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By that metric the US won in Afghanistan and Vietnam. The difference is Iran was bombed a fraction as hard and retaliated.
Yes, you can't bomb a facility hundreds of meters below a mountain without nukes. The wmd story failed in Iraq and we shouldn't fall for the same lie now.
https://www.csis.org/analysis/last-rounds-status-key-munitions-iran-war-ceasefire
There are good breakdowns of US missile stockpiles. The US was dimensioned for a regional war and blew through a large chunk of their stockpile to replace Khomeini with Khomeini.
The US was pushing for a ceasefire
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Iran_war_ceasefire
I think all the dead people and blown up planes in Vietnam would beg to differ. General figures point to about a 10:1 k/d ratio in Vietnam, which while lopsided does also indicate meaningful resistance. Meanwhile the Iran conflict is more like 200:1.
I think the point is that K:D ratio is irrelevant? It's a set of goalposts that gets moved around as needed in order to claim victory. Wars are not sports or video games - you don't win them by racking up points on a board. The important questions here are to do with whether or not the US and Iran have achieved their various war aims.
I am reminded, actually, of past discussions with Americans concerning Afghanistan, and a very strong instinctive refusal to say "we lost". The Taliban won the war in Afghanistan, and the Americans lost, and no number of statistics around casualty ratios can negate that. A war should be measured by how well the participants achieved their goals.
Personally I'm not willing to call Iran yet. I do think that Iran has proven unexpectedly resilient, the US has failed to achieve its goals thus far, and the US is probably going to end up worse off compared to a timeline where it did absolutely nothing, but there is a lot of fog of war and we do not know how theings will end. But thus far I am comfortable saying that this has been bad for the US.
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If this were true, then isn't the entire war a facade? America pretended to destroy Fordow and Isfahan and Natanz a year ago, but couldn't because it's impossible to destroy facilities hundreds of meters below a mountain. Therefore Iran can acquire nukes whenever they want and nobody can stop them. So what's even the point? What's the secret reason America went to war if they know it's actually impossible to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons?
If you believe this I think you should elaborate.
Not that I disagree with your premise, exactly...but I can think of several reasons we might have started bombing. Most of them involve underestimating the resilience of Iran's government. Regime change would make destroying the facilities a moot point.
"We only have to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down."
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