Its probably not even that. PR statements for public consumption rarely reflect bargaining positions behind closed doors.
to "so basically Iran would get everything it wants under this plan".
I'm not so dumb to understand that this will be the final plan, just commenting that this is incredibly bad for the US as is laid out.
> Any review of the actual deal would show a two week ceasefire in exchange for the strait being open and safe while negotiations continue.
Speaking of this community being kinda dumb - do you really think this ceasefire is enough for all ships to go on their merry way? Deals mentioned over social media are not enough to convince insurance companies that all is safe. And 12 hours later we now have evidence of this - https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/08/business/strait-hormuz-sh...
Also, my original point is that there is nothing in that deal that is a better long-term outcome than what we had before the war. Maybe that will change in the final deal, but the fact that the starting point of the negotiation is 100% on Iran's side is not where you want to be.
The provisional ceasefire actually goes against the Iranian proposition. Point 2 explicitly is "permanent end to the war, not a ceasefire".
Iran backed down a bit here from their maximalist aims (which is what the 10 point is).
Typically that means backing down on objectives/demands otherwise that would be the end of it.
I don’t like the way he does things but we’ve seen Trump’s playbook enough to see what he does. Big threat, followed by the US getting some sort of capitulation from it. He then doesn’t follow through with the threat.
That’s not chickening out. That’s just negotiating with a big stick.
Iran wants to charge $2M per ship as part of it's ceasefire conditions - which will almost certainly be rejected since that would impact every ship/nation traversing these waters. Waters that are not owned by Iran.
> Plus they get to keep their enriched uranium.
There's 0% chance of that happening.
> Iran is in a stronger position now than when the war started.
All of Iran's senior leadership are dead. Most or all of the "second-string" leadership is dead. All but their ground-force military is destroyed.
The leadership clearly doesn't matter as neither the regime has collapsed nor have moderates emerged.
Claims of destruction of "all" military are continually invalidated by the ongoing drone and missile strikes.
Read up on his ‘playbook’ with russia, north korea, china etc ..
Is it? Iran seems to be under the impression it is subject to their control.
in terms of shifting war goals, he's chickened out on getting back to the status quo from before the war.
rather than chickened out, the US is the sound loser of this war. the best outcome the US can negotiate for now is worse than what they could get before the war
It's stunning to me, that people still do not understand Trump's one-and-only playbook. He literally published a book about his one-and-only strategy all the way back in 1987 - yet people still freak out when he makes big demands then settles for more realistic options. The guy literally has used the same strategy over and over, and everyone acts like it's the first time every time.
It's also stunning to me the very same people that were losing their minds about threatened events immediately switch into "TACO" mode when those events don't happen.
In this situation, Trump made wild threats and demands if Iran didn't agree to a ceasefire. Iran initially rejected but then some 6 hours later accepted. The one-and-only playbook strikes again.
Bullying only works against the weak.
How pathetic is this!
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/08/world/middleeast/trump-pa...
This whole thing is a debacle. Trump was manipulated by his betters into engaging a war he doesn't understand at all [0], and while flailing he just reached for the most insane threat he could imagine.
The madman theory ironically actually requires a sane and competent person to perform the bluff, [1] which is not the case here.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/07/us/politics/trump-iran-wa...
A high schooler could tell you that.
I don’t like it because we’re needlessly hurting relations, but to say it’s a bad strategy is silly.
Do you really think, after over a decade of buying into a cult, they will suddenly give up after seeing slightly better proof of things that are already widely known?
It's delusion to think this has to do with Epstein. Israel committed to this war Oct 7th, and the Trump admin jumped in for worse reasons: They thought they were special and could win. They thought they would be seen as strong.
Why do Trump friends own so much news and media if Trump believes he has to make up a war to distract from Epstein?
No amount of preachers raping kids has stopped fundamentalists christians from supporting their institutions that enable such activity. They are some of the same people who support Trump. They don't care if he personally raped a kid. "The ends justify the means". 2A folks support him even though he has directly said he wants to take guns from people without due process and even though he said Pretti should not have brought a gun to a protest, something that Kyle Rittenhouse supporters probably should have a problem with.
They don't care. The ends justify the means. They've never cared about the actual person involved. Everything they say in defense of him is post-hoc rationalization and entirely a front. They do not care.
