The thing that bugs me about Trump and the administration is how little planning and forethought seems to go into things of worldwide significance. Ready-Fire-Aim is a joke it should not be how the nation (formerly) leading the free world operates. And worse is the mindset it represents.

Our government employs a great many experts on Islamic extremism, and I can promise you that not one of them is too busy to meet with the Secretary of Defense.

And yet either these experts weren't consulted, or their advice was ignored. The announcement went out anyway. And now there's probably room fulls of experts all screaming that this will cause far more problems than it'll solve, so there's backpedaling.

So I ask, if I was Hegseth what would create this situation? And the most likely answer I come up with, like an awful lot of Trump decisions, is that I just assume everyone is either like me or like a stereotype and act accordingly. I don't need to study or consult because It's My Job To Make The Decision and I Made The Decision.
The result of that is decisions are made off the cuff, without consideration or forethought, which leads to problems that are both easily predicted and easily prevented.

Iran is another perfect example. We want to get rid of Iran, so we go in, fire a fuckton of guided missiles (which cost $1.5 million each, and apparently we have no way to replace them), blow up the leader and some buildings, then step back and do nothing to manage the resulting aftermath. The religious council naturally appoints the leader's son as new supreme leader, and whoops seems they still have a functional military and by deploying it to a tiny patch of water can grind worldwide trade to a fucking halt. Now they're organized again and they're pissed, and we're almost out of missiles so we don't want to start another war. So we're negotiating with the guy whose dad we just killed begging him to stop killing the global economy.

Did nobody consider this possibility ahead of time?

I'm NOT an expert on Iran. But from what little I learned on Wikipedia, I can tell you with near certainty that if you want to 'stop' Iran you have to kill or capture not just the supreme leader but the religious council who appoints him, and many high ranking members of the IRGC also. Do that and install a temporary puppet government with a promise of free elections in a year, or find whoever's the current 'heir to the throne and install them as Shah under the old governmental structure. Then leave enough forces behind to keep the remainder of IRGC loyalists from causing trouble. This requires more than missiles, it requires a bunch of 'wet work' (think spy movies / assassinations). It requires boots on the ground. It requires putting Americans in harm's way. Overall it will take years and cost $billions. But the result, if done correctly, could be the secularization of Iran- undoing our evils when we helped depose the Shah.
Shooting off a bunch of missiles and expecting the problem to go away doesn't make the problem go away.