It does, I admit, demonstrate how shallow his reasoning is, and what a clusterfuck we are in. There is the saving grace that at some point he will have to accept less than that, and will, and that his core supporters and Fox News will tell themselves that somehow it’s a win.

I agree - demanding "unconditional surrender" is absurd, unless he's planning a ground force invasion that everyone else in the Administration is trying to signal is not on the cards. You never know with DJT, though, whether he might actually pull the trigger on something like that.

But yes, whatever happens will be characterized as a win. Even if we end up with Iran replacing Khameini with someone just as bad (or worse), it will be claimed as a win. Even though it will take us several years to replace all the missile interceptors and tens of billions of other hardware we're using up, and even though Iran will end up replacing a fair amount of its material over those same several years. Even though the Administration will probably end up lifting many (most) of the sanctions against Iran even if it's still a terrible regime, as with Venezuela - because after all, we all have to act as though we've accomplished a monumental change in the government regardless if we haven't changed the government very much.

It's still very early days, though - so we can remain hopeful (though not confident) that of the various outcomes that we're very much leaving up to chance, we might get a successor in there that is better (for some definition of better) than we had before. But we're eventually going to declare victory and leave regardless of whether that hope comes true.