That’s just a consequence of the third factor:
Since Trump’s word is worthless they have to make damn sure he and the rest of the world knows in their bowels that they should not mess with Iran.
Agreed as Frodo points out, we are learning that for all its faults something like international law is superior for the hegemon to a world where commitments mean nothing. If you temperamentally cannot commit, nobody sensible will want to make an agreement with you.
According to Trump, the Iran War is “terminated” and a new war will be started with a different name, to avoid Congressional oversight:
So now it’s going to be “Epic Passage” (of wind?) and 60 days after it will be Epic Something Else and so on until Trumpy Wumpy gets what he wants.
Came in here to say the exact same thing. Here’s a supporting article from NBC news.
The fascists are making noises like they think they have found a legal loophole around the 60 day limit on military action without Congressional approval. Just declare the war is over, and then change the official name. Voila, new war!
They are playing semantic games with the lives of American military, innocent civilians, and the world economy in general.
At this rate, by about the mid-terms he will have started more wars than he’s claiming to have ended. Which will definitely roger his Nobel Peace Prize aspirations.
And more importantly, that FIFA Peace Prize is right out!
I imagine he’d get a new peace prize for every war he ends. Every two months, new prize.
Philips P OBrien argues that this could be over very quickly. Could be: he is not sure whether it will be because he doesn’t know whether the Iranians want a deal. Over the last few days various members of the Trump administration have emphasized the nuclear aspect of the conflict. That implies that Trump considers this to be a convenient victory condition:
It could also be argued that it is not an unachievable victory condition. That is not because Iran will give up its ambitions to develop a nuclear bomb. It almost certainly would not. It is achievable because all the Iranian government needs to do is work out some deal with Trump which allows Trump to pretend that Iran has made concessions on this question, when actually Iran has conceded little.
But the war could also last weeks or months longer. Trump wants to declare victory and get out, but it’s unclear the extent that Iran wants to play along and the extent to which they think they can get a better deal by squeezing Trump and the economy a little more.
Regardless of what the official relationship of Iran and the USA will be, after any real-or-fake concessions, there remains the fact that Iran has learned it can control the Strait of Hormuz. And collect massive tolls from any and all traffic through it.
Before Donald’s idiotic attack, they didn’t know this. They might have assumed that either the USA or a coalition of nations would put an end to such a project, quickly and decisively.
Now they know that won’t happen.
No ‘treaty’ with the USA is going to change that.
I think they did know this, but they also knew that any attempt to do so would expose them to being heavily bombed by the U.S.
Now that they have already been bombed, their leaders killed, their ports blockaded, they don’t have anything to lose by doing this and much to gain.
Yes. And it’s been well-publicized that the US is running low on missiles, too.
And on top of that they’ve tried negotiating. Tried treaties. All that happens is that they get attacked again. They really don’t have a choice but do whatever they think will benefit themselves and essentially treat the US as a mindless natural disaster they have to weather. Because we’ve demonstrated that we have only one response to anything they do. Attack.
The Iranians understand us far more than we understand them. Reference the Explosive Media vids. They know that we have 2 political parties, they know that midterms come up in November, and they know that a Republican loss in November will in practice curb Trump’s behavior to a limited extent. Part of the fundamentals is that Obama negotiated a deal that Trump would like to top, but cannot. Also the Iranians know that Trump is a bully and that capitulation invites more abuse. Not that they need to be tempted by that: the Strait is potent weapon. In Kamil Galeev’s words, “Iran is run by the people who read books.”
This is in contrast with the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War, whose grasp of US culture was gained from reading Time magazine. Apparently it was on that kind of level.
Kamil Galeev ref:
Well, the suggestion to do a fast Vietnam just isn’t going to happen. Because that requires an acceptance of loss to minimize the fallout, and we all know the Orange one can’t be a loser. I mean, its all over the Iranian memes.
This is of course conventional wisdom, precedent and practice.
Do you have any faith that will apply to 45/47?
Would it not be equally likely that he’ll try a “crash through or crash” approach.
At the very least trying to ignore a disastrous midterm and continue as if nothing happened is bound to create enough friction inside the Republican party to distract Trump from Iran.
Were 45/47 forced to pivot back to domestic issues in the aftermath of a electoral shellacking in the mid-terms with the legacy of tariffs, ICE, gas prices, cost of living et al et al, then he’ll be hung out to dry and the Epstein files get open to scrutiny.
From here it’s turtles all the way down.
More than pivoting to domestic issues I envision him pivoting to fight a civil war against the part of the Republican party that tries to stop another bloodbath in '28.
And fighting congressional oversight.
And denouncing the obvious fraud that is the only reason his party lost…
Very little extent. Especily because playing along would mean he’d keep announcing more and more things that Iran supposedly conceded. Every announcement he makes that he got some kind of a win and concessions is followed by the Iranians saying they don’t know what he’s talking about.
POTUS 47 has a problem with “declare victory and leave” because he can’t just only do that—he needs to see himself “owning” everyone.
But he and his ‘friends’ are having a great time with all the insider trading that is going on. He’s owning us in that way.
Whereas my investments are rattling around like a few marbles in a jar. Up? Down? And sideways. There is no way to predict the future, so Trump creates it to make a buck, then TACO’s out and does it again.
He must be thinking that there is no point in ending this if he can make money off of it.