The news writers over at The Wall Street Journal wrote this in all seriousness about the aftermath of the Israeli airstrikes on Iran; followed by the US’ MOP and cruise missile deliveries to Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan; followed by a cease-fire between Iran and Israel:
The attack [by US B-2s and cruise missiles] made the US and the region safer, but did the diplomacy? The answer depends on how Mr Trump plays it from here.
No, it does not. The “answer” depends entirely on Iran’s Ayatollah and his mullah cronies in the Iranian government. Those persons still hate Israel and Jews in general, and they still hate the US. They still adhere to a prior Iranian President’s statement as those current Iranian government persons now resume their efforts to put together nuclear bombs with which to destroy Israel and pass on to later-reviving terrorist proxies for their use. Rafsanjani’s statement—brag, really, and threat—about which I’ve written before, l repeat here:
If one day, he [Rafsanjani] said, the world of Islam comes to possess the weapons currently in Israel’s possession [meaning nuclear weapons]—on that day this method of global arrogance would come to a dead end. This, he said, is because the use of a nuclear bomb in Israel will leave nothing on the ground, whereas it will only damage the world of Islam.
On top of that, this war is not over because those Iranian government persons have not accepted defeat, and never will, much like Rome in an earlier period:
The Romans expected a war to end in total victory or their own annihilation…. This attitude prevented the Romans from losing the [Punic] war and ultimately allowed them to win it.
Iran, or at least the current crop of Iranian government persons, have not yet been annihilated. All that’s happened is that those persons have agreed to a cease-fire of uncertain durability and duration, during which they will rest their forces, refit them, rearm them, and then resume, possibly using alternative means, their murderous assaults on Israel, Europe, and the US.
It’s unfortunate that so many in the news writing business seriously think the Iranian government personnel think like Westerners do, have the same moral imperatives Westerners do, have the same value sets and respect for human life Westerners do.
These Iranian government persons are not interested in victory, per se. They’re interested in the destruction of Israel, and they do not care at all about the cost in lives to the Iranian people or to the lives of Muslims generally.
What Trump does, or does not do, diplomatically is wholly irrelevant.