🇮🇷🇺🇸 Iran's $48 billion military is OUTLASTING America's trillion dollar war machine, and every ally Washington promised to protect is watching it happen...
Tehran's vow to wait out this presidency reads like negotiating posture.
Karen Kwiatkowski, the retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who spent years inside the Pentagon, hears something aimed at a different audience entirely: Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Amman.
The protector they banked their security on didn't defend them when the missiles flew, and after this war, can't.
Her verdict: "Uncle Sam has left the building."
That's the war aim nobody prices in.
Beyond surviving and pushing American forces out, Iran wanted the region's security architecture rebuilt without Washington in the room.
Gulf capitals now negotiate as equals, the Saudi channel to Tehran ran through Beijing before a single bomb fell, and the Mecca pact is the symptom, not the cause.
Her hardest point is the ledger.
A country of 93 million with a $48 billion military, by her count, is outlasting a trillion-dollar one.
And the MOU Trump signed looks better with every month it recedes, because the price of waiting only climbs. First fees, now this.
One hopeful note: Brandon recalls Trump telling Fox back in 2004 that he'd end the Iraq war by simply bringing the troops home to a victory parade.
This week's reporting suggests that instinct may finally get its moment.
@karen4the6th @WeTheBrandon
