You’re wrong in a few ways -

- Iran has structured the functioning of its government and military to be highly resilient to decapitation. Every function has redundancy and every military unit can exercise autonomy. Their goal is to build a theocratic revolution around an ideology and not a personality, and intentionally built a system to survive a hostile environment.

- You have to find what you want to destroy and quantity can out last highly sophisticated and expensive systems. They have been aware of satellite imaging for some time and almost certainly have planned for closing the straight against the US navy for decades. What they have going for them is asymmetric warfare that relies on mass and surprise. For instance, the $20,000 drone that requires multiple $4mm interceptors to stop. They can just keep dropping those randomly indefinitely on their time table and burn a steady supply of interceptors that are increasingly spread out then roll out the hypersonic missiles they have but haven’t even used yet knowing the defenses have been spread thin across an ever increasingly wide region as they demonstrate the radius of attack they have. Ground warfare would be against an enemy who has fortified and prepared for decades with full awareness of our capabilities as we demonstrated them globally.

- the idiocy of a talk show host leading a military commanded by a real estate developer turned reality tv show host with delusions of megalomaniacal grandeur can self defeat any military against any foe

Thanks, I appreciate the reply. My contention was only about Iran's navy and their ability to field ships that can launch ballistic missiles. I believe the GP or GGP was implying that Iran still has "boats" with which they could extend the range of their ballistic missiles even further. That's what I think is a far cry from reality – the US and Israel surely know where those ships would be and would be more than capable of destroying them.

Regarding the substance of your comment: I'm not sure I agree about being resilient to decapitation, as the US and Israel have apparently become very skilled at locating the people they want to kill. But I agree with all the rest, especially regarding that bloviating ass, Hegseth.

The thing is, as I understand it, is every function has four designated replacements and a process for the replacements replacement in the scenario all four people are lost. Every military unit has autonomous instructions they carry out without central command.

Israel has been assassinating people for decades. They’re aware that the strategy would be this one. They’ve designed an organizational structure that’s not dependent on individuals. That’s why you see a lot of the senior leaders have had very varied roles over the years - like wildly so. No one in their organization is indispensable, and the supreme ayatollah is a title not a person. They elected his son in coma as a message that the person isn’t relevant, it’s a symbolic role with invested power in the role not the person.

There’s no reason to believe assassinating individuals will achieve very much. It has not seemed to slow them down an iota so far, and I think at this point we have done enough personal damage to their leadership that there is no way to end the war. Even if we stop, it will go one through terrorism and proxy wars at a greater clip than ever before. Only an invasion will work, and I suspect that would be next to impossible to succeed at.

I do not think the US will win this. If we had had a plan, had enlisted allies, had prepared perhaps. But Trump just thought this was like Venezuela and YOLO’ed not realizing it’s not a dictatorship there.

Think Hydra, not lion.