There is possibly a little more to the story..."

Navy Cmdr. Conrad Chun, a Pentagon spokesman, said the banner referred specifically to the aircraft carrier's 10-month deployment (the longest carrier deployment since the Vietnam War) and not the war itself: "It truly did signify a mission accomplished for the crew."[10]

On April 30, 2008, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said: "President Bush is well aware that the banner should have been much more specific and said, 'Mission accomplished for these sailors who are on this ship on their mission.' And we have certainly paid a price for not being more specific on that banner."[19] In November 2008, soon after the presidential election in which Democrat Barack Obama was elected to succeed him, Bush indicated that he regretted the use of the banner, telling CNN, "To some, it said, well, 'Bush thinks the war in Iraq is over,' when I didn't think that. It conveyed the wrong message."[20] In January 2009, Bush said, "Clearly, putting 'Mission Accomplished' on an aircraft carrier was a mistake."[21]

Bad Optics.
.............

If “this is all bad and will only get worse” is the APC threshold for “derangement syndrome”, there are an awful lot of people here guilty of BDS and ODS. Remember when wearing a bicycle helmet was cause for mass hysteria? Point being, we should be able to call a spade a spade here. It is apparent that we have an administration that is making decisions without fully understanding the consequences and that such ill advised “excursions” have the potential to have dire consequences for our profession. Maybe it’ll all work out in this case (I sincerely hope it does), but I would prefer a little more measure from the people who have been entrusted with making such consequential decisions.

Maybe, but the US stands to lose a LOT more than Iran does in this whole ordeal. I don't really care how bad it is for them, I care how bad it is for us and our careers.

And this absolutely was not our fight.

If restricting trade could end authoritarian regimes, then Cuba and North Korea would have failed long ago. The daily cost to the Iranian regime is just a few hundred of their civilians being killed everyday. That’s a cost they have proven they can stomach for decades. But there isn’t enough money in the world for us to continue this style of warfare for much longer than a few months. We will go broke long before the death toll will even be a concern to that regime.

Yes. It’s feasible. For how long, undetermined. Recall all that’s really required is a horizontal non-proliferation treaty. Now why wouldn’t a clerical republic agree to that?

perhaps not. But when a state has been chanting “Death to America” for 47 years, and sponsoring terrorists that have attacked Americans for much of that time, and are about to up their military capability with ICBMs and nukes, you don’t have to be paranoid to believe maybe we need to do something about it.

I thought we did. As a matter of fact, Trump said we “obliterated” their capabilities back in June. What happened?

It clearly would be cheaper to just destroy their oil and gas infrastructure and just leave. Be ripough on Europe and Asia but woukdn’t hurt us all that much.

Do you really think bomb damage assessment Intel is 100% accurate? On deep underground bunkers?

More fool you then. If you don’t get secondary explosions (which with 60% enhanced Uranium you won’t) BDA likely doesn’t mean squat. I used to work in an underground bunker with a rubble field over it and it was ALLEGEDLY good to withstand tactical nukes. Fortunately, I never had occasion to test that though.