But as I've often noted, what makes no sense to us can make a lot of sense to others making the decision. Victor Hanson explains examples of this thinking:
First lesson: fear makes all dictators unpredictable. What may seem to outsiders as a terrible choice may be merely a bad choice to a paranoid dictator, set against the far worse alternative of doing nothing and thereby losing power altogether. Mao Zedong’s communist revolution had only recently won over China, and he was convinced that at any moment American-backed Chinese forces from Formosa would invade the mainland and destroy his fragile hold on power—especially as UN forces routed North Korean client communists and neared the Manchurian border. The United States had no plans to go into Manchuria to overthrow Mao, but he was nonetheless convinced that a preemptive war might be his only insurance that they would not. In that context, war in Korea was not the worse of all possible choices for Mao.
Exactly. Dictators may actually understand that they are making a bad choice--but still believe it is superior to doing something else (or passively letting something else happen to them). Even worse, they might actually believe they are making a good choice. But that isn't necessary at all.
Further, the bluster itself can create the bad versus worse choice if the bluster is aimed at domestic audiences. If you bolster your regime by convincing your people that your nation faces a threat and you can smite that enemy, might not your people one day expect you to smite that enemy? And if you don't, what will the people do?
Indeed, might not a lot of the leadership itself start to believe the tales of wonder weapons and American lack of resolve?
So Hanson says that yes, the Iranians might be foolish enough to attack our Navy. Yet Hanson didn't raise the most relevant example. Iran did in fact attack the United States Navy during the Tanker War during the Iran-Iraq War, and suffered losses in clashes with our forces during 1987 and 1988. For years, the Iranians endured Arab and American efforts to support Iraq in the war that Saddam launched in September 1980, knowing that the Persian Gulf was the source of income and supplies for Iraq. Yet Iran endured rather than striking out, knowing that they needed the Gulf, too, and perhaps understanding that the alternative to Iraq using the Gulf was not Iran only having use of the Gulf. But the pressure of war led the mullahs to abandon their caution and sail into battle that they lost. And the final clashes may even have convinced the Iranians to accept an end to the Iran-Iraq War which since 1982 the Iranians said could not end until Saddam was destroyed and Iranian armies could march to liberate Jerusalem.
I'm just saying don't assume we can think like a paranoid, ultra-religious, dictatorship under pressure at home and abroad:
In a recent meeting of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, it was decided that the possibility of an attack by Israel or America in 2012 is real and that the country’s forces need to prepare several contingencies for war. It also was concluded that in case of war, the regime could be victorious, though the cost would be high, but it would emerge as the one and only champion of the Islamic cause in the world.
We can calculate all we want, but all the dictator and his supporter has to do is conclude one course is greater than another. That's pretty simple math.
