How to Not Change Your Mind

How to Avoid Changing Your Mind About the Iran War

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Argument: How to Not Change Your Mind

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Argument

An expert’s point of view on a current event.

How to Not Change Your Mind

Even when you’re wrong about the Iran war (or anything else).

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*Stephen M. Walt*

By **Stephen M. Walt**, a columnist at *Foreign Policy* and the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.

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October 28, 2026, 8:02 AM

We are all fallible and life is uncertain, so sometimes we believe things that turn out to be mistaken and we recommend policies that don’t work out as we expected. When this happens, we ought to admit we were wrong, try to figure out why, revise our beliefs accordingly, and then formulate new ideas about what to do in light of our enhanced understanding. In a perfect world, decision-makers, pundits, scholars, and ordinary citizens would be good Bayesians: we’d start with a set of prior beliefs, update them as new evidence accumulates, and adjust our behavior accordingly.

In the real world, of course, that happens less often than it should, which is one reason policies that are visibly failing can be hard to change and why past mistakes keep getting repeated. As historian Barbara Tuchman put it in her book *The March of Folly,* decisionmakers sometimes succumb to a kind of “mental standstill” that “fixes the principles and boundaries governing a political problem.” Both policymakers and pundits are often loathe to admit they made a mistake, even when it is abundantly clear that they were off-base. (For my own attempts to do better, see here and here). Just look at all those enthusiastic cheerleaders for war with Iran who confidently predicted that it would be quick, cheap, and yield nothing but positive results. How many of them have ‘fessed up and admitted that maybe, just maybe, they missed something? Instead of owning their mistakes, some of the loudest voices inside and outside the policy world keep insisting they were right all along.

We are all fallible and life is uncertain, so sometimes we believe things that turn out to be mistaken and we recommend policies that don’t work out as we expected. When this happens, we ought to admit we were wrong, try to figure out why, revise our beliefs accordingly, and then formulate new ideas about what to do in light of our enhanced understanding. In a perfect world, decision-makers, pundits, scholars, and ordinary citizens would be good Bayesians: we’d start with a set of prior beliefs, update them as new evidence accumulates, and adjust our behavior accordingly.

In the real world, of course, that happens less often than it should, which is one reason policies that are visibly failing can be hard to change and why past mistakes keep getting repeated. As historian Barbara Tuchman put it in her book *The March of Folly,* decisionmakers sometimes succumb to a kind of “mental standstill” that “fixes the principles and boundaries governing a political problem.” Both policymakers and pundits are often loathe to admit they made a mistake, even when it is abundantly clear that they were off-base. (For my own attempts to do better, see here and here). Just look at all those enthusiastic cheerleaders for war with Iran who confidently predicted that it would be quick, cheap, and yield nothing but positive results. How many of them have ‘fessed up and admitted that maybe, just maybe, they missed something? Instead of owning their mistakes, some of the loudest voices inside and outside the policy world keep insisting they were right all along.

There are several time-honored ways to avoid having to admit you were wrong, and to keep from having to rethink your core beliefs about how the world works. Here are some common ways to defend your views in the face of predictive or analytic failure.

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No 1: “I was right, but my advice wasn’t followed as I recommended.”

The classic way to conceal a prescriptive blunder is to argue that those charged with implementing the plan failed to pursue it as you intended. For instance, if you were in favor of attacking Iran, you can now argue that we should have attacked the country sooner or harder; the problem was that your advice wasn’t followed *enough.* Or you can argue that the policy would have worked if we had just stayed the course—success was within our grasp but then those in charge got cold feet and pulled the plug too soon. Or just blame failure on inept commanders, feckless allies, or other circumstances beyond your control, and hope that n