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The Iran war’s end is being greatly exaggerated

There are many questions unresolved in the latest ceasefire deal and many ways the conflict could begin again.

One should never underestimate President Donald Trump’s ability to use sheer obfuscation to extract “victory” from a situation where the outcome is ambiguous at best. In the days to come, following Sunday’s announcement of a US-Iran ceasefire deal, the Trump administration will undoubtedly face questions about why it was worth killing thousands of people and spending more than $30 billion, not counting the extra costs Americans and people around the world have paid at the gas pump and the supermarket, on a war that succeeded only in reestablishing the prewar status quo: reopening a strait that wasn’t closed before the war, getting Iran to pledge not to build a nuclear weapon — a pledge it has made for decades — and replacing the country’s hardline regime with an ever harder line one.

Trump can claim the US and Israeli bombing campaign set back Iran’s nuclear and missile programs — though just how far set back they are is still unknown without inspectors on the ground — and that unlike Barack Obama, he won’t be sending planes full of cash from the US to Iran. (The money will probably be coming from Dubai instead.)

The deal will likely come under criticism from the Iran hawks who backed the war — some are already expressing concerns — but Trump may not face all that much pushback given how many of his opponents as well as his supporters simply want the war to end.

The bigger problem for the administration is that the agreement leaves so many issues unresolved that it’s far from clear that the war is actually over. And even if it is, we may just be witnessing the setup for future conflicts that keep the United States on an indefinite war footing in the Middle East.

How the Iran war could drive conflicts in countries thousands of........

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