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Why? These things are usually drawn out because America and Iran don’t negotiate directly and pass everything through intermediaries. And by Trump’s account they agreed essentially on every point except for the nuclear question. I don’t see why it would take longer than 21 hours to realize that, the idea that negotiating is this special activity that takes lots of expertise is a myth from the Georgetown school of foreign policy to promote the need for bureaucrat-scholars to run everything.
The leading theory on this forum a week ago was that Trump was losing so badly he would accept any peace deal as long as it was face-saving and he could declare victory. Not so?
America totally destroyed Iran’s military in a stunning lopsided victory. I’ve been told this was only a tactical victory because Iran now controls the straits and is using that as leverage, but, weirdly, Trump is now announcing a blockade of the straits himself. Perhaps America isn’t defeated?
I fear that denying this will have me marked as some kind of rabid Trump fanboy who can’t deal with reality but I have to point out that oil was much higher during the 2008 crisis, back when the same dollars were worth more.
The US having tactical military dominance over Iran can hardly be "stunning". The US not being able to translate military dominance into a strategic victory is, well, somewhat par for the course, but is in this case at least a bogey, and probably a double or triple given that the strategic loss on the Strait has fundamentally worsened our security/economy, by a lot, compared with pre-war.
Oil tankers are now filling up at American ports because we have oil and the rest of the world does not. America controls a near-majority of the world’s oil supply and has a surplus even if prices go up. We destroyed Iran’s military and are dictating terms. I guess America is losing because Europeans are mad it’s not going faster?
There's a big shift in how the American empire now functions. It used to be the source of stability, projecting Pax America over its sphere of influence. Even Iraq, not exactly a success story in nation building, was viewed more like a "good idea, terrible execution" mistake.
The new American empire is the source of instability. It's telling other countries, "You have to work with us, because only we can afford to fuck up the rest of the world and weather the fallout".
Take Qatar, for example. Did everything the US wanted, played its role of a small friendly petrostate heavily investing into soft power perfectly. What did it get for this? Iran destroying its economy and Trump telling it to suck it up. The only reason Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani hasn't publicly thrown in his hat with Xi after this is because there's a non-zero risk Trump might bomb Qatar after reading about it on X.
Everyone is going to start hedging their bets now instead of viewing being friends of the US as the safe default.
Are you referring to something specific or did you just make that up? Because publicly the Qataris are talking about how this is ruining their impression of Iran, not America. And privately nobody is contemplating anything close to America bombing Qatar. You think Trump just wakes up on Twitter and decides who to bomb? You aren’t being dramatic? Trump is on Twitter so you can hear his message, not the other way around. If you think differently maybe you also think the hooker has never seen one so big before?
The logic of the whole war is Trump stitched together a new Middle East coalition of Israel, Saudi, Qatar, UAE, and Bahrain. This entails all working more closely with America which is how Trump got the buy-in to start the war in the first place. Did someone tell them that America is a partner of instability and everyone is moving out of America’s orbit? They didn’t seem to have gotten the memo.
So far none of these "coalition members" have been rah-rah about the war. What exactly are the Gulf states getting out of it? Two months ago, they were pumping oil and shipping it to their customers with no problems at all. Today, they have to join this coalition of yours, spend their oil revenues on air defense, on navies, on a land invasion of Iran just to go back to what is basically status quo ante bellum: pumping oil and shipping it to their customers with no problems at all.
The Sunni states hate Iran and have been informally allied against it for a generation. They are not amused that Iran is bombing them and they want to see Iran put down.
https://m.economictimes.com/news/international/world-news/israel-iran-war-uae-joins-bahrain-in-urging-unsc-action-on-strait-of-hormuz/articleshow/130050237.cms
https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-891956
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy8lzn2ejpjo
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/uae-minister-coexistence-with-iran-impossible-right-now-addressing-threat-essential-for-peace/
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/24/us/politics/saudi-prince-iran-trump.html
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/kuwaits-top-diplomat-blasts-irans-destabilization-of-the-region/
Stories like this are extremely common. The Gulf States do not want to be constrained by a rogue nation willing to blow up their international trade routes. They do not want Iran to toll the strait. They are happy to use America’s military to achieve their objectives. If your model here is that Saudi et al. were happy with Iran until America blew it all up, I don’t think you know what you’re talking about. If you think Saudi et al. view this like European countries seething about everything Donald Trump does, I don’t think you know what you’re talking about.
I didn't say they were happy with Iran, I said they were happy with the status quo, that is, Iran shouting "Death to America" and funding proxies in various shitholes away from the Gulf. Iran didn't blow up their international trade routes or try to toll the strait, because it had a reasonable expectation that it would get attacked by literally every major country if it tried this without a provocation. But now the window of acceptable fuckery from Iran has been widened thanks to the US and Israel launching a decapitation strike.
The major evidence suggests the exact opposite of what you're saying here. The Gulf Powers were not happy with the status quo (they've all wanted Iran cut down to size for generations, are you really disputing this? Why are all the Gulf States condemning Iran in public if they're actually debating how to create a new order without America?).
I don't even know what this could possibly mean. "The window of acceptable fuckery"? We blew up Iran's military and are now going to blockade them. The material with which Iran would actually block or toll the strait is shrinking by the day. Saudi Arabia is increasing the flow of oil through pipes that go around the Gulf and is interested in building more. Bahrain and Kuwait and UAE want Iran bombed back to the stone age so that Iran can never bomb then again. "The window of acceptable fuckery?" The status quo was that Iran had an ambiguous threat to target the straits, the new status quo now that they've used it is that their power to constrain the other Gulf States is being systematically destroyed.
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