> “For the purposes of this market, an ‘official ceasefire agreement’ requires clear public confirmation from both the United States government and the government of Iran that they have agreed to halt military hostilities against one another.” (by March 31)

Seems a rather risky bet considering how deep Israel has ventured into its war in Lebanon. Very doubtful they will stop anytime soon. Given the leverage Israel has demonstrated over US foreign policy I find it hard to imagine that the US will 'leave them to it'. Likewise, Iran is unlikely to leave Hezbollah's interests out of any negotiations or for that matter to trust that the US isn't asking for negotiations in bad faith. I guess there could be a limited ceasefire agreed between Iran and the US to make room for negotiations but the ceasefire would almost certainly have to occur without the opening of the strait or an end to fighting in Lebanon. This (now regional) war has a long way to go in my opinion.

Ultimately, I think this all hinges on whether or not the Iranians feel that they have enough leverage to exercise yet. My feeling is that they will want to continue to the point of destroying Trump's political career - something they could possibly do if this quagmire continues to get worse and closer to the US midterms. Bringing down a US president is potentially one way they can help ensure that they don't simply get attacked again in the near future.

There was an interesting article in a local paper here about non zionist Jews emigrating from Israel.

There are no missiles and draft in Western Europe and the shops are open on every holy day.

Unfortunately this leaves the holy land to the fanatics.

I can't see it being over in a week. People seem to have not realized that the Iranian regime is large enough and possessed of enough of a sense of honor to not just surrender after a week. Plus the use of decapitation attacks makes it extremely difficult for the Iranians to talk each other down. And the US can't negotiate on behalf of Israel or bind them to not break the ceasefire, because there's a separate and much longer lasting conflict between Israel and Iran that has been going on since the revolution.

On the other hand, there is no way to "destroy Trump's career". The US system doesn't have confidence votes. You're stuck with him.

Edit: it is an unfortunate aspect of the minor World War that the Iran war has overshadowed the war in Lebanon, whatever is happening in Syria, and the weird UAE backed war in Sudan.

> ... I think this all hinges on whether or not the Iranians feel that they have enough leverage to exercise yet.

They don't have a navy anymore and they don't have fighter planes anymore. There's only so many missiles they can launch out without revealing where they're launched from. That leaves them with drones: are iranian drones really sufficient to have any leverage?

Why "yet"? As time goes on they've got less and less leverage: they're getting bombed daily. It's not as if they were producing military material faster than it's getting destroyed.

At this point the islamists in Iran (who doesn't represent all iranian people) are menacing of some kind of scorched earth strategy: where they're saying "if you don't stop destroying every military capacity we have and if you begin to moreover attack our non-military infrastructure, we'll prevent other countries in the region from... Having access to water".

I mean: it could be some leverage, but it reeks of desperation to me. They're getting their arses handed to them in this war. "We'll send drones on oil tankers" and "We'll make sure our neighbors, which we already bombed for no reason, now die of thirst" doesn't sound like a genius war strategy to me. Just like hanging iranian athletes publicly doesn't exactly inspire sympathy from the rest of the world and doesn't sound like a sound strategy either: it's obviously to "make a statement" against all the iranians who wish to see the islamists gone and a regime change, but it's not a genius strategy to gain allies among other countries.

As to Trump's political career: he's old, he cannot be president three times. He's already done 5 years and 2 months of his 8 years, that's 2/3 of his 8 years. He's seems to give absolutely zero fuck about anything since a bullet missed him: he's got 2 years and 10 months left as president and I don't see him quitting. Maybe he'll die of old age but I don't see him quitting.

As a sidenote I think we can all agree that senile-autopen-Biden wasn't exactly fit to rule the country either and yet he stayed until the end of his term, barely able to walk or to look at the correct camera. I mean: so far only one president of the US ever resigned. What are the odds that Trump would be the second one? I don't buy it.

And losing the midterms isn't "bringing down a US president": it doesn't mean a new president gets to get elected.