I’ve been thinking recently of Barbara Tuchman, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning American popular historian. Ms. Tuchman’s prose was accessible, colorful, and thrilling, and she had a unique eye for the critical detail that altered the course of human history. The first Tuchman book I read was the brilliant The Guns of August, a still-relevant account of the origins and first month of World War I. But it is Tuchman’s The March of Folly that has been occupying my thoughts in recent days. In that book, Tuchman discusses how regimes pursue detrimental policies despite clear, prospective evidence that doing so is contrary to their self-interest. Her examples include King George III’s loss of the American colonies, the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, and the United States’ entanglement in Vietnam.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has been similarly marching to an illusory tune. Their leaders’ obsession with destroying the State of Israel (possibly the first stage of an assault on Western civilization in general) has led them to prioritize producing a nuclear weapon and ballistic missiles over the welfare of their people. The fruits of this policy are civic unrest, oppression and murder of civilians by the regime; an economy in tatters; the decimation of the nation’s leadership; isolation from the free world; and the present conflict, in which Israel and the U.S. are furthering the devastation. Some argue – I disagree with them – that this engagement by the United States is itself a step in the march of folly. There is no doubt that the argument does not apply to Israel, for whom Iran’s ambitions are an existential threat. Regardless of the outcome of the current “excursion,” it is hard to imagine how Iran and its people achieve prosperity, peace and fulfillment without a major change in their priorities.

Ultimately, Tuchman doesn’t explain why leaders fail to learn the lessons of history, only that they repeatedly do so. It appears that, for now, at least, Iran’s leaders remain committed to policies which history will judge as foolish to the extreme.