There isn't really a hundred-percent-assured way of preventing any country from getting a nuclear weapon. There is only persuading it that it isn't worth the cost. Undoubtedly the current government has a price, just like every other one.
And some regimes dont care about prices when they view the conflict as existential, and this war will only have reinforced that.
There's always a price. I'm unpersuaded that the senior members of the IRGC don't want to enjoy the pleasures of life.
Strategically it's the same. Every success the USA has had has tactical in nature.
Prediction: no matter how long this goes on and how painful some of the costs become, everyone is going to be shocked at how well "the invisible hand" prevents the big catastrophes and mitigates the lesser ones. Recessions, sure. Global starvation, nope - not unless governments start confiscating their own peoples' available food to sell at profit in tighter markets or implement other prone-to-failure policies like price controls.
~10 years (US involvement), ~9 years, ~9 years.
Iran will retain the ability to keep the Strait or Hormuz closed to merchant traffic (at least that doesn’t want to risk getting smoked) in perpetuity.
I worked at the Pentagon, studied in DC, and have deployed under US command to Iraq. There is plenty of sophisticated brain power in the Pentagon who would not / not have recommended that the time was ripe for a shooting war with Iran. They are not the problem. The problem is the leadership from a media personality with very low level military experience, a CinC without a clue who is only doing this to make money for himself, hs family, and his Cabinet, and the complete breakdown of all checks and balances in their political system.