Did I say that? Or did your reply get attached to the wrong comment? Either way, no I don't believe that at all.
The people running the country, killing protestors, etc, aren't trying to "win" in the same way Trump is. It's easier to avoid regime change than it is to cause it from air strikes.
Can you give me some examples of where he’s done this in the last and it actually worked?
That threat was really about the death of American civilization as we know it, and he made good on it a long time ago.
He's not doing some Scott Adams master persuader nonsense. He spent a month being ignored by his counterparty so he just kept amping up the rhetoric until he was threating actual genocide. With human shields placed around the infrastructure he promised to attack, the president desperately begged Pakistan to broker a ceasefire with two sets of terms.
Okay. Tell me, what did the US got? You say they got what they wanted. What is that they wanted and now got?
We take the Second Amendment for granted here in the US - but the lack of a similar thing in Iran is what will keep the civilian population under the regime's control - or else another 10k-30k+ massacre.
How would you feel if your city was being bombed by a hostile foreign nation, including a school full of kids? Magnanimous toward the attackers?
But, if you had an amazing reputation for paying your debts, and get super low interest rates because of it, and all of a sudden you change your reputation and demand for holding your debt and currency goes down, well, then that's created a massive problem for the currency that reduces everyone's quality of life drastically.
It’s not acceptable on its face, but there’s a lot going on in this conflict that isn’t making the news.
It bombarded all its neighbors. What is that if not an escalation against non-aggressors? Not to mention the closing of the straits which is an escalation against many other parties.
Clearly this was not about attacking someone that's attacking you or military assets. This was about leverage. Attacking civilians and civilian infrastructure of countries that are assumed to have some lever over the US to force it to stop while at the same time are too weak or too afraid to defend themselves (which is why you did not see the same scale of attacks e.g. against Turkey despite it also hosting the US). It's a tactic. It's also a war crime.
Maybe if they, idk, stopped funding Hamas, Hezbollah, and Yemen rebels stopped trying to get a nuke, stopped stockpiling missiles for no reason and stopped chanting death to America we wouldn’t be here.
We have seen that the US ability to project power is great. We've also seen (and I don't think anyone didn't know that) that power has its limits. Especially when it comes to fighting fanatics with nothing to lose.
The US is still the only world power that has the ability to e.g. prevent Iran from just walking in and taking the gulf countries. It's true that protection isn't hermetic.
But hermetic protection is REALLY important when your entire economy is based off of oil and water desalination plants. Iran still retains the ability to damage that infrastructure. The Gulf countries have some hard decisions to make, but I wouldn’t be surprised if several of them sprint closer to Iran. Already we are hearing of a joint Omani-Irani agreement on Hormuz administration…
There is no real possible alignment between the regime in Tehran and the Sunni Emirates or Saudi Arabia or Kuwait. There is no way they are sprinting closer to Iran.
Oman is more complicated but they are also not going to align with Iran.
It's hard to evaluate but I don't see huge shifts from the gulf states. The US is still their best bet (not to mention that they are heavily invested in that). They have major investments that aren't oil, i.e. unlike Iran they can live very comfortably even if the energy sector is shut down. They prefer to make money from oil and gas but they also prefer a weaker Iran.
It's looking like more of the same and counting down to the next round.
I think what new is the realization of Iran’s willingness to escalate.
> There is no real possible alignment between the regime in Tehran and the Sunni Emirates or Saudi Arabia or Kuwait. There is no way they are sprinting closer to Iran.
Can you please expand on that? I don’t understand why they couldn’t be aligned.
The Islamic Republic of Iran believes in exporting the revolution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exporting_the_Islamic_Revoluti...
Basically they believe the rulers of the gulf countries should be overthrown and that those countries should be run by Islamic rules. So basically MBZ who rules the UAE (as an example) wants to keep ruling the country and strike some balance between economic prosperity and maintaining his rule while Iran would want to see him removed and his government replaced by a theocratic regime. Naturally the UAE also wants not to be bombarded by Iran but the personal survival of the UAE rulers is a bit more important to them than that goal.
My unprovable pet theory is that the US would've had less black eyes if we didn't have incompetent people like Kegseth in charge, and especially if he hadn't been allowed to dismiss top brass across the military just because they were too woke/not "warrior" enough.
