[scotchmi_st]

Well sure, but everything short of committing the whole country to total war will always come down to “we could do it, it’s just too politically expensive”. Even in authoritarian countries, there is a limit to what you can get away with.

That “we could do it, we just don’t want to” argument will face its acid test later in the year when the midterms are closer, but certainly if I were in charge of Iran I’d be feeling pretty good about the current situation.

[rayiner]

Do you think the military gave a realistic assessment of what time and resources it would take to control the strait? Was this pitched as an operation that would take a huge political commitment of troops and drag on for years?

[scotchmi_st]

No idea. Do you think it was pitched like that before the conflict began?

[rayiner]

I don’t know. My prior is that this admin was never willing to put boots on the ground. And for purely self-serving reasons, they wouldn’t have risked a scenario where Iran blocked oil traffic through the strait, causing gas prices to go up.

So, to me, the two possibilities are: the military told the administration it couldn’t control the strait without boots on the ground, and Trump disregarded that advice.

The other possibility is that the military was overconfident. We know it has been developing plans to attack Iran for decades. It’s possible the military thought it could control the strait based on obsolete plans that didn’t account for new developments like Iranian fast boats and drones.

[esseph]

> Was this pitched as an operation that would take a huge political commitment of troops and drag on for years?

That has been the military assessment in leaks, yes.