As horrible a person as Putin is, at least he had a plan and it might well have worked. He knew that he needed to use ground troops. He sent them directly at Kiev and almost managed to capture it. This was after he’d already captured the Donbas region and Crimea without much effort. His plan was evil, but it wasn’t absurd.

My guess is that the Trump admin was informed by Israel that they were going to be bombing stuff in Iran and Trump and Hegseth said “We gotta get some of that glory for ourselves!” and launched strikes without any kind of plan, or analysis, or even a well defined goal.