Originally Posted by Lowslung

You’d think we would’ve figured this out after Korea, Vietnam, and GWOT/Afghanistan. You can clean sweep the battlefield & still lose the war. These kinds of operations always, always, always take on a life of their own & result in all kinds of unintended consequences. Mil leadership after Vietnam said never again will we get involved in combat overseas with vaguely defined, impossible to achieve objectives. We all nodded in agreement and then promptly ram dumped that very sage advice.

We’re now uncomfortably positioned between a rock and a very hard place. If we walk away, Iran will control the straight, take in billions in tolls and oil revenue, and undoubtedly restart its nuclear program and rebuild and improve their stocks of drones and missiles. They will have learned valuable lessons in how to hide and protect their people and equipment & ferreting them out will be twice as hard the next time around. Bad option.

If we stay & finish the job, it will undoubtedly take more blood, treasure, and time than the already war weary American people are willing to bear. Securing Iran’s nuclear material will be no small operation, nor will finishing off the Iranian regime. Maintaining a presence capable of of striking anytime the enrichment program starts back up or Iranian drones and missiles menace the straight or their neighbors will be a multi decade expedition. All bad options.

Seems there is a reason previous administrations were loathe to undertake similar actions against Iran & instead found themselves seeking admittedly imperfect solutions that involved more statecraft than bombs.