Blundering their way to war


Item:

Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the belligerent moves by Iran actually underscored weakness.

“If there’s a meta-narrative here, it’s that Iran tends to speak loudly but carries a small stick,” Mr. Sadjadpour said. “Their alleged terror attacks projected incompetence more than fear, their announced nuclear progress is likely exaggerated, and their threat to pre-emptively cease oil exports to Europe turned out to be another bluff.”

(NYT story here; the analysis is somewhat better than elsewhere, and corrects some of the knee-jerk reaction of their earlier stories.)

Massive miscalculations - the perfect prelude to a war.