So, we are in what... Day 101 of Iran? The most winningly won war in American history? It isn't a war right now. The US military ran out of objectives on the board for their not planned out "just following orders" Iranian War. So we paused and have been pretending the Strait of Hormuz shutdown isn't remotely as big of a deal as it is.
It was a mistake to pause.
It was an unavoidable result of failure to plan. Trump ignored congress until he ran out of time.
Apparently he forgot he wasn't a supreme dictator with unlimited powers - again.
US should have continued to pound IRGC targets, especially those connected with their missile and drone capabilities, including fabrication facilities. By now, their ability to threaten their neighbors and Israel would be close to zero had attacks have been sustained.
That seems unduly optimistic. The history of modern warfare, going all the way back to 1914, suggests that defenders are always able to survive, and to retain their ability to fight, despite apparently overwhelming bombardment.
That would also have diminished their ability to project power into the Strait.
Not really; That ability comes from having a very long and rugged coastline with vast numbers of small boats.
Projecting power into the strait - if the objective is merely to make it unsafe to the point of uninsurability for cargo vessels - requires no more than a few small boats and a few nutters with AK47s.
And once IRGC is sufficiently weakened, local groups could be aided and used to fight regime forces on the ground in order to liberate their own country.
They could have been, if they hadn't been called upon by Trump to rise up right at the start of his war, and been slaughtered.
The survivors are not going to be fooled into that again, after seeing the IRGC mow down their friends.
Trump is insisting... well... he has insisted on everything from he 'doesn't care' to scorching Iran if 'they don't make a deal'. Deals have been everything from no one close to imminent.
The problem with Trump is that he TACOed so much, nobody is taking his threats seriously.
Also, he had no plan from day one.
Also, he has no understanding of his enemy on any level.
Add to that US politicians who would rather see Iran win and the regime become stronger than to allow Trump to have a W before the Midterms, and it's a recipe for a defeat, not one due to military facts, but just politics.
Maybe, but there's also no military path to victory. More dakka isn't the stategic genius plan you seem to imagine it to be.
Iran is (like Afghanistan and Vietnam) simply not a place you can defeat militarily. Having more and better weapons is useless against fanatical defenders; For some reason, the USA is very slow to learn this fact.
A magic-eight ball is most honest that Trump and the Trump Admin has been on Iran, except when former DNI Director testified that Iranian leadership was weakened, but intact.
Which does not mean that they cannot be weakened further to the point of cracking.
The Iranian leadership has been weakened to the point where the IRGC have been able to take over.
The nut is FAR harder to crack today than it was a hundred days ago.
The US and Israeli attack on Iran succeeded in the aim of regime change, but failed because the change turned out to be for the worse, not for the better.
Well done.
Trump has lately been saying the US will take the enriched uranium by force if necessary. A suggestion that seems as absurd now as it did in 101 days ago.
At this point, yes. But mostly because we have done very little for most of the last 101 days.
Well, given that everything you have done has made things worse for you, as everyone (except Trump and his sycophants) knew from the outset that it would, the less you did the less you hurt yourselves.
Doing very little was bad enough. Doing more would have been even worse.
<snipped irrelevant crap about Israel>
United States wants what it doesn't have the capacity to take and the current leadership is the reason we lack intel on it and are oblivious to diplomacy and general knowledge
I think US definitely has the capacity to defeat the regime.
Then you don't understand what "defeat the regime" entails.
The problem is that neither TACO Trump nor the US Congress have the patience to prosecute the war against Iran effectively, nor the stomach to ignore the higher oil prices that would be the temporary effect of a more intense warfare against IRGC and the rest of the regime.
What would "prosecute the war against Iran effectively" look like? A full scale ground invasion and push to Tehran? Nuking Tehran?
Could the US do either of those things without serious repercussions? Would either even achieve the goal of removing the IRGC from power?
The German saying "Lieber ein Ende mit Schrecken, als Schrecken ohne Ende" applies here. Better to go through a temporary horrible period to end a bad situation, than to endure that bad situation (i.e. Iranian regime persisting) without end.
That's nice. But what makes you think that the horrible period entailed by (for example) a ground war would be either temporary, or effective in ending the bad situation?
If you think the bad situation can be ended by air and missile strikes alone, then you are standing against the entire weight of C20th warfare as a counterexample.
Iran are a bunch of radical boobs
First thing I can agree with 100%.
And with each passing day, it seems that we are in an entanglement of stupidity that is drawing the planet nearer a fuel crisis that appears to be completely avoidable.
It looks like there has been
a modest increase in total rigs in recent weeks. That together with reduction in demand due to higher prices should counteract it becoming a fuel crisis. Oil and gasoline prices are still lower than they have been in certain periods of recent history, esp. when adjusted for inflation.
Whatever your definition of "crisis", it is undeniable that the world fuel situation today is far less good than it was before this stupid war.