askchapo

Yes

https://xcancel.com/Acyn/status/2036963832502055229

Trump: We make the greatest military equipment… you got to make it faster, got to make more of it because we need it. We had an attack. 100 missiles were shot by Iran at a very important thing that we had. I won't tell you what it was for certain reasons. This element of importance.

At this point I think troops on the ground is an inevitability mostly because the US doesn't have the munitions to sustain this war for as long as they need to. A couple different thoughts here.

First, the US has one overriding need in the war: open the Strait. As we all know, Iran is pressing the economic nuke button and it's going to explode in everyone's faces, especially the west. It will prompt instability across the world in all the places the US wants it least: Europe, Latin American comprador states, the Gulf monarchies, the East Asian US military outposts occasionally referred to as Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. Revolutions are on the table in Latin America. US economic collapse, etc, etc. We all know the costs of Iran exerting control over the Strait. It's the most significant problem BY FAR for the US, since all of the empire's adventurism in West Asia is very specifically about This Thing Not Happening. There can be no US victory here without the Strait open to the flow of Arab family dictatorship oil - anything else is a worst case scenario defeat.

Second, opening it simply WILL NOT happen through an air campaign. The threshold for keeping it closed on Iran's part is so low - make Shaheds or the speedboat equivalent and be willing to use them. That's all that's required. The US hasn't knocked down this capacity substantially even before we account for the massive stores of drones they've got stored all around the country. The US would need to be able to maintain this pace for years, not months. Years of constant air campaigns launched from distant bases and rickety aircraft carriers on overstrained airframes with coked-out low morale pilots and expensive munitions. Though the close-up bombs are essentially infinite, the stand-off munitions are dwindling much more rapidly than they can be produced.

Third, therefore, the only way to actually open the Strait is to put in place a comprador government in Iran. The Israelis want state collapse, but that actually wouldn't meet the US objectives, because the endless militant factions that would emerge could just as easily keep the Strait closed to extract concessions or simply to punish the rest of the world for destroying their country. So the US needs to force actual surrender. That could be through a years long campaign (which we know the US is less able to withstand than Iran) or through successfully pulling off a Venezuela. But Trump fundamentally misunderstands what happened in Venezuela or why - it's not a comprador government he hand-picked, but a government following its normal succession procedures and carrying out a partial strategic retreat under immense overwhelming power it's unable to repel. However, the Golden Warfighters will continue to believe they can go in and kidnap Araghchi and Khamenei and whoever else to eventually get to Their Guy. But there is no Their Guy as long as Iran as a nation retains the capacity to resist. Delcy Rodriguez is not Their Guy, she just doesn't have any other choice but to surrender oil control - internally, the revolution remains intact. Iran has the choice to keep the Strait closed.

So the contradictions compel the US to further military entanglement. Retreat is surrendering the Strait and the political foundation for control over it. A gigantic mega epic spec ops beardy boy attack might kidnap and kill some Iranian leaders, but mostly it'll get all the US's best and most fanatical dudes wasted just like Azov in Ukraine. The US at that point can decide to push harder and attempt a larger-scale land invasion, but they'll all just get blown up on the way through Iraq. They can push through that, but it's the sort of thing that turns a US war into a political mass movement and threatens the foundation of the whole system (before even accounting for the economic disaster!). Eventually, the US will be forced to make the choice all empires do at this stage - surrender control over that valuable distant land and retrench around your closer, more pliable vassals. Decline and contraction are an inevitabilty, and boots on the ground are the next important step to make that happen.