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It’s the Poor Man’s MAD (mutually assured destruction). They want this conflict to be as painful as possible so that pressure is applied to the aggressors to stop. The US can’t defend all of the possible targets, it causes a lot of economic damage and increases uncertainty for everyone in the region.

This is one of the reasons that most administrations declined to start a war with Iran in the past, the risk that they would do something like this, that taking out the leaders wouldn’t end the threat but would just make it more wild and unpredictable.