So, to sum up: There is a 10-point plan that nobody has agreed to and a 15-point plan that the public has not seen and a fundamental understanding that the Strait or Hormuz will open and the attacks in the region will stop, though the strait is closed and the attacks haven’t stopped. Seemingly the only thing that has changed is that the U.S. is not currently pummeling Iran while a future day for negotiations has been set up. Maybe this constitutes a ceasefire, but talks to end the war have purportedly been happening this whole time, so I’m not entirely sure how meaningful all this is. For the media’s part, I’m also not entirely sure what we’re supposed to do. When the president announces a ceasefire and what’s left of Iran’s leaders say they have an agreement, we have to report that. We also have to report the on-the-ground reality, and in this case, the delta between the alleged ceasefire terms and what is happening on the ground is egregious. As for the only 10-point plan we actually have access to, I can’t imagine how it’s even a “workable basis on which to negotiate.” Nearly every point in the plan looks to be a nonstarter for the U.S., at least in the context of previous negotiations. If Iran were to get even three of the 10 points implemented in a ceasefire — any three, really — it’d constitute a major improvement from their position a few months ago. That certainly doesn’t mean Iran is somehow “winning” the war, which is an even more ridiculous claim than saying the U.S. has achieved a major victory. General Dan Caine’s assessment is that we’ve destroyed 80% of Iran’s air defense systems, 90% of its Navy, 90% of its weapons factories and 80% of its nuclear industrial base, among other things. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is dead, as are most of his senior counterparts. Iran is obviously weakened, and their capacity for terrorism, nuclear proliferation, or attacking its neighbors is considerably degraded. Yet, at the same time, Iran has proven it can exert serious economic leverage on a global scale by controlling this single waterway. They’ve shown that they can tolerate an unspeakable amount of damage to their own leadership and their civilian population. They’ve weathered the most threatening, straightforward promises for mass destruction imaginable from a U.S. president and watched as almost none of them have come to pass. And now they are negotiating from what they clearly understand as a position of strength, given that they are demanding concessions they’d never have even swung for in these negotiations just a few short months ago. Trump, for his part, seems to be improvising in real time. He suggested that Iran and the U.S. could enter a joint venture and control the Strait of Hormuz together, which is a rather shocking proposal when you pause to think about it for even a moment. “The terrorist regime we said we needed to wipe off the face of the earth on Monday will, on Wednesday, become our business partner for the future, and our ships will pay tolls that line their pockets!” That’s to say nothing of the precedent it sets for other nations to begin restricting free passage in international waters, a problem that doesn’t currently exist in large part due to American influence in our global trade system. Some will take away from this episode that Trump’s “madman act” worked, that Iran blinked, and that “the media still doesn’t understand Trump after all these years.” Trump says big scary thing. Big scary thing doesn’t happen. Supposed deal is agreed to. Cue the takes about Trump the negotiator and a businessman, while the hysterical media are all rubes for pearl-clutching over meaningless words. The reality I see, though, is far more unsettling. I don’t think the Mad King act is really an act at all; I think the president feels trapped and is finding his way out on the fly, leaving a trail of destruction in his wake. The evidence is right before us. To quote @SohrabAhmari, the Iranian-American conservative commentator who endorsed Trump as recently as 2022: "The objectives were ever-shifting: changing the regime and putting Iran’s destiny in the hands of its people; degrading military capacity; stopping a nuclear program that had already been 'obliterated' in the course of the earlier 12-Day War; reopening the Strait of Hormuz; not reopening the Strait of Hormuz, because we don’t need it anyway; you better 'fucking open it, you crazy bastards,' otherwise America will 'wipe out a whole civilization'; OK, how about we both run it in a joint venture?" Worse yet, I think he is still trapped and still feeling the walls as he walks through the darkness, guessing on his next moves. I think this war is not over, Iran’s control over this economic lever has not been removed, and we have not found our way out. If you can even call this situation a ceasefire at all, I’m skeptical it will survive the time between me writing this sentence and pressing "post." I think Trump’s threats were genuine, and the fact they didn’t come to fruition was more happenstance, military bureaucracy, and good fortune than any semblance of a plan or an off-ramp. The “deal” Trump is negotiating is far worse than the one we had, if there is even a shared reality on what the deal is (and I’m not sure there is). And in this case, the media’s purported “hysteria” over the threats to wipe out an entire civilization was not just warranted but perhaps understated; that we’ve moved on so quickly, that it only took a few headlines about a ceasefire deal nobody seems to understand, is perhaps the most worrisome thing of all. Somehow, impressively, Iran and the U.S. are both losing this war. But that seems to be what war often is — a violent circle of sacrifice and downsides, justified by the people pushing it, and tolerated by the rest of us.