Autocrats don’t have to be delusional, of course, but by the very nature of autocracy, they tend to staff themselves with aides who affirm and aggrandize their autocrats’ power and fail to challenge their bosses’ worldview. Putin surrounded himself with staffers committed to his project of restoring Russia to the role of supreme Orthodox counterweight to the louche West, in control once again of all the territory where the tsars once reigned supreme. He believed that retaking Ukraine would be a matter of weeks, or even days, and no one in his inner circle would or could say that he might be wrong. If the generals not in his inner circle had misgivings about the probability of a cakewalk to Kiev, they weren’t going to be general for very much longer.
As to Trump, none of his lackeys dared tell him that Iran might not crumble if we joined Israel in going to war on the regime, and while our top generals did issue some muted demurrals, none dared say, “No way.”
As a result, Russia appears stuck in a bloody stalemate from which its forces have made virtually no advances for the better part of a year, while Trump appears stuck in a war that he cannot end. Israel keeps attacking Lebanon, and Iran still blocks the Strait of Hormuz. A report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies at the beginning of the year estimated that the number of Russian soldiers killed, wounded, or missing since the war began was 1.2 million. The number of U.S. casualties in our war on Iran is relatively tiny so far—just 13 fatalities according to the Pentagon—but that will rise if Trump concludes that getting a deal with Iran requires boots on the ground (as Republican war hawks keep arguing).