You think the US has shown itself as to be extremely competent in the Iran war? If you were talking about Iraq, that was completely different leadership.
At the time of the Iraq war the US was holding all the cards. It had a perfected playbook, the optimal technology, and support from the population. In the Iran war the old playbook is ineffective, the technology is too expensive to keep it up, and the popular support for a war demanded by another country isn't there.
And yes... you have the current crop of leaders who couldn't lead their way out of a wet paper bag.
Are you trolling
From a military standpoint, yes. You have to have your head buried in the sand to think we didn’t have significant loss of military assets in the region.
That's why even in the nuclear Navy, as crazy as they are about reactor safety, they would train and preach continuously that "safety of ship" is more important than reactor safety, because the reactor is not safe if the ship is not safe.
None of that seems like it jibes with your description.
So again - the execution shows significant tactical competence. But the strategic direction is absolutely disastrous.
strategic failure - iran shrugged it off and now are causing massive damage to world economy with no end in sight.
The US has been consistently tactically excellent. Strategically this is a blundering loss.
If you strategically aim your awesome unmatched powers the wrong way you can still lose.
Our ability to defend our allies in the region is non existent, and we lost almost all of our radar capabilities which will take a decade minimum to rebuild. That’s assuming hostilities end tomorrow.
The real question is whether political objectives are achieved. In Iran, those were vaguely defined to begin with, but depending on the moment and mood of the President they were:
1. Prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon now or in the foreseeable future (Not Achieved)
2. Remove Iran’s theocratic anti-American regime (Not Achieved)
3. Maintain international access to key shipping routes (Negative Achieved, much worse than pre-war status quo)
So after spending billions of dollars, depleting stockpiles of our most modern precision weapons against a vastly inferior military technologically, losing 18 American lives and resulting in both global economic disruption and to our Gulf allies, the war has failed to accomplish any objectives and left everyone in a worse position than before the war except the IRGC.
These costs are continuing since there is no end in sight and it seems the US is running out of some of the equipment it has used.
Iran gained straight of hormuz. It gained chuckpaz and confidence too. It is now itching to play major regional power
As is, the US can stand-off and torment Iran for a very, very long time.
$31 trillion economy. $94,000 GDP per capita (nearly 3x Japan for reference). The US can spend $100 billion annually on bombing Iran for the next decade entirely without harming its economy in a meaningful way.
The US doesn't have to let off. Iran is pinned, massively eroded, and the US is only losing money. Iran has lost all of its proxies, its military is entirely broken (and fully capable of waging a guerrilla conflict), its navy is gone, its airforce is gone, its military manufacturing is substantially eroded, and Russia is boiling. The reason the US is going back and forth on peace, is for the same exact same reason it's in the US interest to bleed Russia. It's this: let's pretend we want peace, while we endlessly grind Iran down.
And the reasons for bombing Iran are...?
You could argue they'd never use their power unless attacked, but I don't think you can be certain of that. It comes down to if you can accept that a non-rational actor can be allowed to have this power (or nuclear weapons for that matter).
Now that the cat is out of the bag it would be a terrible idea not to finish the job and make sure Iran doesn't have this power ever again.