No. of Recommendations: 6
It comes down to whether you believe the administrations endless fount of lies or you believe in facts.
It also matters what you think those facts mean.
There's no reason to doubt that the U.S. has all-but-destroyed Iran's ability to exercise "conventional" military power. We had overwhelming conventional military superiority over them. Going into the war, there was little chance they could avoid having their air force, navy, and fixed missile installations and other military bases utterly destroyed by our air power. Those things are also relatively simple for militaries and intelligence services from other countries to monitor and assess. The Administration is almost certainly telling the truth about the amount of damage we've done to Iran's conventional military capabilities.
The issue is what that means. Iran is able to keep the Strait shut down because they also have the ability to wage asymmetric war. Overwhelming conventional military superiority doesn't mean that you eliminate the ability of your opponent to fight back - it just means they can't fight you on the conventional battlefield. As we learned to our dismay in Iraq. So even though Iran's conventional military has been all-but-eliminated, they can still use small-bore tactics (drones, mines, small portable non-ballistic missiles, etc.) to inflict damage. Because the Strait of Hormuz is so narrow, those tactics are effective in inflicting massive global economic problems. You can't bomb your way out of that problem.
So as long as the regime exists and has internal control over the country, they'll have the ability to keep their hands around the neck of the global economy. As long as the regime exists and has internal control over the country, they'll be well positioned to resume to their prior threat level a relatively short time after the conflict ends. Again, it took them barely eight months to go from their nuclear program having been "obliterated" to again posing an unfathomable threat to the world - the damage is much more widespread this time around, but with $2 trillion GDP (PPP), they'll have plenty of resources to rebuild over time.
