> the Twelve Day War
The US only conducted limited strikes on Iran's nuclear program. The rest of the conflict was unilaterally led by Israel.
> whether or not the key OKRs had been achieved.
Iranian nuclear capacity was degraded [0] setting the program back by 2 years [1].
For a short term conflict, it met the limited OKR of preventing an Iranian nuclear breakthrough in 2025-26.
But this game of cat-and-mouse will continue as long as Iran maintains industrial capacity. The only solution at this point is generalized strikes degrading Iran's industrial capacity indefinitely.
If that also means Iran collapses into a Libyan style civil war, so be it. You put boots on the ground if you care about controlling strategic points and reducing civilian casualties - a generalized airstrike to kill one high value target and killing 200-300 civilians is easier than risking a strike force to extract that target.
We don't care if the Bagh-e-Chehel Sotoun becomes a bagh-e-chehel hazar jamajmeh, if Tehran's urban infrastructure collapses, and Khorasan, Sistan-ve-Balochistan, Kurdistan, Iranian Azerbaijan, and Khuzestan collapse into ethnic and communal violence.
This is what we did to Imperial Japan in WW2, Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and Libya in 2011, but unlike Japan and much of Yugoslavia, we have no appetite or interest in deploying a Marshall Plan or Dayton Plan.
That said, there is an offramp - give up the entire nuclear program and place it under American or EU control.
Those are the options.
[0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/what-is-status-ira...
[1] - https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-strikes-destroy...
> If that also means Iran collapses into a Libyan style civil war, so be it.
Pretty cavalier way to talk about a monumental humanitarian catastrophe.
Say what you will about the Libyan leadership, the collapse of the country was categorically A Bad Thing. Wishing that on the people of Iran is monstrous.
> Say what you will about the Libyan leadership, the collapse of the country was categorically A Bad Thing. Wishing that on the people of Iran is monstrous
Morally, absolutely.
But morals don't run the world - interests do. And it is in our interest to not spark a nuclear race in the Middle East, the same way it was in our interest to firebomb every Japanese wooden city during WW2 instead of putting boots on the ground as well as airstriking much of Urban Serbia during the Yugoslav War.
As such, Iranian leadership will have to give up their nuclear ambitions if they wish to offramp.
This is what a multipolar world looks like.
> But morals don't run the world - interests do.
> As such, Iranian leadership will have to give up their nuclear ambitions if they wish to offramp.
It's not remotely in Iran's interests to give up on its nuclear program. Probably the best thing that could happen for their security would be an above ground nuclear weapons test to get everyone off their back.
It's not like surrending their program is going to save them, just ask Gadaffi about how it worked out for him. Oh wait.
Also, it's not like they're the ones starting the nuclear race in the region: that one's on Israel.
"It's not remotely in Iran's interests to give up on its nuclear program. "
No, it is not in the interests of the very corrupt and evil Islamic Theocracy running Iran to give up their nuclear program. It doesn't benefit the average Iranian all. In fact the program harms most Iranians by making Iran an international pariah.
> Probably the best thing that could happen for their security would be an above ground nuclear weapons test to get everyone off their back.
Then KSA makes a nuke. Then Turkiye. Then the UAE. Then Egypt...
> It's not like surrending their program is going to save them, just ask Gadaffi about how it worked out for him. Oh wait
Yep.
But it will reduce the risk of us using scorched earth tactics to deindustrialize and collapse Iran as a warning to other countries.
A managed transition to amenable leadership (clerical or secular) and complete US or EU control of Iran's nuclear program would be good enough for us.
> it's not like they're the ones starting the nuclear race in the region: that one's on Israel
Take up Israel's nuclear program with the French, not us Americans - it was De Gaulle who sent his nuclear engineers to build Israel's nuclear program in the 1950s-60s [0].
We could not denuclearize Israel on time in the 1970s, just like we can't denuclearize China, India, Pakistan, or North Korea.
This is also why Israel was treated as a pariah state by the US from the 1970s-90s [1][2][3]. The US-Israel relationship only took off in the 2000s under Clinton 2 and Bush.
[0] - https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000271219.pdf
[1] - https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP86T01017R0001007...
[2] - https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP91-00561R0001000...
[3] - https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP90-00965R0008072...