[jfengel]

It's both. The Republican party (like all parties) is made up of groups that barely tolerate each other. In this case, you have a bunch of Evangelical theocrats and a bunch of atheist technocrats. They tolerate each other because they both really despise progressives, but once the progressives are completely defeated they'll turn on each other.

The theocrats want to bring about Armageddon. It's not clear if the technocrats are merely not objecting to it, or if they have some other goal in mind. Perhaps they want to funnel money to themselves via the defense sector, or perhaps they want to show off America's might. It may just be supporting one of our few remaining allies, who considers Iran a threat but hasn't risked an all-out war.

I'd like to think that, if this goes badly, then the theocrats and technocrats will blame each other for doing something costly. But I'm sure they'll just blame progressives, which always seems to suffice, regardless of how absurd the explanation is.