One can debate whether this war is a positive…..reduction in Iran’s capability to have a nuclear weapons vs further radicalization of the militant Muslim world. My view is these guys need no help to go off the rails, they fail at something and it’s automatically the West’s fault. Give them a nuclear weapon and the Strait of Hormuz is closed the next day with a series of demands, mostly involving Israel.
So nobody wanted this war, it’s a miserable outcome and a tragic one for many, including those kids we all still think about. But this is a rogue regime and a constant source of conflict. It will get worse as their programs come to fruition and look out when their oil starts to fade, that’s when they will be at their most dangerous just like Russia.
The right answer was for the world to step in when the election atrocities became known. The US finally did because Trump isn’t a member of the club and is willing to do the unpopular things. In the short run it’s a bust. Maybe in the long run it’s a bust if we don’t get regime change which looks less and less likely.
But that’s not because the administration wasn’t willing to act. It’s because the American public are limiting his hand via the election process and because Europe has been totally unsupportive. Nor does the argument that they weren’t consulted hold much practical weight, that would simply have leaked and made things much more difficult.
Trump’s solution to that conundrum was to say we would take out their whole electrical grid. But the price of that in terms of civilian suffering will probably be too much and the world will accept a phony deal and the Iranians will go on giving us a taste of medieval radicalism every now and then, But we have probably delayed the inevitable by 5 years. In most country’s that and the whole experience might be enough to hope for change. In country’s like Iran sadly that never seems to happen with a a cataclysm