Mike's Minute: Could this be the beginning of the end of the war?

It’s a bit early given it's a short week, but at four and a half-ish weeks into Operation Epic Fury, there's a reason to be depressed and a reason to be hopeful. 

To the bad news first. 

This hasn’t been a great week for the Americans. They have been left with talks that may or may not be happening and a lot of rhetoric that sounds like last week's rhetoric – "we've won", "there is nothing left", and "we could leave anytime". 

Except, the missiles that fall on Israel seem to indicate that for a place that have been bombed to flatness, they keep finding things to fire and that’s before you got to the hacking of Kash Patel's phone, which was just plain embarrassing. 

Trump's demeanour didn’t help either. A winner doesn’t whine and man has he whined a lot this week, to the point it appears he will end the war, as predicted, but has worked up a narrative that allows him to avoid the small issue of the Strait of Hormuz. 

Which is of course why he is whining. He's cocked it up. 

One way or another, the fact that they didn’t see the Gulf states being hit and didn’t see a waterway being used as ransom will go down in US military history as yet another interventionist cock-up. 

The new timeline is a bit of a worry. 2-3 weeks fits in with the 4-6 timeline, roughly. The trouble though, if you follow Trump, is that he uses the "2-3 weeks" line a lot, on a lot of different things that, as it turns out, don’t take 2-3 weeks – almost as though he makes it up as he goes along. 

Also not great is Netanyahu, who claimed they were a bit over halfway as far as targets go, which is not 2-3 weeks, given it's been almost five. 

But to the good news – the Iranian President has said they will stop if they get a guarantee they are not attacked again. And this is part of the exit strategy. 

A bit of back and forward, nuclear material cleared, regime largely gone, some sort of rebuild, money sorted, and it's kind of got a Gaza 2.0 vibe about it. 

And then of course 2pm this afternoon is the address to the world. "An important update". Does that have the makings of the end? Let's see. 

But the driving forces are the driving forces that have been at play all along – petrol in America costs too much, the cost of living is up, hiring is down, recession fears are up and the midterms are coming. 

As we said last week, Trump might be mad but on the political survival front self-interest is a finely honed skill of his. 

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