It's a victory!

In July 1953, then Premier of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Kim Il Sung, declared victory in the Great Fatherland Liberation War (the "Korean War" to the rest of us).  This was a war he started in 1950 (although he claimed the US started it), and had a clear purpose, which was to obliterate the Republic of Korea (south Korea) and unify the country under his communist rule. 

This was after over 200,000 military deaths and the death of over 1 million north Korean civilians (and likely over 200,000 Chinese deaths, as Mao intervened to deter the US attacking China), and the net loss of 3,900 square km territory.  However, Kim Il Sung treated it as a victory and the Kim dynasty has done ever since.

Sure it lied about why the war started, and it is logically impossible to think that the war was any sort of victory for the north, but at least the Kims have an excuse - they are part of a psychopathic totalitarian dynasty clinging to power.

Trump doesn't have that. 

Sure, 90% of the Iranian Navy has been destroyed, but it is clearly fully capable of attacking ships in the Strait of Hormuz, using small boats, coastal based cruise missiles and drones. The US and Israel have obviously not destroyed that capability.

Sure, most of the Iranian airforce has been destroyed, and its ballistic missile capability has been badly damaged, but it isn't over. Perhaps its nuclear programme is completely, or mostly destroyed, but its motivation to have a nuclear programme will not have abated, indeed quite the opposite.

After all, Kim Il Sung himself also knew that once the Soviet Union collapsed, the only security guarantee the regime in Pyongyang could rely upon is having its own nuclear weapons.  That has been proven, as there is little real chance of the US engaging in a first strike against north Korea, because the risk of nuclear retaliation, whether to the south or to Japan or beyond, is very real.

The Iranian regime has been weakened, it has lost leaders, but it has not loss control of the borders, the mass media or the instruments of domestic repression. It has not been destroyed, but it has been battle hardened and has - rightfully - claimed victory. Victory against the United States is defined as survival. It is not a victory Saddam Hussein could claim, as the Iraqi Government fell completely.  It is not a victory Muammar Gaddafi could claim either (although the regime of Nicholas Maduro is - largely - intact without him).

Trump's claim of victory isn't quite as hollow as Kim Il Sung's, but at best he has diminished and deferred the ability of the Islamist regime to project its terror abroad, and only moderately diminished its capability to project terror domestically.

If the regime remains, it will be more hardline, more focused on advancing terror abroad, including targeting the US, Israel and liberal democracies globally. 

I bet the Cuban regime isn't that worried anymore.

TACO indeed.