Quote Originally Posted by Presley Cannady View Post
I don't know if Iran can never estimate its costs, but I'm pretty sure they've tried. Why build a missile with a thousand mile range if you haven't reached some judgment--flawed as it may be--about the targets you can hit with it?
First some historical background; the "War of the cities" among Iraq and Iran when they were bombarding each other's cities with a kind of V-weapon/"Baby Blitz" offensive because their ground forces were too inept to achieve strategic success.
This was likely the foundation for their missile arsenal and might have coined their perception of missiles.

Another point of view would be to treat their ballistic missiles as some kind of ICBM/SLBM equivalent; tools of deterrence.
Potential aggressors are more cautious if they have to think about what a rain of BMs loaded with chem and bio weapons could do to their cities. The prospect of complications helps to deter aggression.

The interpretations of those BMs as some kind of offensive political tool (blackmail) or as a tool of genocidal plans are just possible interpretations among many possible interpretations.


There's little doubt about which interpretation hawks would choose - and we all know that hawks have a more than proportional influence on the U.S. media's reports on security policy topics (I'm not so sure about their influence in Israeli and UK reporting and Germany media is usually dominated by doves).