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I think "dismantled" is overselling it here. Sure, burning through interceptors isn't great, but you seem to be comparing "Iran got in a few good hits" to "Israel was free to hit all but the hardest targets for as long as it cared to." There seems to be this common bias towards seeing Western nations as glass cannons, where only a few good hits are required to bring them to their knees, and you can win as long as you can tank whatever they throw at you (which is maybe limited by "moral" concerns about indirectly harming civilians) until you manage that and negotiate an outcome that favors your objectives. I think if you're against the West fighting a war they got involved in by choice, maybe this works to convince democracies to choose peace (see Vietnam, et al). I don't think it immediately follows that this applies to something more existential (see Israel vs. Gaza, or Yamamoto at Pearl Harbor).
If landing (conventional) ballistic missiles into enemy capitals was a decisive victory, the Germans would have won WWII.
Maybe true, but this is still a pretty big "if", and the existence of the question has prompted Europe to start actually investing in defense.
Iran only got in a few hits because the war stopped when the interception rate dropped to about 65-70 percent. Given the volume they were throwing at Israel that could have done a lot of damage if most or all them were getting through. And during WWII the weapons were a lot less precise. Now with Israel I doubt they were in too much danger because at worst they could throw a couple of nukes and scare the Iranians enough to call it off (not even getting into the probable US intervention that would probably come before that). When you’re fighting the country with the largest nuclear arsenal on the planet that wouldn’t be a reliable backstop.
That’s really the problem here. It’s not that western countries are glass cannons, in a lot of ways they are pretty capable. But when you are backing a huge nuclear armed world power into a existential corner it’s a much more difficult situation. And I’m sure someone will draw the right sigils in blood on floor to call forth @Dean and five other posters to explain to that this isn’t really an existential situation for Russia and that they wouldn’t do shit in response to their entire air defense network being glassed by NATO SEAD, but I’m pretty sure they genuinely feel that way and aren’t just being pricks for no reason.
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