I think a lot of those states are wondering how much protection they’d need if we weren’t based there and drawing fire. China can offer economic stability and sales of modern military equipment for self-defense, and I think the entire world is working through the implications of the United States allowing an unsound octogenarian to destabilize the dollar or declare a major war on a whim. There’s a lot to dislike about China but the gulf states aren’t exactly sticklers for democracy and stability is good for business.
https://www.iranintl.com/en/202601255198
https://www.amnesty.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/mde130...
https://www.ecpm.org/2025/02/20/the-death-penalty-in-iran-th...
Dissidents are being hanged in Iran as we write this.
Israel has claims of self defense after being brutally attacked. The US has claims of wanting to take down the regime and prevent them from getting nuclear weapons. You can argue about claims and actions. The Iranian regime has no shred of excuse other than their total lack of humanity.
And there is no proof of the 10s of thousands of protesters killed claiming. That was just propaganda to enable this recent war.
Countries can claim this and that about defense and brutal attacks, and depending on who you are you believe the propaganda or not, but in the end what matters is the destruction and killing they do. Which US and Israel and done more of by a long shot.
Reading just this far and it could be either the US or Iran you’re talking about. It almost makes you think…
Iranian strategy in this war will be studied for ages.
Russia is the aggressor there, and I don't recall Ukraine targeting other countries with Russian bases. Also, the war in Ukraine is about Russia expanding territory so it involved boots and occupation since day one, which is not the case in Iran.
What about the missiles launched at Dubai?
This is categorically false. Saudi Arabia, UAE, Iraq, Qatar, (Kuwait,) even Oman and Turkey at various times, and Cyprus. Iran demonstrated superiority in only one respect during this war, and that was in recruiting otherwise well-meaning, levelheaded figures in media and government, even religious leaders, to spout incoherent nonsense as you did here.
Because it has no way of achieving its objectives.
If the US objective was self destruction or massive face plant, it is certainly getting closer to its objective.
We have not set their program to zero. They now have, and will continue to have, people trained in the knowledge of how to rebuild it. They now have massively more incentive to do so. Countries in the region now have more reason to help. Countries the world over have more incentive to contain US idiocy, as yet again we screw their economies for made up reasons.
As do their allies, and the raft of allies the US has lost over this idiocy will hurt US for decades, likely never to be repaired.
This is why Iran has won. The US has so destroyed brand US that it’ll never regain trust anywhere, economically, militarily, or morally.
1) JCPOA was in effect for barely more than two years. Iran's nuclear work prior started way back circa 2000. It was killed before we can say anything about its effectiveness.
2) IIRC, JCPOA didn't prevent Iran from developing nuclear tech. It only limited capacity. They were free to do all the R&D they wanted.
3) Iran was doing weaponization work prior to the deal which they didn't disclose. So taking them at their word on the subject is probably not a good idea.
Trump pulling out from the deal was dumb, because it probably was slowing weaponization down, but the idea that the deal was stopping Iran from developing weaponization tech is not supported by the aims of the deal itself.
> We have not set their program to zero. They now have, and will continue to have, people trained in the knowledge of how to rebuild it.
Very close to it. Lots of facilities were destroyed, and I believe a majority of their scientists were killed.
> They now have massively more incentive to do so.
Debatable. I can see it going either way.
> Countries in the region now have more reason to help. Countries the world over have more incentive to contain US idiocy, as yet again we screw their economies for made up reasons.
Nearly all the countries in the region want Iran gone. They are a destabilizing force for all their neighbors.
> As do their allies
Iran has pretty much 0 official allies. Their only allies come in the form of "we hate the US too, so we will help you be a thorn in their side"
> This is why Iran has won
Won what? If that's winning, then I'll take losing.
> The US has so destroyed brand US that it’ll never regain trust anywhere, economically, militarily, or morally.
This remains to be seen I think. Honestly, if Europe kicks us out I'll be happy personally. I look forward to the day the US isn't running the oceans as a toll road for the globe and everyone handles their own backyards. I think we are far enough past WW2 that the world no longer needs a nanny.
>This remains to be seen I think. Honestly, if Europe kicks us out I'll be happy personally. I look forward to the day the US isn't running the oceans as a toll road for the globe and everyone handles their own backyards. I think we are far enough past WW2 that the world no longer needs a nanny.
