IT NEVER CAME UP

 I see that there are reports that Israel is making it clear to its only partner that it is prepared to continue the attack and is less interested in a negotiated solution with an enemy that close and that dangerous who has a couple thousand years of lying about things on its mantle piece. I cannot say I blame them because there is in fact no sign that Iran is giving up or that it is losing influence in the West. If you look at it without the media filters, the West is turning into the most virulent anti-Jew place on the planet right now. Yes yes, I know, the haters all always say its the zionism they hate but we all know what they mean.

So the British earned a little title of their own because they had a very simple foreign policy for ages and ages and they were spectacularly ruthless and lucky implementing it. The English (Perfidious Albion) policy always was that they did not want to see all of Europe under one master. They didn't care whit who that master was, it was better for England and better for all that Europe be a fractured and divided marketplace that would systematically gut the Spanish new world empires, the Dutch empire, the French empire the Italian whossname, and always the Holy Roman Empire. They missed a bet when they let Frederick the Great put things together and create Prussia but it would take a hundred years to see how bad a decision the 7 Years War had been. The British made side deals everywhere to keep Europe fractured.

So there is plucky little Israel engaged in a great war with Iran over  the heads of a half dozen formerly impotent emirates and kingdoms and the Iranians in their rashness decided to treat them all as the enemy. The buffer states of yore are now equally and all of them, the open enemies of Iran. That was something the POLMIL guys saw coming as long ago as 1945 so it comes as no surprise. Only one Gulf country had ambitions beyond its borders and everyone knew it.

Now we have to look at history and did you ever wonder why the Allied position on surrender negotiations with the Germans and Japanese was always that there would be no negotiations? Yes, it is simply because nobody at all trusted the British to negotiate in good faith. With them there was always going to be a poison pill that would blow up relations 20 years downstream. You could set your watch by it.

America's foreign policy people are mostly paler Brits. They also believe in the poison pill negotiation strategy although it never works out that their clever negotiating benefits the United States in 20 years time. Nope. It always seems to leave a mark that just won't buff out. You can see this sort of thing just by looking at both Iraq and Afghanistan. Wars were won in days and we lost the next 20 years in both. Where in the actual Hell did that idiot Bremer come from?

The only remaining hope in the negotiations going forward is that the President knows what he is dealing with and has appointed some savvy negotiators who also know what they're dealing with. In any event it doesn't really matter because the negotiation is always only only a trick to end the shooting so both sides can rearm and regroup. This is not some sneaky koran thing, this is simply the way that all wars end and all negotiations towards that end proceed. It's nothing new.

For a country with no friends at all there is only war and thus a mandate to end such wars with an unassailable position of strength because to do other is to lose. At this remove from the contest I could not even begin to think what would act as the final redoubt in Iran in this war that has to be reduced at all costs in order to gain time to prepare for the next one. It is not the people, it is not the capital, it is not the Head of State or Head of Government, it is not land sacrificed from the mainland and it is not massive disarmament of the surrendering side. I don't see what it could be.

I fought Iran once a long time ago. It was the easiest little war nobody ever heard of. We had a Navy in the Gulf that formed into Surface Action Groups and did everything they could to hunt down and sink every single Iranian warship at sea and also shot up some oil processing platforms. We also had a carrier battle group in the North Arabian Sea that wanted to play and did and when we did all the damage we could in the time allotted for retaliating for the mining of the USS Samuel B. Roberts, we unilaterally declared a cease fire and stopped shooting. Things immediately returned to the status quo ante bellum. 

That's obviously going to be a little more difficult now. Not impossible, simply more difficult. One way to sand off the sharp bits though is to have an "ally" unaccountable to anyone who is prepared and willing to go to just about any lengths at all to secure a meaningful peace while you negotiate.  That might be the only way to do it. 

You can see this trick used all through history too.