WHAT DOES VICTORY LOOK LIKE?

At the beginning of the month, Marc Thiessen with the American Enterprise Institute offered five steps for Our President to declare victory.

1.  Complete all remaining military tasks.
2.  Eliminate the remaining Iranian leaders who were spared for the purpose of negotiations.
3.  Unilaterally declare victory.
4.  Impose peace terms.
5.  Bar Iran from firing on protesters and set conditions for eventual regime collapse.

It's easier to sit at one's desk in Washington than it is to implement those things, but then, the thrust of his column is "accomplish enough to declare victory and go home."  The principal objectives of the United States are that the mullahs not acquire hot rocks and that Iran stop exporting politicized gangbangers throughout Asia Minor.  Those objectives align with those of Israel and the Gulf Arab states, although, as we repeatedly note, they are not congruent.

I have little confidence in the news reporting subject to the fog of war which diplomats and politicians add to, but with respect to those principal objectives, I've heard rumblings of Iran offering to stop the nuclear physics for five years with the United States asking for twenty: given the long-term tensions among Arabs, Persians, and the other tribes and sects less well known dating back to at least Nebuchadnezzar, it's unlikely that any Iranian negotiator, whether in the employ of the mullahs or the Shah or King Xerxes the Great would forswear nuclear weapons for all time.  Furthermore, Israel and Lebanon have agreed to continue to negotiate whether Hezbollah, the Lebanese crew of the El Rukns, likes it or not.  I was not aware until recently that Lebanon and Israel have been "at war" since the late 1940s, although that did not deter Holiday Inn from operating properties in Lebanon into the 1960s.  I lose track of the chronology:  Munich massacre, Yom Kippur war, Lebanese civil war, mullahs take over Iran: and now Lebanon's duly constituted government has had enough of Hezbollah.  That's promising.

What continues to amuse is Our President countering Iran's requests for "reparations" with musings about jointly "building something beautiful."  At heart, all he wants to do is to build hotels.  That sort of dickering will not be possible without a serious change in management in Iran, and although there are signs of fracture in its government, understand that there is many a local imam who fancies himself an ayatollah, and many a lieutenant who thinks he'd be a good general.

But perhaps Power Line's Bill Glahn offered the best advice.  "You may or may not like the end result, but don’t spend time on analyzing the current state."  He's right, and I do have yard work to do.