In my opinion, both Iran & the US are in a quagmire with no real/actual exit.
We’re in what I call a ‘volatile stalemate equilibrium’.
There’s limited attacks from both sides, but not a full war, diplomacy keeps going like a sinus function, both countries are hurting and neither country is willing to reach a win-win deal.
So we’re stuck in this volatile stalemate equilibrium and unfortunately, personally, I don’t see an exit out of this other than a military win. Something that would exhaust one, or the other, militarily.
Even if both countries reach a diplomatical “understanding,” we’ll be back to the era of Pakistani-mediated MoU, which is essentially still a volatile stalemate equilibrium.
A few weeks ago, the leader of Iran had explicitly referred to this exhausting and dangerous phenomenon “No War, No Peace” and ordered Iranian officials to quickly bring this war to an end. But how? Read the post again.