Trump pausing Iran attacks shows US military power is not enough on its own

From the publisher

Has Iran won a war it didn’t start against the United States? It is not a victory in any conventional military sense: about 3,500 Iranians have been reported killed and the US-led bombing has caused anywhere between $150bn and $270bn of damage. Yet Donald Trump’s decision to pause, rather than intensify, the 13-night summer bombing campaign in effect represents a degree of recognition that the US cannot achieve its stated goals by military power alone. “Iran’s initial standard for victory was simply to survive,” said HA Hellyer, a Middle East expert with the Royal United Services Institute. “If anything, that’s been raised. The regime has demonstrated it is not going…

The source's own excerpt, unedited