Iran War?

[Valmy]

I'm also not 100% sure how powerful the Strait of Hormuz leverage will affect the one key decision maker--Trump.

Trump cannot even vocalize what the fuck his goals are in this war and he might not even know himself. So I would have to agree that we cannot predict how anything and everything might or might not affect him.

[OttoVonBismarck]

One can sometimes glean what is important to Trump by seeing how Fox & Friends and Hannity report on issues, Trump is literally brain rot levels of addicted to watching conservative cable news.

[Jacob]

At this point, I think Trump's primary motivation is ego-protection and -aggrandizement. Insofar as there's a coherent policy - and there may be a few such operating in the background - it comes down to which court ministers have access and how persuasive they are at any given moment.

[The Minsky Moment]

It was the successful weakening of Hezbollah and Hamas, plus the collapse of Assad that I think enables the attacks on Iran. An uncomfortable truth is that the IRGC's "forward defence" (we'll spend billions fighting you there to stop you from fighting us here) was effective and correct for the regime's objectives.

The other lesson to learn here, and one reinforced by the fate of Qaddafi, is that if you are going nuclear, don't hesitate or do deals, go full blast and test a working device ASAP.  Look at how Trump treats NK vs Iran.

[The Minsky Moment]

My suspicion is the premise of the missile cities was an assumption of a more limited war with Israel in which Israel wouldn't have air superiority, e.g. it was insurance against a surprise attack destroying huge above ground missile stockpiles. It seems Iran didn't consider the implications if Israel attacked alongside the U.S. and established aerial supremacy, turning the missile cities into easily neutralized facilities.

The other reason to centralize is that you don't trust lower echelon command to be able to operate reliably and independently.  If that's true, it may say something about Iran's ability to effectively resist going forward.

[crazy canuck]

I don't think the Iranian military was centralized at all, they don't need to be and it would be very much against their interests to try to create a centralized model. They were never going to take on the US in a conventional war.  They have been preparing for an asymmetrical war for more than 40 years.  Equating Iranian strategy to what the US would do is not wise.