Aaron David Miller

It's worth making one additional point, and that is the Iranians...

have deployed geography in a terrifying manner.

And the Iranians have two cards, more than two, but two cards, the capacity to close and manage the Straits of Hormuz and the capacity to undermine Gulf security and stability with their residual capacity after six weeks of war of short-range missiles and drones.

and that capacity remains.

So CIA, DIA, my time in government, I can't tell you how many exercises were run, how many intelligence reports indicated the problems and challenges should the Iranians control the Straits, and the difficult time that the American military would have reopening them.

So why this was never factored into the decision process

To launch a war of choice is one of the many intriguing and frankly depressing questions that need to be asked.

Those comments, like so many others that he makes, are tethered to a galaxy far, far away, not to the realities back here on planet Earth.

And frankly, we have to take the social media posts seriously and his interviews with the media.

But the reality is it reflects, I think, a degree of confusion or a nonchalance about this whole issue, which frankly is extremely worrisome to me.

There was no real strategy here.

And that's the problem in a war of choice.

Look, Iran is a brutal, repressive, authoritarian regime.

It is a nuclear weapons threshold state.

That is to say, it has all the elements, or at least had all the elements required to make a deliverable weapon.

The decision to make one has not been made.

There's no doubt that there ought to be a different Iranian regime, one committed to the security prosperity of

and freedom of its people, but we don't have that regime.

The question is, what is a sensible policy?

This was a war of choice.