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Trump is also, I think, uniquely willing to withstand electoral pressure. He has not caved just because the war is unpopular and the midterms are looming. He even says the midterms don't matter. Surely that's a negotiating signal (to convince Iran that they can't just wait him out). But I think any other president, at this point, would have picked a vastly different strategy out of political concern.
I'm currently thinking that the Abraham Accords will be expanded, but a broader regional peace will happen in steps and not one big all-encompassing deal. It might look like North Korea, where we have never really reached a true accord with them after Trump's handshake with Kim Jong Un, but we have a working relationship now and are slowly understanding each other.
As for nuclear dust, I'm not sure if Iran will give it up and consent to lose face. But given that we destroyed the bulk of their nuclear facilities it might be fine if this lingers for years, as Iran doesn't have the capacity to do anything with it anyways.
Yes, the North Korea model (maybe sans nuclear capability) is a semi-likely outcome in my outlook. Very minimal force projection capabilities, but fanatically committed to defense of its internal autonomy.
Which, interestingly, was probably one of the under-recognized dynamics of Iran that the war changed. Iran was in the middle of a multi-decade effort to develop power projection capabilities, from blue water naval elements to drone carrier concepts. It sank, and the US sank it so quickly I've gotten the sense people felt it didn't matter, but there's a difference between nascant and insignificant.
Iran hadn't gotten any sort of reputation as a naval power because there wasn't exactly a 'opportunity' to test the emerging capability, but it was a capability that was progressing and could have, hypothetically, had things like an Iranian naval detachment inconveniently escorting Iranian tankers to China during a US-Taiwan scenario and any attempted US blockade. Among other more direct things in regional proxy or not-so-proxy conflicts with Israel.
If Iran does revert back to a North Korea model of minimal power projection capability for the next decade or three, still just limited to drones or missiles from its own territory or proxies, that would be a non-trivial divergence to what Iran was trying to move towards. It's not the sort of difference most people would notice / acknowledge / credit, because there's no real weight to an alternative not seen, but such is the nature of growth trajectories denied.
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