When I say groupthink, I really do mean it. @RKelanic is more serious than others. In the paper of record, she laid out, quite correctly, all the ways in which this could backfire. It is highly significant that the actual scenario unfolding — a military defeat with the US unable to reopen Hormuz without Iranian cooperation — was not even considered. I am interested in understanding why it is that even she did not see this coming. Why, despite Krepinevich’s well-known thesis on the diffusion of precision-strike and the recent experience of the US military in the campaign against the Houthis, the US military did not anticipate these developments. Why did the editors of the NYTimes frame this as a one-sided affair filed under “US and Israel Attack Iran.” I think the reason is fairly clear. There was a systematic misperception of the balance of power. They attacked bc they really thought Iran to be weak and tottering — the groupthink consists in precisely this perception; Western analysts simply assumed that this will be a one sided affair, with US and Israeli power dismantling the Iranian state. In part, this is Iran’s fault. They did not move aggressively to restore deterrence in previous rounds; thereby persuading Bibi and Trump that they won’t counter-escalate. But that can’t be the whole story. I don’t think we can make sense of this catastrophic failure of groupthink without reaching for the orientalist-racialist prior of Western analysts and policy makers. nytimes.com/2025/06/14/opini…