Comment by ggm
19 hours ago
But we've had messaging for domestic consumption worldwide since the trojan wars.
What people say in either direction is not a reflection of what happens, it's what they want to say, and have some cohort believe happened.
This is for domestic consumption. As will the WH reports be, facing the US domestic audience.
They didn't have the internet back then, everything is global now im afraid.
"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." ]
The Supreme National Security Council is quoting the agreement that Trump supposedly agreed to. And if that agreement holds, it is hard to see it as anything but a complete Iranian victory.
Keep in mind, the losers in a conflict have more of an incentive to lie than the winners. The US and Israel seem very much the losers here.
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.)
If you get into the details, the two biggest "points of past contention" (nuclear enrichment and sanctions) are in the ten point proposal. I only see four ways to resolve that conflict:
1) The US agrees to the resolution of those that Iran publicly claims in the proposal (aka we lost)
2) Iran is lying publicly, and actually agrees to keep sanctions in place and/or give up uranium enrichment (maybe, but the plausible version of this is just reversion to the diplomatic status quo ante - a de facto defeat for everyone).
3) Trump is lying publicly, and there is no agreement on any of this (plausible, but it's unlikely to end better than #1 or #2)
4) This is just a rhetorical trick in service of a stall tactic ("almost all" does not include the ones that actually matter - plausible, but it's unlikely to end better than #1 or #2)
#2 is best case for the US, and represents a defeat in that costs were paid but nothing achieved. It's also a defeat for Iran, but I don't think many of us care about that?
Edit - I guess it is also plausible that Iran's current leadership is sufficiently fragmented that "what Iran agrees to" is not a coherent concept right now. That is just the practical effect of #3 by another route, though.