From Error to Entrenchment: The Islamic Republic’s Inability to Reconsider S. Rouzbeh 2026-10-17 An examination of tactical learning, strategic assumptions and the difficulty of reconsidering policies that have become part of a political system’s identity. Mistakes in politics and strategic decision-making are not unusual. Almost no government has avoided errors in assessing an adversary, predicting the future or choosing a policy. The difference between a system capable of correcting itself and one that traps itself on a path towards failure becomes clear at one point: when reality departs from the initial calculation, is the decision-maker willing to re-examine the calculation itself? If the answer is no, we are no longer dealing with a simple mistake, but with a mechanism that can turn one error into a chain of errors. Chris Argyris, the theorist of organisational learning, distinguished between two forms of learning. In the first, an organisation responds to an error by adjusting its methods to pursue the same goal more effectively. In the second, when failures recur, the goal itself, the initial assumptions and the logic of the decision are also questioned. This distinction matters when examining the Islamic Republic. The government is not entirely incapable of learning. Evidence suggests that, at the tactical level, it learns from military and security experience: it changes how it uses missiles, selects targets, circumvents sanctions or exercises domestic control. The problem is that learning takes place at the level of ‘how to carry on’, not necessarily at the level of ‘should we carry on down this same road?’ The example of 7 October illustrates this condition. Three days after the Hamas attack, Ali Khamenei denied Iranian involvement in planning the operation, but described Israel’s intelligence and military failure as ‘irreparable’. Eight months later, despite the devastating war in Gaza, he said that the region ‘needed this operation’. In the months that followed, reality became more complicated. The Hamas leadership suffered heavy blows; Hezbollah entered the war and lost much of its command, including Hassan Nasrallah; Bashar al-Assad’s government fell, and one of Iran’s most important routes for regional influence and support disappeared. This does not necessarily mean that the ‘axis of resistance’ was destroyed, but it showed, at the very least, that some initial assumptions about deterrent power and the direction of events required serious reconsideration. Assad’s fall could have been one of those moments of reassessment. Had decades of investment in Syria produced the expected result? Did the policy of ‘forward defence’ still serve its former purpose? Had the assumption that this network would endure been correct? But the Islamic Republic’s leader again offered no fundamental reassessment. Khamenei attributed Assad’s fall to an American and Israeli plan, insisting that pressure would make the resistance stronger. Within this logic, even an outcome contrary to expectations does not necessarily invalidate the original assumption. If allies win, the strategy is said to have been correct. If they suffer blows, the enemy is said to fear the resistance. If commanders are killed, their blood is presented as a source of strength for the resistance. If the cost rises, that very cost is taken as evidence of the struggle’s importance. Within such a structure, policy gradually becomes ‘unfalsifiable’: almost any outcome can be reinterpreted in a way that preserves the policy itself. This cannot be explained simply by one leader’s stubbornness. Decision theory recognises a phenomenon called ‘escalation of commitment’: the more a person or organisation has invested in a decision, the harder it becomes to admit that the decision was wrong. Retreat is more than a change of policy; it is an acknowledgement that some past expenditure may have been fruitless. As a result, rather than leave a course of action, decision-makers sometimes deepen their commitment to it. In the Islamic Republic there is another factor. Some policies are more than instruments of government; they have become part of the system’s political identity. Over the decades, ‘resistance’, hostility towards Israel, confrontation with the United States and forward defence have become embedded in the government’s official narrative. Reconsidering them is therefore no longer simply a change in foreign policy; it can also call part of the system’s narrative of legitimacy into question. Seen in this light, the central issue surrounding 7 October is not that Khamenei failed to predict the future accurately. No political leader has that ability. The issue is what changed once the gap between prediction and reality became apparent. Were the assumptions reconsidered? Was it explained which part of the calculation had been wrong? Were the objectives weighed against the costs again? Or was every new development interpreted within the same old framework? This is where the distinction between ‘adjusting tactics’ and ‘reconsidering strategy’ becomes important. The Islamic Republic can change its methods and learn from some operational mistakes, but is far less willing to question the course itself. A government’s most dangerous error is not to make a mistake. The danger begins when its framework of thought loses the capacity to recognise that an assumption has failed; from that moment, each fresh failure can be read not as a warning to change direction, but as another reason to continue along the same road. The final question is this: how many failures, at what cost, and what further change in reality are needed before a political system questions the road itself, instead of merely adjusting the way it travels along it? Rouzbeh Source: https://srouzbeh.com/en/posts/entry-1792281782869-ecdb27f2 Please credit the author and link to this edition.