During the past week I’ve spoken to a number of skilled and experienced observers of the region, and every one them is hard put to make sense of Iranian motives.
In the absence of a rational explanation, let me offer this one: The mullahs are nuts. I don’t mean that they are nuts in the way that a power-mad tinpot dictator is nuts, but rather that they are world-historically, existentially, and metaphysically nuts. Their character and circumstances, that is to say, impel them toward actions that would be irrational for another character under other circumstances.
The treatment of Iran by the Obama administration was probably the biggest (among many) of its foreign-policy disasters.
There is a new report out from the Reason Foundation, by Jeff Greason and James Bennett, on how it needs to be rethought and reorganized. I haven’t read it yet, but I expect it to be good (I saw Jeff today at the Space Settlement Forum, where I gave a talk on space property rights).