Nothing Good Can Come From the U.S.-Iran Ceasefire Extension

Yesterday came the announcement from Pakistan that the U.S. & Iran agreed to extend their ceasefire for another 60 days with nuclear talks to follow.

A signing ceremony is scheduled to take place in Switzerland on Thursday.

I don't see anything good coming from this state of affairs.

As with the previous ceasefire which came after Trump made an empty threat that "a whole civilization will die tonight", this extension only strengthens the Iranian regime. 

The Strait of Hormuz is essentially Iranian territory despite Trump's empty pledge to make it "permanently toll-free" as if it were a phone sex line.

The Iranian regime gets up to $300 billion in reconstruction monies mainly from the very Gulf Arab states they bombed earlier this year.

The ceasefire also applies to Hezbollah in Lebanon rendering Israel a sitting duck. The same can be said for Iranian dissidents now at the mercy of a regime which killed more than 30,000 people earlier this year protesting for their most basic needs - food, fuel, water and any semblance of freedom.

I knew deep down that the Trump Administration's military intervention would not result in regime change. Trump's preposterous claims there had been regime change on the basis of "the leaders are all very different than the ones that we started off with". As I noted at the time, "Oh, there might be some new faces, but the regime is exactly as it was before."

With both the Trump Administration and the Iranian regime being unreliable actors, one can only hope this ceasefire will soon crumble and somehow allow for space necessary to topple the Iranian regime from within.