Kurdish Policy Analysis

President Donald Trump has been leading a double life in prosecuting his war against Iran. In public, he regularly boasts that Iran’s military might has been decimated, its leadership killed off, and that the few officials remaining alive in Tehran are begging him to talk. “They want to negotiate. They want to negotiate badly,” Trump said Sunday night. “We’re talking to them. But I don’t think they’re ready, but they’re getting pretty close.” Behind the scenes, it is the Trump administration that has been asking for talks. Two Iranian officials told Drop Site that Trump’s Special Envoy Steve Witkoff personally sent messages to officials in Tehran, including Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, last week exploring possibilities for resuming negotiations. Iran has not replied to Witkoff. The Iranian officials told Drop Site that Iran has also received messages from the White House via third countries. “Because of decisions made by [Iran’s] top authorities, no response was sent to his message...

While US has made Operational Progress yet challenges remain  Tehran’s strategy is built not on defeating its enemies but on simply surviving a prolonged war of attrition. The notion that such a vast and geographically complex country could be invaded and its regime toppled through external military intervention is, in practical terms, a pipe dream. - The war in Iran is currently in a phase in which the military trajectory is relatively positive: the United States is steadily destroying Iran’s ability to use its most essential tool in the war  — drone and missile attacks — which in turn underpin the entire Iranian strategy. Iran has still done some damage to US forces, and it is still firing drones and missiles, though the overall attack rate is slowly decreasing. These attacks still pale in comparison to the major attacks Iran sought to conduct in an existential war and have caused neither operationally significant damage nor widespread casualties. - The US-Israeli combined ...