I’ve come to think that the costly quagmire is the point. It’s predictable and that’s why it’s done.

In the case of Iraq, they lied on purpose to support the invasion. In the case of Iran, Trump just ignored the intelligence. I do think the intelligence community is capable. For example, they warned of the Russian invasion weeks before it happened when all other European countries said it wouldn’t.

> America’s spies had told President George W. Bush that Saddam Hussein had reconstituted a nuclear-weapons program and that Iraq possessed biological weapons and mobile production facilities, as well as stockpiles of chemical weapons.

That's not true at all. The intelligence community reported that there were no weapons of mass destruction but then the White House got involved in the analysis and brought politics into it and changed the reports.

Trump isn't even pretending to have a consistent, plausible reason to attack Iran. He never even set an actual strategic goal beyond blowing stuff up. It doesn't really matter what the intelligence said, since it had nothing to do with Trump's decision.

What happened was entirely predictable, as the article says. Iran using the Strait of Hormuz as leverage was an obvious consequences of putting them into a sufficiently precarious position.

It is to take attention away from Epstein. The illicit sex, blackmail, and money laundering empire is the largest in recorded history, and in one person's mind, worth "Weapons of Mass Distraction" and outright war crimes to cover up. The same can be said of destructive and nonsensical actions taken since January 2025.

Massively overplayed by unchecked power.

Superficially, the article is right, intelligence services didn't get this wrong, and the administration made a bad decision despite having a good appraisal to hand.

But really, it's a values failure.

Wanting to make decisions that are good for America, and good for its friends, is a value. Putting people you are supposed to represent ahead of yourself used to be the kind of thing people would say mattered. It used to be a thing that leaders tried to demonstrate that they had carefully considered their decisions.

Once you have an administration that puts itself ahead of everything else, this whole thing makes sense.

This administration is full of insecure people who want to show how strong they are. You can see it in how they talk, and the constant stream of memes coming from the WH. It's incredibly juvenile, stuff like having Trump portrayed with a sixpack, beating up his enemies.

Strongman regimes have a tendency to try to steal the blind, to use a poker concept: bully the opposition into giving you a concession, by making super aggressive moves. Like picking pennies off a train track, most of the time you will win and the opponent will back down, EVEN if on paper the opponent tends to have the better cards, because a rational opponent will appreciate putting a lid on risk. This last bit is really important, because it means the bully learns that he can win despite rejecting advice.

So you can go around sucker punching people until it stops working, and there's a decent chance Iran is where it stops working. If it's not Iran, it will be the next thing, because they can't stop.

And to get back to values, too many Americans are unwilling to take responsibility for their country's actions. If you look at what causes discontent with the current Iran situation, it is things like gas prices. In other words, self-interest, still.

Calling this a mere "intelligence failure" rather than runaway idiocy from our policymakers is putting it way too charitably.

I throw out this observation more to be provactive than persuasive, but I haven't seen it elsewhere..

People before me have observed how Trump's moves all are ego driven, or self serving or serve Putin or Israel or gas companies, and I'm here to add to the mix a different conjecture.

Trump's moves all tend to increase inflation in a plausibly deniable way. Tarrifs, fed-fighting, wars, etc.

And that is a deeply unpopular but elite-viewed necessity for handling America's national debt.

Inflation allows the wealthy class to get away with extending government spending without admitting/pursuing austerity which was political suicide under Carter.

The wealthy shelter in their land and stock portfolios which keep growing unlike cash and also benefit from said spending, while ordinary people pay the extra regressive tax that is inflation. The elite can then turn around and blame the little guy for supporting Trump and their hands are clean.

Joe Kent (the director of counterterrorism who recently resigned to protest the war) stated that US intelligence gathering in the Middle East is lacking, that the US has extensive intelligence sharing agreements with Israel, that the US relies on Israel’s superior intelligence in the Middle East, and Israel uses its position to bias US foreign policy in the region to further Israel’s geopolitical aims in the region - in this case attacking Israel’s adversary, Iran, even though it’s not in the US interest to do so. It seems that Trump really has thought this would be an open and shut war. The US does not gain by the war; nor does most of the world; nor do the Iranian citizens being bombed. Israel furthers its geopolitical strategy of destroying its neighbors, because that’s how its leadership defines security (and stays out of jail). One of the most obvious stupidities propagated in all this is the notion that Iran has been a regime waiting to be toppled by dropping bombs on its citizens, its schools, universities and hospitals.