Fareed Zakaria

So let's just evaluate it on the merits in the sense of the genius negotiating strategy.

What we have ended up with in a situation where we began the war with a country whose nuclear program had been completely and totally obliterated, those were Trump's words, but those were words, by the way, echoed by the head of the IDF in Israel.

Israel's atomic agency said Iran's nuclear program has been destroyed and can be kept destroyed indefinitely as long as they don't get access to nuclear materials, which we were actively denying them.

So that was the reality of Iran.

It had been pummeled.

Its nuclear program had been destroyed.

That was what we started with.

What we have ended up with is a war in which Iran has lost its military and its navy and things like that.

But to be honest, it was not using those to attack anybody.

What it has gained

is a far more usable weapon than nuclear weapons.

It has realized and shown the world that it can destroy the global economy, that it can block the Strait of Hormuz and that that would have a cataclysmic follow-on effect.

It now seems poised to not simply be able to hold the Gulf states and much of the world hostage because of that pivotal position it has, but it's now going to monetize that, presumably giving it $90 billion of revenue every year, which is, by the way, about twice as much as it makes selling oil.

It has weakened the Gulf states, which now sit in the shadow of this tension that they have to worry about and navigate.

It has brought China into the Gulf, we learned, because the Chinese had to get the Iranians to agree to this.

It has weakened the dollar because these payments that are being made through the Strait of Hormuz are now being made in crypto or in yuan, China's currency.

It has strengthened Russia because Russia is now making something on the order of four to five billion dollars extra per month because of the price of oil, which will probably stay elevated for a while.

And it's almost wrecked the Western alliance because

Trump, in his frustration and desperation when he realized he wasn't getting his way, has decided to blame all of it on all America's allies as if they had somehow joined in.

This would have made any difference.