These are all lucky, unintended consequences. Trump basically played Russian roulette with Iran and quit after pulling the trigger once or twice. Sure, things are arguably better off now, but all of that only happened because there was a major risk of what would have been a genocidal war. It’s like looking at the Cuban Missile Crisis and focusing on whatever improvements came after it instead of seeing it as a near-miss that must be avoided at all costs. A policy that risks slaughtering millions of Iranians is a shit policy, full stop.

We see things differently then comrade and will have to agree to disagree. My 2 pence is I consider Kruschev a coward for blinking not once, not twice but three times during that period and don't particularly think there should've been something for the Soviets to fear with stationing missiles in Cuba. Once the crisis was in full swing Kruschev should've stared the imperialists down to the last.

Kruschev should've stared them down how Stalin would have (and did do during the Korean war by claiming he had nukes when he had none) and gone the full way instead of pissing his pants like he did during that period and cravenly giving into the imperialists. The entire history of the 20th century would've been different - the Vietnam war probably avoided had missiles been stationed in Cuba and Cuba not under a 6 decade long embargo.

Compare Kruschevs cowardly attitude of avoiding confrontation at all costs versus Che Guevaras stance of "we'll fight with what we've got"

the Russians were so thoroughly stood down, and we knew it. They didn’t make any move. They did not increase their alert; they did not increase any flights, or their air defence posture. They didn’t do a thing, they froze in place.”

Khrushchev’s response, broadcast on Radio Moscow on 28 October, was craven in the extreme, stating that “the Soviet government, in addition to previously issued instructions on the cessation of further work at the building sites for the weapons, has issued a new order on the dismantling of the weapons which you describe as ‘offensive’ and their crating and return to the Soviet Union”.

It is possible that part of Khrushchev’s motivation for embarking so light-mindedly on so serious a course of action was to give the lie to Chinese criticisms of revisionist passivity in the face of imperialist aggression – notably the refusal to assist China in developing her nuclear capability. In point of fact, however, the humiliation and dangers to which this zigzagging revisionist leadership exposed the socialist camp only served to confirm the Chinese comrades’ worst fears.

The October Crisis happened at a moment when fraternal relations between China and the Soviet Union were reaching breaking point, and Mao’s Marxist Leninist characterisation of Khrushchev’s handling of the crisis as moving “from adventurism to capitulationism” really hits the nail on the head.The criticism is not that one should never retreat – Lenin’s insistence on signing the very painful Brest-Litovsk Treaty with German imperialism wascorrect, and Trotsky’s preferred position of “neither peace nor war” was a disaster. The criticism is that, once so serious an undertaking as confronting US imperialism with nukes 90 miles from Miami was embarked upon, it needed to be followed through to its necessary consequences. Contrary to the view that Khrushchev’s retreat was a statesmanlike tactic which enabled Kennedy to pull back from the brink, the reality is that the combination of light-mindedness and cowardice, of adventurism and capitulationism, actually emboldened US imperialism, making the world a more, not less dangerous place. We should ask ourselves: if Kennedy had met a sterner rebuff from Moscow over Cuba, would he have been so ready to launch the genocidal war in Indochina which cost so many Vietnamese lives?

Che: “We shall fight with what we’ve got”

http://www.lalkar.org/article/165/the-october-crisis-remembered

We shouldn’t give Trump any credit for manufacturing such an enormous risk out of nothing, and we definitely shouldn’t give him any credit for how other countries have responded – he has no control over those responses, and he certainly didn’t intend them. It was blind luck, the price for it was a near-miss, and the thing about near-misses is they’re not always misses.

There's nothing blind luck about it. Either he was foolish enough to make a decision to go to war with Iran (a mistake Biden would never have made) in which case the Empire collapses almost immediately given the numerous war games that show US getting it's ass handed to it or he strengthened Irans position and inadvertently China and Russias too

Though it took two years to plan and was scheduled to take place over three weeks, it only took ten minutes for it to end. Within those ten minutes, the backbone of the U.S. forces had been broken, and the Iran-like country emerged victorious.

https://www.albawaba.com/news/remembering-when-us-simulated-war-game-against-iran-1288001