Iran's Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei is reorganizing the country's military and national security establishment to prepare for a prolonged confrontation with the US and Israel.
The ongoing conflict in Iran bears striking similarities to the Vietnam War, according to a recent analysis of David Halberstam's classic work, *The Best and the Brightest*. Both conflicts were marked by a lack of clear goals, poor management, and an overreliance on technology and firepower. The current US administration's approach to the war has been criticized for its lack of expertise and experience, with many of its key advisors lacking a background in foreign policy or military affairs.
Recent biographies of Ronald Reagan reveal a leader whose composure steadied a disoriented state, but also a governing method that relied on repetition and procedure rather than fixing systems. This emotional sensibility became a governing method, where the federal government became increasingly opaque to citizens, and technical debt grew, the accumulation of unmade decisions carried forward as administrative workarounds.