But there is a number of problems with this line of thinking. The first of which being that the United States has spent an enormous amount of money and lost service members in a conflict that has yet to achieve any of the initially established strategic objectives outlined at the onset of this conflict: regime change, denuclearization, destruction of state proxies, etc.
A “we won, we’re out” cut and run strategy may have worked in the past; but it is not going to work in this situation. A lot of people want to believe the propaganda, but the reality is that Iran is very likely the one who is in the driver seat, here.
The United States can declare victory and stop attacking them. Sure, they can absolutely do that. Iran can’t make the United States continue fighting the war. But what does the United States do if Iran says “no thanks, we’ll keep playing”? The United States is going to have a hard time convincing the world that they’re the wounded party if they continue to get attacked, even after stopping, when they started the war by assassinating Iran’s leader.
What if Iran stops attacking Israel, American bases, and GCC countries, but refuses to reopen the Strait of Hormuz? The global economy cannot go without a fifth of the world’s oil, indefinitely. The Trump Administration is getting a real-time crash course on why the previous administrations before him didn’t do what he just did.
Iran is a theocracy that believes their very existence is under existential threat; they are not going to surrender. They’re also not going to take a cease-fire deal which would just allow both sides to rearm, only to resume the conflict a later date and time. They tried that after the “Twelve Day War” and it proved that a ceasefire just resets the war.
At this point, Iran is very unlikely to collapse into a revolution. In the history of modern warfare, an air only campaign has never resulted in regime change. The Kurds are not going to be the “running back on the five yard line” and they’re not going to deliver the win for Trump.
This entire thing is a fiasco and the embodiment of “if you fail to plan, then you plan to fail” and it’s painfully obvious that the Trump administration failed to plan. I genuinely cannot tell if the Trump administration is so incompetent that they actually just gambled with the hope that Iran would fall over quickly, like Venezuela did. Or if they’re just going through the motions with the American public, trying to convince them that they tried everything, before sending grounds troops in, yet this was the plan all along. Either way, there is no clean off ramp.
