The cease-fire in Iran, which seems likely to be the end of the war for all practical purposes, fails my simple test for victory: There is not a visible win here that the average American citizen can see without the need for mediating explanations from intelligence assessments. As I’ve said from the beginning, this war was worth fighting — if and only if it brought a permanent end to the Islamic Republic government that was founded in 1979 and has been effectively at war with us ever since. That would be a grand-strategic victory in taking Iran permanently........

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