The world in which America is a military superpower.
> if any of them were minimally rational, they would have all gone to total war with Israel and the US
They have been. They've been getting levelled. If the U.S. can staunch the flow of arms to the Houthis, they'll become irrelevant, too.
No, you missed my point. Iran dies no matter what happens. Better go down after eliminating Israel, taking out a huge % of the world's oil supply and banging up some Americans. Instead they were extremely restrained, squandering their capacities.
> They have been. They've been getting levelled. If the U.S. can staunch the flow of arms to the Houthis, they'll become irrelevant, too.
Incorrect.
One, they tried. They don’t have the capability. Two, that means more Iranians die. Cultures that choose pointless vengeance over pragmatic survival tend to get weeded out.
> Incorrect
Which part, why and based on whom?
No, they didn't, not at the peak of their power. They waited until many of their tools were hit and THEN responded. Everything they've done is unfortunately in self-defense after their capabilities have been extremely degraded. They sat around and waited for Israel to strike first every time.
> Two, that means more Iranians die. Cultures that choose pointless vengeance over pragmatic survival tend to get weeded out.
Again, you're missing the point. They are going to be weeded out no matter what.
In part. Khamenei also pointlessly spent down Hezbollah supporting Hamas instead of writing the latter off and saving his firepower. If Hezbollah had maintained its massive-launch capability, instead of drip feeding rockets into interceptors as a messaging exercise, maybe this would have gone differently.
More broadly, if Iran ran itself without a C-list vengeance plot at its core and focused on its massive resources, it could have developed economically and geopolitically.