Shortly after U.S. and Israeli bombs and missiles began falling in Tehran, Iranian missiles flew in all directions at U.S. bases in Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and others. The people living in these countries were justifiably terrified, which was a likely objective of those Iranian leaders who survived the first assaults. Tehran’s strategy may be to persuade America’s regional allies to reconsider their security alliances.
In 2010, most people shook their heads when a now-infamous map of Afghanistan’s various societal, governmental, and tribal interests went public. The counterinsurgency (COIN) spaghetti chart was terribly complex – and intractable. One PowerPoint slide shows how challenging it can be to understand how a stimulant in one corner can produce a response in a seemingly tangential sector. And this is just a single country.
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