Trump’s “Memorandum of Surrender”: The art of the deal meets the fact of defeat

Donald Trump is not negotiating with Iran. He is negotiating with the humiliation of having failed to break it. Beneath the ceasefires, memoranda, podium theatrics and sanctimonious appeals to “stability” lies a fact Washington cannot admit: the United States entered this confrontation expecting submission and emerged confronting its own limits. It wanted Iran isolated, disarmed and politically obedient. It wanted its deterrence shattered, its regional influence dismantled and its sovereignty reduced to a flag, an anthem and nothing more. It failed. Iran endured the pressure, preserved its strategic leverage and forced the most powerful empire on earth to negotiate with the country it had promised to bring to its knees.  That is not an American victory. It is the management […]