But I Did Have Breakfast: Kill Chains, Self-Reflection and the Iran Debacle
March 23, 2026·0 comments
The fatal flaw of any person or institution incapable or unwilling to engage in self-reflection or introspection is not so much that they have a stunted sense of themselves, but more so that they have a stunted sense of others.
This is why the United States has already lost the Iran War, in the same way that Russia lost the Ukraine War. Like Russia, the US can keep fighting for as long as we want and there is no ‘defeat’ in the sense of being forced off the battlefield. But by the same token, the ‘victory’ imagined at the outset of the campaign is no longer possible. All that remains is a weighing of the economic and political costs of remaining in theatre for a conventional deterrence standoff versus the economic and political costs of a humiliating withdrawal and a far more powerful Iran in 5 years. There are no good outcomes remaining, only a range of bad outcomes where the pain can be concentrated or diffused over time, but not avoided.
We will get this weighing terribly wrong, too, unless we begin thinking of Iranian decision makers as having an independent ‘I am’ and a range of choices that is nothing like the preferences and desires this White House has projected onto them so far.
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