The ISS

One use which I've seen cited is as a rendezvous point for pieces of a
mission to go elsewhere. For example a manned lunar mission might
be launched in several pieces, assembled at ISS by an assembly
crew, and then have a separate mission crew to actually
operate the assembled equipment. On the other hand the rendezvous
point might just as easily be anywhere else in LEO space - does
ISS provide any real advantage for such a mission? The robot
arm perhaps? Other facilities? Perhaps it can provide
warehousing in future for supplies, fuel, etc? The sad fact is that in some of it's earlier incarnations, this would have been an exemplarily use of the space station. But in the constant and unceasing paring down process that it was required to go through, it lost most of the capabilities that would have contributed to this usage. Such that what we now have would be only a small step up from starting from scratch.