Pretty rich to day this given what US is doing now.
Instead Trump ripped it up and then got involved in yet another useless zionist middle eastern war that only seems to have made Iran stronger and further destroying US reputation.
I'm trying to discuss what that means, because I think that's where we are disagreeing.
What does that mean to you?
To me (and it's crafters) the JCPOA "working" meant slowing Iran down temporarily.
Well yeah, like I said, it was a stalling maneuver. It slowed things down.
> We know they followed the agreement with minor discrepancies, and when sanctions started they started breaking it. With no diplomatic agreement and sanctions in place what should Iran be doing? Might as well build a bomb then.
Well yeah, they were doing that before and during the JCPOA. Why wouldn't they do it after?
How sure are you that we're reducing net total future threats in the Middle East under Trump?
So far, Trump said that the Straight of Hormuz closed is cutting off China’s oil supply and isn’t important to the US, the US doesn’t need allies, but after Trump got zero help from Europe he then proceeded to ask China of all countries to help in the straight?!
Knowing people travelling near and through the Straight, Iran has all the cards. “Iran is of little threat” doesn’t hold water when the US can’t even send ships though to protect container ships
https://www.citriniresearch.com/p/strait-of-hormuz-a-citrini...
I doubt the revolutionaries sympathizers within Iran liked their children being murdered or infrastructure getting destroyed. All the US has done is a repeat of the same thing they've done for half a century: start a war and immediately get more enemies within the middle east. Perhaps the only change is now the US's allies are distancing themselves faster and further than ever before.
If you're not ok with walking away at that point, maybe put a better offer on the table?
Additionally: supporting the killing of innocents, war crimes, genocide, etc, just because the perpetrators are jewish, is eviler still. Israel's actions make all jews (like myself) look bad, and puts us at risk around the world.
Maybe try diplomacy instead? And no, diplomacy doesn't mean "take our offer with no changes or we will kill you all". It means recognizing that israel isn't better than other countries, it means treating others as equals, it means you don't get to boss around co-equal countries, and it means giving first if you want to receive.
So then what would we achieve? nuclear material is cheap (10s of billions) relative to a multi-decade occupation (single digit trillions). It's undoubtedly true that Iran would revert to it's preferred form of government, geopolitical orientation, and nuclear capability once the US left.
The lack of will to use sufficient force to win a war is fundamentally no different from not having that force in the first place. Both are equally real constraints on your ability to win the war.
Because Trump is already facing a bloodbath in the midterms and his next step is either a ground war or dropping a nuke, and both of those will ensure he not only loses the midterms but has a legitimate shot at seeing the inside of a prison cell.
Knocking off Saddam gave us ISIS. These things have a way of going sideways.
Let's see. It may be a military dictatorship using Khamenei, who may or may not even be in Iran, as a figurehead.
So it would still be a theocracy, same as before, but now also run by people who are conditioned to believe that more violence is always a solution to any problem.
https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3miybj6ff622f
> Hegseth: "God deserves all the glory. Tens of thousands of sorties, refuelings, and strikes, carried out under the protection of divine providence. A massive effort with miraculous protection."
Imagine it happened to you.
Phew and I wonder why that might be!
What's the obsession with the destruction of Israel? Could it be related to the fact that an Islamic Republic of (...) could not accept a Jewish rule right in the middle of the great Muslim Ummah?
That's just today...
Iran's so called "obsession" is simply their desire to remain a sovereign state.
Hezbollah formally accepts Khamenei as wali al-faqih the supreme juridical authority. That's not alliance, that's religious-political fealty to a foreign head of state.
Iran provides an estimated $700M–$1B/year, plus missiles, drones, training. Without Iran, Hezbollah's strategic arsenal doesn't exist.
It operates as a parallel state inside Lebanon (own military, telecoms, social services, foreign policy), displacing Lebanese sovereignty in the south and Bekaa.
> So Iran colonized Lebanon
They haven't "colonised" anything, and, at best, it's disingenuous to describe training a resistance group as such.
> It operates as a parallel state inside Lebanon (own military, telecoms, social services, foreign policy), displacing Lebanese sovereignty in the south and Bekaa.
