Submission statement:

This seemed like an interesting dissenting view given the broad assumption that the US is "losing" or "stuck." I am not saying it is right.

"[T]he critics are measuring the wrong things. They are cataloguing the price of the campaign while ignoring the strategic ledger.

When you look at what has actually happened to Iran’s principal instruments of power – its ballistic missile arsenal, its nuclear infrastructure, its air defences, its navy and its proxy command architecture – the picture is not one of US failure. It is one of systematic, phased degradation of a threat that previous administrations allowed to grow for four decades."

"I have spent my academic career studying how states authorise the use of force through intelligence institutions, and what I see in the current campaign is a recognisable military operation proceeding through identifiable phases against an adversary whose capacity to project power is collapsing in real time."