There are not that many two letter codes (a comment said 26*26= 676) and they are reserved for country codes. Global tlds are three letters and up (eg com org etc)

Well, this one is special, by virtue of being in widespread commercial use.

ICANN will act in whatever manner causes them the least trouble, which will be to retain the status quo. They have absolutely no incentive to behave otherwise.

> ICANN will act in whatever manner causes them the least trouble ... They have absolutely no incentive to behave otherwise

It's pretty detrimental to relationships when one side pre-declares their rules and policies, and then arbitrarily decides to ignore them.

I'd say they have a lot of incentive to behave in whatever way their published policies state, regardless of the impact to users of the cctld.

(I don't know what the policies are)

because there are fewer combinations of two-letter codes. This is also why they are reserved to actual countries.

Yeah but it's not like ISO is going to reuse the code "io" for some other future country.

You don't know that.

By policy, 2-letter TLDs are reserved for ccTLDs, matching ISO country codes.