To claim the "officially recognised" Lebanese state is sovereign is utterly ridiculous! They are stooges, tasked with sitting back and doing nothing while Israel carries out ethnic cleansing and genocide. An MI6 front (Westminster Foundation for Democracy) even has an office inside the Lebanese parliament.
Turns out that if you take over a country's government and continuously carry out appalling attrocities against it's people for decades, they will resist.
Wow, this is quite a take. If Hezbollah doesn't have to respect Lebanon sovereignty then why does Israel?
"Turns out that if you take over a country's government and continuously carry out appalling attrocities against it's people for decades, they will resist."
This is just a insane conspiracy theory. Hezbollah is the organization that actually partially took over the Lebanese government with Iranian help.
Hezbollah attacks Israel with absolutely no concern for the damage Israels counterattacks will do to Lebanon.
Absolutely disgusting - look at the massacres Apartheid Israel committed in Lebanon just yesterday.
> Hezbollah attacks Israel with absolutely no concern for the damage Israels counterattacks will do to Lebanon
That's the same logic wife-beaters use... "it's their own fault I hit them!".
I'm not going to engage any further with your genocidal rhetoric.
Let me ask you a few questions
1) do you think Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran can defeat Israel with force?
2) do you want them to?
Not that long ago. Just a reminder.
If the USA and Israel had really wanted to stop evil regimes they could have gone to Sudan maybe?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Fasher_massacre?wprov=sfla1
https://www.piratewires.com/p/how-wikipedia-s-pro-hamas-edit...
The Islamic Republic has killed a vast number of people over its reign. The main problem though is their drive for nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles and their exporting of violence beyond the borders of their country.
I'm not sure what sort of military action you're proposing to solve the civil war in Sudan but if there's a solution I'd be interested in hearing it.
If anything, it's israel here that has attacked almost all countries in the area and annexed land from them ("buffer zones").
But what you're saying isn't true - any of it! Iran has been hitting military targets. And they've been using MIRVs, not anti-personell cluster munitions (you know, of the kind Israel has dropped over 1M of over Lebanon). MIRVs split into multiple, independently targetable missiles when high above ground near the target zone. Cluster munitions wait until they are only some meters above ground, and then explode into bomblets.
On April 6, as many as 50 sites were impacted by missiles and their cluster munitions.
“Iranian cluster munitions struck roughly 50 locations across central Israel, wounding at least six, including a seriously wounded woman in Petah Tikva and a moderately wounded man in Ramat Gan,”
Iran has focused on using cluster munitions in its ballistic missile salvos since the first two weeks of the conflict. However, the proportion of these munitions has increased. By March 10, Israel’s Home Front Command said that 50 percent of the Iranian missiles contained cluster munitions.
On April 1, The Times of Israel reported that “12 missiles carrying conventional warheads with hundreds of kilograms of explosives […] struck populated areas in Israel, causing extensive damage. There have also been more than 30 incidents of missiles carrying cluster bomb warheads hitting populated areas, with over 200 separate impact sites.” A ballistic missile attack on April 4, which led to at least 10 impact sites, illustrated how large an area can be affected by one missile with cluster munitions.
As before, it's Apartheid Israel that uses cluster bombs (and white phosphorus too).
Iran is far more of an apartheid state because Jews are considered to be Dhimmis and officially discriminated against. Dhimmi status is not equality. Recognized-minority status under the 1979 constitution comes with hard ceilings: Jews cannot hold senior military, judicial, or executive positions; inheritance law historically favored any family member who converted to Islam (a Jew converting could inherit the entire estate from Jewish relatives, a direct incentive structure against the community); testimony of non-Muslims is weighted less in court; blood money (diyya) was unequal until reforms in the 2000s. The reserved Majles seat is one out of 290, tokenism, not representation.
America has admitted that they (tried to and maybe were successful in) sending arms to the fifth column attempted uprising.
Try to get your information from somewhere that isn't American/Israeli propaganda.
Try to get your information from somewhere that isn't Iranian propaganda.
And provided with starlink: https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/u-s-smuggled-thousands... ?
Imagine russia or china sponsoring and arming protesters in US. The last time US was actualyl attacked it put 120k japanese people into concentration camps just because they were japanese.
Were there any armed protests in Iran? I thought they were peaceful?