@cstross

Great points in the article. This one, for example...

"if Iran wants future presidents not to repeat this war, the precedent they want to set is “attacking Iran is a presidency-ending mistake.” And to do that, well, they need to end a presidency or at least make clear they could have done."

🍿

@elasticsoul @cstross That's definitely a desire, but there's also the serious possibility that Iran can't actually do it.

I mean, you could say the same about Iran wanting to make attacking Iran a prime minister-ending mistake, but here we are after numerous Israeli attacks on Iran over the years, and none of them ended Netanyahu's reign.

I see this as quintessentially a geopolitics "game". Iran has the advantage mainly because EVERYONE blames Trump (and Netanyahu) for all this.

This is

@elasticsoul @cstross compounded by Trump going out of his way to insult other countries and their leaders, making it politically impossible for them to help him as begged.

And it is furthermore compounded by Trump going out of his way to display pathetic weakness, by unilaterally lifting sanctions on Iran in exchange for absolutely nothing.

So, even if Iran can't do anything to seriously end Trump's presidency, Trump's firehose stream of self-owns gives them every incentive to keep on taking