It's not even been two weeks since the start of the war, and the narratives shaping the discussion have reached a fever pitch on all sides. From the doom and gloom of "Iran has already won", to the somehow very popular (and laughable) narratives that Tel-Aviv has been leveled to the ground about 20 times over by now, to Trump saying that he has won.
Let's try to cut through the noise. As with anything, there's something to every side of the argument.
Positive Results
The military strikes against Iran have greatly diminished its capacity to retaliate. Ballistic missile launch capacity is down to 10% of what it was on day 1, significant reduction of drone launch capacity over the last couple of days:
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The Bad
IRGC's strategy of setting the world economy on fire is working. Faced with the existential threat, they are lashing out the only way they can: mining the straight of Hormuz, missile, drone, USV strikes on the maritime traffic. Multiple ships are being hit daily. Here's just the latest batch of oil tankers set ablaze:
Worst of all, they're not just stopping the traffic, they are trying to destroy the entire oil shipping infrastructure of the region. In their latest move yesterday, they struck the oil terminal in Salalah, Oman. This is a port city outside of the Persian Gulf that oil tankers were being loaded without having to go through the Straight of Hormuz. Other gulf countries have pipelines running to Salalah which they were using to offload their oil to bypass the Hormuz blockade. Following the strike on Salalah, the port is out of commission for now.
So if the Islamic Republic's war aims are to sow maximum chaos and upend world's energy trade, they are winning on that front, even if their missile/drone launch capacity is down to 5-10% right now.
The Ugly
Trump got into this war without properly gaming it out.
Yep. Just like everything else with this completely incompetent admin. It doesn't seem like they considered anything after the initial strikes and Khamenei assassination.
they're now stuck in a forever war with a country that doesn't want to stop
It's not a "forever war" per se, but the genie is out of the bottle. To stop now is almost even worse than to keep going. Now that you have Khamenei Jr. in charge, how do you stop? You have someone in charge of Iran who's been an even more radical hardliner than his father before the war. And now you've killed his father, his mother, his wife, and his son. You're going to leave him in charge of a country who was the biggest state sponsor of terrorism even before he came to power?
If the US suddenly ends the war now, here are some of the probable events to look forward to in the future:
1. Assassination attempts on Trump and Netanyahu by the Islamic Republic. Personal revenge for what they've done to Khamenei Jr. We saw less than 2 years ago that a determined dude with a good ol' sniper rifle can come to within an inch of taking out Trump. If the secret service can't even deal with that, how will they deal with a hypothetical explosive FVP drone on a fiber-optic tether that can fly past any jammers?
2. The usual IRGC "Death to America" chant becomes something more than an empty threat. They could plan something bigger than 9/11 ever was. They don't have a nuke, but they have 440 kg of highly enriched uranium. What if they smuggle some of that into USA? And what if they then set off hypothetical dirty bombs around Manhattan to cover the whole place in radioactive dust?
Now, Trump admin didn't have the wherewithal to think of the potential outcomes of starting the war. I have very little confidence that they will think of any consequences of stopping the war now either.
They've kicked the hornets nest. They have to deal with it now. And I have zero confidence that they will, in fact, deal with it.
