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Because you didn't actually get what you wanted. Of course, it's hard to say here because the Trump administration can not articulate what it wants.
I have tried to understand it. You act as if the only reason you could conclude Trump doesn't know what he's doing is because you're not paying attention.
The problem is that they seemingly can't articulate what we're trying to do and contradict themselves like twice a day. Let me ask you this: why should I extend any of these people the benefit of the doubt? Have they displayed some record of competence that suggests I should and wait and see what strategic genius unfolds? Spoilers: no, they haven't. These are the people who decided we needed to threaten a close ally to gain access to territory we already have access to. We are fortunate that they can at least lean on the immense operational competence of the US military, but that cannot cover for a strategic deficit.
No, all the evidence available to me suggests that they expected the Iranian government to be cowed by the initial attacks and don't have a follow up plan beyond "keep bombing until they give up" (a strategy with a terrible track record). Maybe this was done at the instigation of Israel/KSA, but "Trump got suckered into doing something stupid in Iran at the behest of self-interested 'allies'" is a point in favor of the "Trump doesn't know what he's doing" argument. He is at least in good company there, since that describes a lot of US involvement in Iran since the end of WW2. For Israel, we have both clear national strategic interests and the personal interests of the leadership, but Israeli leadership wants to do a lot of things and the US doesn't have to indulge them.
And there's the thing: you don't even have to be a weapons-grade dumbass to wind up in this situation. Military actions not producing the desired results and forcing planners to clumsily improvise has happened to smarter people than Trump.
I wouldn't dismiss the possibility, though I think it's more likely that the lack of quality institutions highlights the prevalence of incompetence more.
I think there's good evidence that a broad effort to strengthen America's hand relative to China is succeeding, rather slowly. I would count this as strategic competence at play. The counter-Trump view is that this is despite his efforts, not because of it.
I also think it's likely that the Trump administration is screwing with reporters on purpose ("lying") which is going to make things look very chaotic to external observers and provides little to no insight as to whether or not the administration actually knows what it is doing. (The counter-Trump view here, I think, would be "jokes on you, I'm only pretending to be retarded" is not very convincing.)
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Yeah there’s your problem you just need to listen to Donald Trump more:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/read-trumps-full-statement-on-iran-attack
Adding other materials (November’s National Security Statement, Abraham Accords, Trump’s speech to the UN etc.) it’s like this: Trump has negotiated a new security framework for the Middle East on which all powers agree. Relationships with Israel have been normalized. Hamas and Hezbollah have been destroyed. The only threat to a lasting peace in the Middle East is Iran. So their capacity to threaten the Middle East is being destroyed.
I don’t know what else to tell you, this is all stuff said out loud in treaties and speeches and I think everyone chooses to pretend Trump just isn’t worth listening to. Maybe when he said we were going to destroy Iran’s missile industry he was just being extra figurative.
I’m choosing to interpret this as a reference to Diego Garcia, which is a pretty apt lesson in why European powers are not reliable partners. Or maybe you meant Trump threatening Spain after they refused to let us use our bases there to stage attacks in Iran? It’s hard to tell, there are so many examples that make my argument for me.
By the way how did we end up with incompetent institutions when apparently we used to be lead by people smarter than Trump?
Except (Sen. Chris Murphy, D-CT):
You are right that Hegseth agrees with Trump:
So, missiles and missile production, fairly straightforward and measurable. Naval "destruction", less. Other miscellaneous infrastructure, obviously not a goal. Deny nuclear weapons? See briefing. It IS, don't get me wrong, a goal, but the only method is: 'hope Iran gives up and negotiates at some point'. That's it. That's the whole strategy. That's kind of a shit strategy, unless we're going to go all WW2 Japan and drop nukes on civilian centers, or some other type of total war shit. (And as mentioned upthread, mutually assured oil production destruction is an option but an insanely bad one)
In other words, there IS a strategic plan but the ACTUAL (tactical) plans we have don't match the grand strategy. At all. IMO, that's enough to fairly claim that there isn't a [real/authentic] plan (functionally speaking).
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