Six months after Trumpy & Bibi launched Operation Epic Fury against Iran on February 28th, the so-called kinetic campaign has settled into a costly stalemate, at best. And a de facto military defeat as a practical matter.
In fact, what began as another furious “shock and awe” military offensive designed to quickly and fatally degrade Iran’s nuclear program, missile forces, leadership, and regional power projection capability has instead produced:
- no regime change.
- no collapse of Iranian governance.
- the severe depletion of American high-end munitions.
- badly damaged US forward bases across the entire Persian Gulf (Bahrain, UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan)
- significant personnel casualties, including 18 dead and 400 injured US servicemen.
- Massive Federal budget costs now approaching $100 billion and rising rapidly.
Even more importantly, this misbegotten war has handed Tehran a durable pretext for restricting maritime traffic through and around its territorial waters and the Strait of Hormuz (SOH). That is, with virtually inexhaustible supplies of homemade missiles, drones and other tools of sabotage, Iran has been handed what amounts to a global economic Kill Switch.
Hellbound and Down 
Mosaic governance… Iran had a “hide and wait” strategy, which is what they are still doing. They knew the US could run out of ordinance. They are also good at hide and seek, pot shots with drones.
It was largely pointless on the US/Israel’s part. There isn’t enough of any Iranian opposition to take over.
TBH, I think the US should slink off and act like it never happened.
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