| > If a participant in a war, in good faith, wants to negotiate long-term cessation of hostilities, they wouldn't kill the leaders of the other side. Assassination of leaders is very common in war.
Nobody claims the US wanted to negotiate a cease fire with the old regime, they want to negotiate it with whatever phoenix rises from its ashes. > Because who the fuck will you negotiate with after? Who surrenders? That's why historically people don't do that in wars. You negotiate with the power structure that remains, it could be equally oppressive figures from the same organizations, it could be opposition leaders, it could be labor unions, it could be whomever locally consolidates power. Put public keys on the shells and rockets. One can not credibly claim lack of agency while firing rockets and drones. Old enough to fire? Old enough to get hit! I just described a protocol to identify who is in power, administration-agnostic Pentagon can demand the Iranians hold a crypto party bootstrap their own web of trust and forward the keys through physicists then IAEA. The web of trust can be established before any voting or alliance forming. If Iran predelegated all hostilities in the event of regime decapitation, they effectively sent their troops (and population) on a never ending suicide mission. The longer power vacuum persists the more casualties result. Ultimately it is more in the interest of both Iran regime and population to even bootstrap this web of trust without Pentagon demanding it! > Israel/The US just want to destroy Iran as a nation state. Thinking that there are going to be any talks with someone with a mandate from the Iranian people in weeks or months is misguided. This is a decades-long thing. We better buckle up. Why does establishing the local power nexus necessarily take decades? The faster it is unambiguously established, the faster negotiation can actually start. |
1) The US and Israel have repeatedly assassinated Iranian negotiators when they did come to the table. Who's gonna want to negotiate at this point and put themselves on the kill list next? The repeated shady dealings have ruined the reputation of the US as a party one can even negotiate with.
2) You have to understand that Iranian leadership (but also big parts of society!) are actually religious nuts. It's not all for show. They believe that their sacrifice on the earthly sphere will be rewarded in the afterlife. Their considerations aren't immediate material wealth and well-being the same way they are for the Americans. They're willing to endure this long-term pain for what they see as the longer-term reward of punishing the Great Satan.
From the Iranian perspective, they are winning and keeping at it is the rational move.
The US navigated itself into a no-win situation, driven by misguided illusions of imperial power, hubris and (in the case of Hegseth) toxic masculinity.