Prior to the war, I linked to a tweet from Matt Yglesias which explained why Matt opposed the war, and I expressed my agreement with his stance.  While I feel plenty has gone on which I do not observe, I can report that the course of the war did not change my initial assessment.

Then I read many, many commentators saying how good the final deal was for Iran, and what a major loss it was for Trump.  I was never sure I understood all of the parameters of the full deal, but still I did not hold any directly contrary opinion to that.

And now I see Iran is attacking ships in the Strait again, talking openly and brazenly about building nuclear weapons, and making plans to have tolls/fees on the Strait.  To be clear, only the first of those surprises me, the latter two do not.

But given their reckless behavior in what is supposedly a wonderful war outcome for them, what is the correct way to model what they would have done had Trump and Netanyahu not attacked?  And what is the correct way to model our optimal response to that?  The terrible things that are happening now, do they not reflect an underlying equilibrium that would have emerged anyway within a few years’ time, or do we hold some hypothesis here of extreme path-dependence, suggesting the Iranian government would have been less bellicose on more or less a permanent basis?  To cite one particular example of a possible equilibrium, if drones permanently alter the balance of power in the region, the ways in which their current position is now more aggressive might have emerged in any case.  Or if the military have the strength to be the natural successors to the mullahs, might that not have happened over time anyway?

I do not see many war critics engaging with these questions openly and explicitly.  It seems to me that the war critics implicitly are relying on a model of extreme path-dependence for Iran’s behavior.  Had Trump not attacked, they might have stayed in a more peaceful groove for some while to come.  That model might be true, but I do not feel I know enough about Iranian politics to make that judgment.  Why are the others so convinced that model is true?  Are they such well-informed experts?  Is it that they have the properly sunny sense of the underlying Iranian disposition?  Inquiring minds wish to know.