Subject: Re: The strategy,...is working
I personally don't think any of them are all that likely - but even if you disagree and think one of those scenarios is going to unfold, they are not happening right now.

Yeah. And?

Well, if you want to say the strategy is working - present tense - then you'd need the operation mission to be accomplishing some of the strategic goals.

One of the major strategic goals is to prevent Iran from restarting their nuclear program. But nothing we've done so far is working to accomplish that goal yet, at least in any demonstrable way. The regime is still in place, and therefore still has the same motive to pursue nukes as before - and probably more. The uranium is still in country, presumably in exactly the same place as it was before the war (ie. under the rubble of the demolished facilities). Iran hadn't previously restored their enrichment capacity that was destroyed in the 12 Day War, so we're obviously not affecting that. Etc.

IOW, if the war were to end today, there's nothing to indicate that Iran would be in any different a position on their nuclear ambitions tomorrow than they were on June 25 last year. The current war "isn't working" to prevent them from getting a nuclear weapon. If we were to have a massive ground invasion to depose the regime, or if we were to send in the several thousand troops necessary to locate and extract the uranium, or if the Iranian people were to rise up and overthrow the regime, then that would be progress towards stopping them from getting a nuclear weapon. But none of those things is happening. The stuff that we know is happening isn't changing Iran's position vis-a-vis nuclear weapons in any material way, except arguably to strengthen the position of those in Iran who have advocated that nukes are the only way to provide national security against the U.S. and Israel.