No. of Recommendations: 14
You're narrowing it down to only the nuclear component but the broader plan has always been about Iranian power projection across the region...and that certainly is being degraded severely.
Is that the goal of the war? To degrade Iranian power projection in the region?
The Administration most frequently talks about the need to keep Iran from getting a nuclear weapon - not generally degrading Iran's power projection. Because, of course, that kind of conventional regional military power is probably not something that would really warrant a pre-emptive war against Iran. I don't think that anyone was arguing that U.S. interests were especially threatened by the fact that Iran had a navy, or had an air force. So while destroying those things certainly weakens their conventional military power, the improvement to our security interests from removing that aspect of their power isn't all that high. Particularly given the significant costs of waging this kind of war.
And, of course, given that they will certainly rebuild some of that capacity after the bombing stops. No one seriously thinks that Iran's going to throw up their hands and say, "Well, I guess we'll never have an air force again." Missiles are easy to rebuild - nearly all of their missiles were either destroyed or launched during the 12 Day War, and most of their launchers as well, and they completely replenished them within less than a year. Sure - we've made great strides in degrading Iran's conventional military capabilities -which weren't really a significant security threat to the U.S. (or quite frankly to the region, since Iran's ability to project power wasn't really predicated on their relatively modest navy or air force). We've used up most of their ballistic missiles, at the cost of using up the lion's share of our available missile defense systems - they'll have to replenish the former, and we'll have to replenish the latter. Is that worth tens of billions of dollars and precipitating a global energy crisis? Doesn't seem like a particularly "working" strategy to me. We're notching the goals that aren't especially valuable (neutralizing the Iranian naval threat), while not achieving the goals that were arguably more important (neutralizing the Iranian nuclear threat)...and all at great cost.
