Oopsies about those attacks:

Regime president Masoud Pezeshkian issued the apology to other Gulf states in a rushed video message, but it won’t come with a change of policy. Apparently, no one’s taking orders from the mullahs’ side of the regime any longer:

“Iran’s president apologized Saturday for attacks on regional countries even as its missiles and drones flew toward Gulf Arab states, indicating that Tehran’s political leadership could not exercise full command over Iran’s armed forces. He also rejected US President Donald Trump’s repeated demands for surrender.

President Masoud Pezeshkian, one member of a tripartite leadership council overseeing Iran since a Feb. 28 airstrike started the war and killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, delivered the defiant message exactly one week into a conflict that has spread across the region, rattled global markets and air travel and left Iran’s own leadership greatly weakened by hundreds of Israeli and American airstrikes.

The message, seemingly filmed in a hurry without professional broadcast equipment, again underlined the limited powers being exercised by the theocracy’s leaders over its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, which controls the ballistic missiles targeting Israel and others. It answered only to Khamenei and now appears to be picking its own targets as the conflict widens.

And yet the attacks continue. Either he has no control over them or he’s pretending to have no control over them. I think probably the former. I read quite a while ago – don’t recall where – that Khameini had de-centralized command and control of the ballistic missiles, giving instructions to the people in charge of each station as to what to do in the event of his death. So I don’t think these attacks are uncoordinated. I think they were pre-coordinated by Khameini.

And now, reading further down in that article I quoted for this post, I see that’s what’s being said there, too:

It’s not even clear how much control the IRGC has at this moment either, but they have enough to defy Pezeshkian’s orders. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has claimed that Ali Khamenei prepared for the war by ordering the all-out attack on Iran’s neighbors and implementing a “mosaic” strategy, in which decentralized units would be empowered to carry out their last orders independently until … something happened. In the last eight days, the US and Israel has done tremendous damage to command, control, and communication functions within Iran, so we are likely seeing the mosaic strategy playing out without any central control to reverse it and halt action – a risk in every war in which leadership gets destroyed.

So will the attacks on the Arab states and others continue unabated until there are no more missiles to fire?

Trump has this to say:

Iran, which is being beat to HELL, has apologized and surrendered to its Middle East neighbors, and promised that it will not shoot at them anymore. This promise was only made because of the relentless U.S. and Israeli attack. They were looking to take over and rule the Middle East. It is the first time that Iran has ever lost, in thousands of years, to surrounding Middle Eastern Countries. They have said, “Thank you President Trump.” I have said, “You’re welcome!” Iran is no longer the “Bully of the Middle East,” they are, instead, “THE LOSER OF THE MIDDLE EAST,” and will be for many decades until they surrender or, more likely, completely collapse! Today Iran will be hit very hard!

He understands this strong horse versus weak horse thing.

Azerbaijan has also been attacked by Iran in the last week, and has mobilized its military. They may even be ready to put a few boots on the ground in Iran themselves.

And the IRGC has basically said they aren’t paying a particle of attention to Pezeshkian:

President Pezeshkian made a mistake [saying they won’t attack neighboring countries], and our forces demonstrated his mistake. His comments were 5 hours ago, and since then Dubai and Abu Dhabi are being struck. Ignore Pezeshkian’s words during the war.

Pay no attention to the man in front of the curtain.

These are indeed interesting times.

What is the endgame in Iran? It would be wonderful if it was some sort of stable and liberty-loving republic. But if that can’t happen – and perhaps it can’t or won’t – perhaps taking away its weapons and ability to make more weapons, as well as getting rid of the worst elements of its leadership, would be good enough.