[joe_the_user]

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.

[ggm]

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.

[zahlman]

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.)

[amalcon]

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.

[zahlman]

Just to make sure: you understand that "workable basis on which to negotiate" does not mean anything remotely resembling "thing to which we have agreed", yes?

[amalcon]

Yes? "Workable basis on which to negotiate" generally does not include things that directly contradict existing agreements, though. I am pointing to "Almost all of the various points of past contention have been agreed to" to establish that he's claiming some agreement on the past points of contention that matter.

If the "workable basis for future negotiation" contradicts that agreement, then someone is lying about something.

[zahlman]

> "Workable basis on which to negotiate" generally does not include things that directly contradict existing agreements, though.

I disagree, and don't understand why you see it that way. Of course each side's negotiating position includes things they couldn't get before. The point of negotiating is to get things they didn't have before.

[amalcon]

I'm just not sure how to respond to this, because this criticism doesn't seem to actually address the point. I suppose I could have communicated poorly, but I'm not sure how I could have been more clear.

"Almost all of the past points of contention have been agreed to" is pretty specific language, that indicates a new negotiation. What does "have already been agreed to" mean?

Do you think Trump was referring to an agreement that was in place prior to the war? If so, why did the war happen at all?

Do you think he was referring to future negotiations? "Have been agreed to" would be an odd way to phrase that.

Do you think he was referring to an agreement that lifts sanctions and permits uranium enrichment? That's #1, US lost.

Do you think he was referring to an agreement that contradicts the public 10-point proposal? That's #2, everyone lost.

Do you think that was just something he said, that doesn't have any truth behind it? That's #3, he's lying.

Do you think he was referring to negotiations that did not include uranium enrichment or sanctions? That's #4, he's using an obvious bad-faith rhetorical trick to stall.

Do you think he was referring to something not in one of those categories? Then what?