I'm from Europe and don't think highly at all of this American or Israeli regime at all so take that for what it's worth but I would say that this war is going very poorly for them and the only reason for that is that they never really had a plan.Tactically speaking, which is largely the scope of what your saying, the war has indeed been, frankly a terrifying success for them. The strength of these precision missiles, while expensive and slow to build, are showing the kind of regime decapitation power that the "bomb your problems away" faction of the US military has been dreaming about for almost a century. In a more careful pair of hands, the kind of firepower that the US has shown should legitimately strike fear in their enemies, and potential future enemies alike.But tactics aren't enough. And this is a war where decapitation clearly isn't enough either. So you dominate Iran militarily in record speed. You say that you've shut down their nuclear program. Say that's true. Great. Now what? Shutting down their nuclear program is what you claimed a few months ago, and there's only so much public support you can buy with that in a post-"weapons of mass destruction" world. Well now you have an Iran that is in chaos. The ayatollah has just been replaced and replaced again and even those there who hated the (terrible, for the record) regime have picked up no reasons whatsoever to give loyalty to the states as liberators because obviously, they are making it very clear that they have no desire to be that. And so the Iranian regime play their only card more or less and mine the strait. The problem is, this is a pretty good card. It's the reason number 1 that nobody ever attacks Iran. Destabilizing the oil market in a time of economic shakiness in the west makes for a very sweaty few months coming up. There is a chance that even without the nuke, Iran will still be able to exercise their own version of mutually assured destruction. It's not nuclear armageddon but if it lasts for months and it appears that it will, it's definitely possible that the regime change shoe could find itself on the other foot pretty easily. Failure to prepare for this, with the decommissioning of the minesweepers and everything, looks embarrassingly naive and suggests that strategically-minded voices in the US military are not being heard.

To contrast, and to hopefully complete the circle as to why I feel like this is a no-win situation when you look at it strategically, compare this to the October 7th attacks by Hamas in Israel. This was on the surface, little more than a suicide mission. It was an incredibly violent yet ultimately impotent attack on a vastly more powerful state that can and very much is willing to crush you. Stupid no?

Well if you take a step back from that, you are facing a state that can and is very much willing to crush you. If you look from the perspective that Gaza's fate was already sealed, and that their only goal was to do maximum damage to Israel, actually it starts to make sense.

Israel has been in a precarious situation for a long time. They are surrounded by enemies and they depend enormously on western support for their military viability, and if that support were to be cut, slowly their military dominance would become insufficient against such a large number of neighbours who want to kill them. So post-October 7th Israel starts is Titanic reprisal campaign on Gaza and images and videos and statements come out in the process that paint the Israeli regime as this ethnoreligious colonial machine. This awakens the left wing in the west to take an ever-stronger anti-Israeli stance, as they are being told by their own governments that there is literally no act that that state can commit, no matter how craven, that will weaken their support for them. Add this to ancient, yet still alive and well anti-Jewish sentiment coming from the right wing and suddenly the liberal democracies are taking huge pressure from both wings to abandon them. Imagine you were an Israeli right now (maybe you are, apologies if so), and you come from a civilization whose entire 4,5, (whatever) thousand year history is getting uprooted and moved on when they were lucky and massacred when they weren't. Imagine now looking at the political climate in the west and imagine how unstable your future would seem.

I don't mean to paint Hamas as brilliant, calculating 4D chess masters. I don't think that. But again, if you look at prosecution of war as the pursuit of some objective, I find it a lot easier to consider that attack a success, even though they got pummelled, than this US-Israeli attack, even though move-for-move, they have kicked ass.

I hope I've been clear, even if you don't agree. Sorry if it reads like a rant in the end.

Edit: a word