DAR ES SALAAM, March 26 -- WAR frequently commences with assurance and concludes with bewilderment. From the inception, what appears to be decisive leadership can rapidly transform into strategic entanglement.

Reflecting critically and strategically, this pattern is exemplified with unsettling clarity by the current crisis in the Middle East.

For months, numerous military strategists and scholars of international relations have cautioned that a confrontation with Iran would be neither straightforward nor contained.

Iran is not an isolated state, like some of the lesser adversaries that the United States has faced in the past.

Nevertheless, it seems that those cautionary tales were ignored. The reasoning behind the gamble appeared to b...