Originally Posted by rickair7777

We are pretty much already at peak escalation, a full-on invasion simply isn't in the cards from a practical military perspective. IR has nothing left after the SoH, other than random one-off TBM shots and low-intensity terror ops, all of which they've been doing for years anyway. Their AF and Navy are destroyed, and they have no IADS left. We can also plink away at their mech and armor inventory, leaving the ground forces as just light infantry. Not that their ground forces matter aside from domestic oppression and maybe deterring Iraq long-term.

The question now is how long to either open the strait, setup some scheme to enable shipping, or negotiate an armistice. Or likely some combination. Yes there's uncertainty as to duration and extent of economic impact. But the US administration *should* have a political incentive to minimize that (IL probably doesn't, like the GCC they want to get in their licks while the getting is good).

Of note, the GCC states are now pushing the US to fully dismantle IR's force projection capabilities before we call it off. Like most, they were not in favor of this evolution, but not that we're here they want to take full advantage of it.