Any settlement between Iran and the U.S. that might emerge before this column sees print, or at any future date for that matter, won't matter a whit.

Because Iran won't honor any such agreement, and we all know they won't. All Donald Trump's underlings appear to be doing at this point is negotiating the terms of a defeat sure to be presented as anything but.

We likely lost the war when Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and we proved unwilling to do what was necessary to reopen it, causing an unsustainable surge in oil prices and sending the global economy into a tailspin.

Just about every analysis I encountered over the years predicted that one of the first things Iran would do if attacked was close the strait. Apparently, nobody in the Trump administration bothered to read any of that.

The failure to anticipate such an obvious Iranian move will likely go down as one of the worst military follies in history. When we acquiesced in the closure of the strait, leverage in the war shifted into the hands of Tehran (or whomever was still in charge there).

Again, the mistake was not attacking Iran (that was long overdue), but doing so without, apparently, any kind of plan for what would happen next, or how our adversary would respond.

The idea that Iran's leaders........

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