[pjc50]

The Iran war isn't over yet. Plenty of time for it to become attritional, especially if the people who want Big Gaza / "mowing the nuclear lawn" to become the status quo are in charge. After all, Afghanistan was a quick victory, 20 years of attrition, and eventual exit.

[energy123]

Without factories? I doubt it. I'm not saying the US is going to win (in the sense of achieving objectives), but it's not going to be an attrition war like in WW2 or Ukraine. Japan had factories. Ukraine has factories. You can't sustain a modern war without factories.

Afghanistan wasn't an attrition war (where the outcome is a collapse of one side). The CENTCOM commander explains best why the US lost, it's because of sanctuary:

> The core of the Taliban’s command and control was in the mountainous town of Quetta in southern Pakistan, and the most violent branch of the movement, the Haqqanis, were safely ensconced farther north, also in Pakistan. All were off limits to our forces. Occasionally, Pakistan would apply some pressure, but it was never enough to reduce their ability to operate. I came to see this as the absolutely critical failure of all our plans, and I grew to believe that there weren’t enough U.S. forces in all the world to establish order in Afghanistan, so long as Pakistan was open to the Taliban. It was a logical error in our approach to counterinsurgency that could not be papered over or compensated for.

[pjc50]

> You can't sustain a modern war without factories

No, but somehow Iranian backed Hamas and Hizbollah forces manage it from factoryless regions of Palestine and Lebanon. That's what I meant by "big Gaza": a region that's substantially damaged but still capable of fighting, where US/Israeli forces have to keep bombing militants in civilian areas forever. Every few weeks a new pile of dead kids for social media. Is that the plan for Iran?

[energy123]

> US/Israeli forces have to keep bombing militants in civilian areas forever

It's not forever. A common misconception about insurgencies is that they're impossible to defeat because they're an "ideology". But it's more about sanctuary and state sponsorship. Afghanistan was a loss because of sanctuary, as per my quote above. This article provides quantitative analysis on that:

https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2010/R...

Hezbollah had sanctuary in Syria before Assad's collapse, and their state sponsorship is under strain because their supply route through Syria has been cut off and their state sponsor in Iran has degraded industrial production and finances.

> Is that the plan for Iran?

The plan for Iran is to prevent a fait accompli, defined as 10000 ballistic missiles (exceeding interceptor stockpiles) or a nuclear weapon. The best case scenario is regime change. The second best case scenario is coercing them into terms. The worst case scenario is to degrade their power projection capabilities without a negotiated agreement. But all three scenarios are considered better than the status quo trajectory by the belligerents. The status quo trajectory is seen as leading to a bigger war later (e.g. once they reach 9000 ballistic missiles instead of 5000), or worse.