The reason the US acts the way it does in the US is not based on any immediate logic. There's a great paper, "Rebuilding America's Defenses" that describes US foreign policy in extremely straight forward language. It was written during Bush's era, but many of the people with their names on it are part of the effectively permanent political establishment.
Their goal was (and perhaps if they're delusional - still is) to maintain hegemonic control over the entire world. The main motivation for things like attacking Iran is 'projecting force.' It's supposed to work to intimidate other countries into deference and compliance without having to actually get involved in a battle with them. Basically mimicking how school bullies work.
So you're looking for a reasonable explanation based on superficial pretexts, but there is none. The same is true of Iraq. It's not like we really thought there were WMD. But it was simply an opportunity to project power and keep the military industrial complex churning.
The reason the US acts the way it does in the US is not based on any immediate logic. There's a great paper, "Rebuilding America's Defenses" that describes US foreign policy in extremely straight forward language. It was written during Bush's era, but many of the people with their names on it are part of the effectively permanent political establishment.
Their goal was (and perhaps if they're delusional - still is) to maintain hegemonic control over the entire world. The main motivation for things like attacking Iran is 'projecting force.' It's supposed to work to intimidate other countries into deference and compliance without having to actually get involved in a battle with them. Basically mimicking how school bullies work.
So you're looking for a reasonable explanation based on superficial pretexts, but there is none. The same is true of Iraq. It's not like we really thought there were WMD. But it was simply an opportunity to project power and keep the military industrial complex churning.