In the four months and three weeks since combat began with Iran, the United States has lost 17 or 18 of its warriors (with three or four killed over last weekend), with more than 420 others wounded.
Sixty Israelis have been killed. More than 100 Iraqis have died as a result of the conflict. Our allies in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have all suffered civilian deaths and every country in the region has taken significant damage to its infrastructure.
Iran has suffered military deaths in the thousands with many hundreds of civilians killed as well. The toll on the countrys infrastructure is massive â exponentially larger than that which it has inflicted on its neighbors in the region â with the highest estimates in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Irans conventional military has been shattered. Its missile and drone forces have been significantly damaged or expended. It is far, however, from being out of ordnance with which to threaten shipping in the Strait of Hormuz or its neighbors.
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Iran has avoided striking Israel during the most recent 10 days of combat as it fears the response of the Israeli Defense Forces. That is deterrence restored. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard is afraid to strike the Jewish State. Now it must be made afraid to shoot at Americans or at its Arab neighbors or international shipping.
The rump regime that remains appears to be a military dictatorship led by the 68-year-old Commander-in-Chief of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Ahmad Vahidi, who came out of retirement to lead the military dictatorship after the opening strike on Iranian leaders killed scores of leading officials in the country.
The “official” successor to the killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is his son Mostafa Khomeini, who has not been seen in public since the conflict began. Khamenei 2.0 is widely believed to have been seriously wounded in the opening strikes of the battle and has recently been reported to have been moved out of the country.
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The economy of Iran is in a shambles with the exchange rate of Iranian rials for U.S. dollars approaching 2 million to one. The United States Navys blockade of Iranian shipping is completely effective as to shipping, so Iran is again denied the most basic and essential revenue stream from the sale of oil via the oceans. Its imports must come from land or air.
The conflict could extend for months or even years as Americas blockade drives the Iranian economy deeper into the hole out of which it will take decades to climb once combat ends. The countrys nuclear program is indeed obliterated, and while the deep tunnels and caverns of Pickaxe Mountain remain a mystery to the U.S. the IRGCs ability to “break out” to a nuclear weapon has been crushed. (The U.S. has not yet targeted Pickaxe, and may not be able to damage its deepest reaches.)
Once measured in weeks, Iran is now years and years away from a nuclear weapon even if oil exports r
