The US was happy with the x1 Iranian response because they could continue to pretend they really had escalation dominance but now Iran is calling the bluff and showing they are comfortable continuing up the escalation ladder.
The reality is the US can pop off the occasional hits but their depleted missile stocks mean they can’t get involved in a drawn out return to full war.
The US has been caught out being prepared for the wrong war.
The 2 most important new concepts to modern warfare as demonstrated in the Ukraine are overwhelming numbers of drones and missiles.
More specifically cheap long range drones and a large supply of air defence missiles.
With air defence missiles you completely rule out the use of large bombers dropping huge payloads of cheap gravity bombs levelling whole cities relatively quickly.
As seen in Ukraine, to clear urban areas now you must attack from the air obliquely with drones and glide bombs, this makes the task much harder and slower.
Meanwhile, US Senators have just woken up to the fact that they are the ones on the ballot for the November mid term elections not Trump. The War Powers Resolution act was passed in the US House of Representatives delivering a symbolic rebuke to President Trump voting 215-208 to limit his unilateral authority to wage war against Iran. I think Trump can still veto this but it’s the start of a process that really could tie up Trump in the longer term.
Back to Ukraine and Zelensky is now trying to pressure Trump to re-engage and put pressure on Putin to agree to talks and a ceasefire as the Ukraine PR campaign (‘we are winning’) is in full swing.
In the real world the Donetsk city of Konstantinovka is being rolled up by the Russians with drone footage showing wreaked vehicles of the Ukrainian army as they leave the city in disarray heading north east to Kramatorsk around 10 miles away.
The fall of Donetsk oblast and the whole of the Donbas region to the Russians is now just a matter of time which is why Zelensky is so urgently trying to get a settlement on current lines now.
More on the Iran nukes story and the word is that Iran told Pakistani mediators to tell the Americans they did have nukes and would demonstrate the fact if pushed. The call was deliberately made on an unsecured line so that the Americans would definitely hear it themselves.
And so the reports that the call did happen are coming from both Pakistan and US sources, though there is no actual proof the nukes do exist word is the claims are being taken seriously.
The important thing to remember about nukes is that they are defensive (ironic but true). No one will attack another country that has nukes with nukes, that would just be suicide. The country that was attacked would respond and destroy your civilisation using their own nukes.
So if the objective is to defend your civilisation you would never first strike another nuke country using nukes.
This is the main reason why the Ukraine war started. The US was about to put their nukes on Russia’s Ukraine border which is so close to Moscow it would have given the Russians no time to assess if a launch was nukes and launch their own nukes in reply, so completely negating Russia's nuke defence.
So now the Iran talks have shifted, Iran is now not interested in any discussions about the nuclear materials or inspections (never were really) and their main stipulation to end the conflict is that the US end attacks and the blockade, and rein in Israel.
Iran is not even so concerned with sanctions relief or the frozen assets now they have established the shipping toll.
This has wrong footed the Americans, they thought Hezbollah were just a proxy and proxies are disposable, you use them and then throw them away (Ukraine).
Current Konstantinovka sitrep;
(Military Summery Channel)
Konstantinovka, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk
TRUMPS "WORRIED IRAN HAS NUKES" - w/ Fmr. CIA Larry Johnson
Smc_Extended with one 
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