not understand how people read the words

> We received a 10 point proposal from Iran, and believe it is a workable basis on which to negotiate. Almost all of the various points of past contention have been agreed to between the United States and Iran

and conclude that this means anything remotely resembling that Trump "supposedly agreed" to do everything Iran wants.

(Just in case this is somehow the reasoning: "points of past contention" clearly do not refer to the "points" in the "proposal". That's not how English works and not how time works. But that's the only wild guess I can genuinely even think of, after going over it repeatedly.)

None of the targets have anything remotely resembling free press. So yes, the real effects were censored.

With all due respect, I feel people that hold your views would believe it if someone told them that not only did Iran complete defeat and demoralize the U.S. war power in Iran, that Iran has actually successfully bombed the U.S. into submission and the U.S. essentially no longer exists except as a vassal to Iran. I really think there is no Anti-American narrative that is too ludicrous for people that hold this view to believe. I actually find it fascinating.