From a pure military-centric perspective, the ongoing U.S. and Israeli war against Iran has been a smashing success. Yet in terms of strategy, the air campaign, now in its second week, is very much a discombobulated mess: U.S. goals are constantly shifting, metrics for victory are nebulous, and the emergence of a coherent endgame is nonexistent.
Militarily, nobody in their right mind can claim that Iran isn’t on the ropes. U.S. and Israeli airstrikes are pummeling the country’s military capabilities, taking out its leadership structure and thrusting the Iranian regime into its most vulnerable state since the nearly decadelong war with Iraq in the 1980s. Dozens of senior Iranian officials and commanders—chief among them Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s longtime supreme leader—have been killed, a consequence of superior U.S. and Israeli intelligence as well as shoddy Iranian tradecraft.
The Iranian government’s physical infrastructure is under assault: The parliament building and the Assembly of Experts building have been struck, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ headquarters is now a pile of rubble. The Iranian navy, never impressive, is for all intents and purposes defunct. According to the Israel Defense Forces, 70% of Tehran’s missile launchers have been taken out, which means that as the war continues, the Iranians will have to take extra precautions to preserve their remaining stock.
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