With the Iranian regime still in place, he was celebrating a resumption of the way the world was on Feb. 27, the day before the United States and Israel attacked Iran.

A return to a version of the status quo was a far cry from the original aims of a war effort that kicked off with a vow to come to the aid of the Iranian protesters who had taken to their nation’s streets to denounce their regime. Once strikes killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, in the opening hours of the war, Trump told Iranians that the moment to seize back their nation had come.

An uprising never happened. In the nearly four months since, Iranian leaders demonstrated an ability to withstand withering attacks from the most powerful military in history, shut down the Strait of Hormuz, cripple global energy markets, and drive such a deep wedge between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the U.S. leader spent part of his 80th birthday Sunday cursing out his Israeli counterpart to journalists.

In promoting a deal that halted the fighting, Trump and his top lieutenants said Iran had agreed not to pursue a nuclear weapon. But Iranian leaders, who have made similar pledges repeatedly for decades, suggested Sunday that the difficult conversations about their nuclear program were still ahead and would come only after the U.S. naval blockade on their ports was lifted.

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With the details of Sunday’s agreement still not public and nuclear issues a question mark, experts said it was too early to assess the full legacy of a conflict that spanned five-and-a-half weeks of intense fighting followed by more than two additional months of an uneasy truce as global oil stocks drained.

But Trump’s approach has shifted. Rather than exhort Iranians to overthrow their repressive leaders, the focus is now on bargaining with the regime. The president has pushed back on military action that might jeopardize the peace, as he did Sunday with Netanyahu.

“As far as regime change, I never cared about regime change,” Trump told the Wall Street Journal on Sunday. Iran’s current leadership is “the third group we’ve dealt with, and this is the most rational group yet.”

A woman in Tehran chants slogans against U.S.-Iran talks on Sunday. (Vahid Salemi/AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

Trump and his backers say the war was a major success, wiping out several ranks of top leaders, destroying more of Iran’s already damaged nuclear program and eliminating its conventional navy.

“If the Iranians comply with this deal, it is going to fundamentally transform the Middle East for the next 50 years,” Vice President JD Vance told Fox News on Sunday. “This region of the world has been a basket case for my entire life, and longer than that.”

Some Middle East experts question that, even as many said a deal that ended the fighting and reopened the strait was likely superior to the alternative of continued war.

“If this agreement goes forward as reported, it will leave a brutal regime in control of Iran and in control of most of the tools it uses to threaten the region: ballistic missiles, drones and a weaker but still-dangerous regional proxy network in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen,” said Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5874511&forum_id=2#49940662)