Trump has already decimated Iran. Rebuilding will take a generation. And he's threatening to do more if they don't fall in line.
Iran is refusing to surrender because they think in terms of generations, and they think Trump and the GOP will suffer at the polls the worse the humanitarian losses get in Iran. They are betting that soon-to-happen midterms will punish Trump and his coattail candidates when the media shows picture after picture of children and women suffering without power, water and food. And of course, the religious zealots who hate America will do better with a weakened MAGA and a return to Obama-style politics.
So they think they're ultimately winning by forcing Trump to destroy their country.
But there's always a countermove in chess.
Since the Iranians are refusing to surrender, AND since the Iranians and the American media will try to parlay all this destruction into friendly gains in our elections, the Iranians are leaving Trump with NO CHOICE but to destroy the country entirely. Because when else will we have a President with such resolve to do whatever it takes to protect America from terrorism and the Muslim invasion that's already happened in Europe, Canada and states like Minnesota.
Iran's defiance is their death warrant. And the only "power" they will be able to exert going forward is cowardly terrorism which will further alienate American voters from their cause.
Iran sucks at chess.
200 years ago, "decimate" meant punishing a military force of mutineers by killing 10% of the men to send a message.
In the last 200 years, it means annihilation of 90% of the enemy.
See below:
In the military of ancient Rome, decimation (from Latin decimatio 'destruction of a tenth'[1]) was a form of military discipline in which every tenth man in a group was executed by members of his cohort. The discipline was used by senior commanders in the Roman army to punish units or large groups guilty of capital offences, such as cowardice, mutiny, desertion, and insubordination, and for pacification of rebellious legions.
The historicity of the punishment during the early and middle republic is questioned, and it may be an ahistorical rhetorical construct of the late republic. Regardless, the first well-attested instance was in 72 BC during the war against Spartacus under the command of Marcus Licinius Crassus. Further instances followed in the next century, mostly occurring during times of civil strife, before falling out of use after AD 69. There is evidence of the punishment's revival in the post-classical world, such as during the Thirty Years' War and World War I.
In modern English, the word is used most commonly not to mean a destruction of a tenth but rather the destruction of 90%, or just annihilation.