Iraq had ~400 SCUDs/ballistics. Iran has ~4000 ballistics, with 30 years more development. Not leading tech, but accurate enough CEP (10s of meters in case of attacks on US bases in Iraq), and large enough numbers to satuate regional missile defense. Which realistically means all of MENA energy infra will be destroyed before US can hunt down Iranian launchers. 1/3 global oil and lng exports. Which is bad for region and US alliance like EU, JP, SKR who depends on MENA energy. US as large producer can't fill this gap. MENA energy exporters with US basing knows this, and will unlikely allow US to use their territory. That basically removes chance of coalition efforts unlike gulf war since most US allies don't have carriers, and the few that do have limited capabilities and barely add to sortie rate. Which leaves US carriers, of which US realistically could only commit 5-6, and at maximum surge rate can't sortie enough simultaneously to preempt/diffuse threat of Iranians missiles. Not to mention risk to 6 carrier groups. What happens if they somehow got hit. How PRC will react to losing their oil imports, and realizing most of deployable US carriers can't reinforce IndoPac. Or that if you take off 1/3 of global fossil fuels, most developing countries will be outpriced in the ensuing scramble. The short of it, is Iran can (on paper) mess up world as much as US can mess up Iran.

after wwii, vietnam, desert storm and the ongoing ukraine war, i have a sense that people vastly underestimate how much personnel and ordnance is necessary to wipe out the military capacity of a country with 100m inhabitants.

a realistic count probably starts at 1M boots on the ground, possibly 10M or more. even summoning all csgs for the task would only yield a force of ~75k personnel, which is one or two orders of magnitude too small. deployed half way around the world in a hostile region.

could us hurt their most valuable assets? for sure. wipe them out? not even close.