This recent thread with answers by /u/Aleksx000 may give you an idea of the situation in the build up of Italian intervention.

I haven't touched much on the actual Italian conduct of the war. But one must remember that, as soon as war begun Italy had found themselves in need to re-evaluate their entire long term strategy. There was no longer time before the conflict and Italy had to make a quick move.

In a long conflict, Italy had very little hope of achieving anything of substance. In a short conflict, the lacking preparation and unreadiness of the Army, the resistance of the Navy to engage in any large scale operation, meant that there wasn't much to be done there either.

More so; if Germany had lost a short war (maybe even before the Italian intervention), Italy could expect to come out of it with some of its international standing intact. If Germany had won with Italy sitting out (which is if the allies sue for peace before Italy joins), than Italy would have lost whatever influence they had left on their partner - a partner that would have established itself as the master of central Europe.

In a long war on the other hand, Italy was more or less destined to roll with Germany: they couldn't sit out forever or "they would have lost their stature of great power" as Mussolini explained.

That's why, in the beginning, when the German offensive of May 1940 made a quick conclusion of the war seem likely, the Italians proved remarkably unsure of their war goals. Soon after the intervention, we have the telling instructions from Mussolini to the Army on the French border and in North Africa, that show how he changed from keeping a defensive line, to moving forward, then halting again, then again attempting to penetrate into French soil - all in the wake of a peace treaty that would not come.

That's how the Italians wasted the (tiny) window for some offensive action in Africa - that would have been anyways difficult to support through the non existent Italian supply lines. Once the British managed to reorganize a bit, the Italians found themselves cut out in Ethiopia and their last independent offensive in Egypt was met with the disaster of "operation compass".

When the conflict did not end with the French defeat, for the Italians it became a matter of regaining some measure of independent action within the Axis. That's how Mussolini conceived the idea of the "parallel war", with the attempted invasion of Greece. But ultimately the Italian victory was still entirely subordinate to the German one - and Italy was only trying to carve out its part of the cake before Germany could claim it all for themselves. There was no overall strategic plan for a long term war that the Italians knew they could not win.

Again; as the war in Greece was entirely subordinate to the political relation with the German ally, the actual planning for the campaign was remarkably poor - with overenthusiastc predictions, low morale, lack of coordination between the various branches (notoriously the original plan involved a twin amphibious operation that the Head of the Navy - soon to be sacked Admiral Cavagnari - had not been informed of; and in fact Mussolini approved the invasion of Greece without the Head of the Navy being present to the meeting).

But - as I mentioned before - there was no realistic strategic goal or plan, except to retain some influence on Germany throughout the war and hope for an eventual compromise peace. Even the most extreme German supporters among the Italian establishment did not envision much of an independent role for Italy in a III Reich's Europe. And Mussolini himself went back and forth between wishing for a total German victory and a German defeat.

Mussolini retained some delusions of being able to mediate between Hitler and the allies, even Hitler and Stalin, until the late 1943. Then he more or less gave up; by then though Italy had already lost the war.