LET THE ANACONDA'S COILS TIGHTEN.

Former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice seems to be thinking along those lines.

Strategic patience is hard, and it isn’t always satisfying. But time is on the side of the U.S. and its allies. Reaching no deal is fine. Reaching a bad deal isn’t.

Power Line's John Hinderaker concurs in part and dissents in part.  "But the administration’s unwillingness to stop talking to Tehran, probably linked to our lack of a short-term solution to the problem of the Strait, have cast a pall over what began as a stunningly successful military operation."

I don't understand asymmetric warfare well enough to weigh in on whether Our President's continuing to (claim to?) talk to somebody in the Iranian government while the True Believers of the revolutionary guards continue to posture and shoot off missiles is deliberate, to create the same sort of faction fighting among whoever is still in charge that presented as the Soviets closed in on Berlin.  That might be on Ms. Rice's mind.

The public hasn’t seen Mojtaba Khamenei since his installation as supreme leader. Economic pressure has made the regime vulnerable—not necessarily to the street, where it can always crush dissent, but perhaps to internal fractures over Iran’s future relationship with the world. If the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps controls 40% of the economy, as reports indicate, the U.S. must make sure Tehran understands that 40% of nothing is nothing.

In order to see that through, though, unbundling freedom of navigation through the Straight of Hormuz from anything else remains essential.

America’s near-term goals should be to keep it in that weakened state, to strengthen the region’s political realignment, and to make certain that President Trump’s promise that Iran will never possess a nuclear weapon is fulfilled.

The U.S. doesn’t need a nuclear agreement with Iran to achieve these goals. But once the Strait of Hormuz is opened, if the administration engages in nuclear negotiations, it’s critical that the following conditions are maintained:

Not a single penny of frozen assets or sanctions relief should go to Tehran. Under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Iran used the money to rebuild its capabilities and those of its proxies. It would do so again.

Here comes another weekend of "an agreement is near."  The hardliners in Iran and among the Militant Normals are not prepared to be patient.