The regime change stretch goal looks like a failure. I think the Americans got duped by the diaspora and the Israelis.
And now it's a race to eliminate enough of Iran's TELs, stockpiles and manufacturing capabilities before the Gulf States drop out. Several are low on interceptors already.
It was a bad decision to not have enough AD when kicking off. And then not have enough firepower to achieve like complete destruction of most of Iran's critical capabilities in a week.
The regime only has to survive to be victorious. And they will seem untouchable if they survive.
The real question is what happens when the Americans declare victory in a few weeks and end Israelis want to keep going?
It’s not super clear what the actual strategic objectives are or what an American victory looks like. If the regime doesn’t change, then neither will its general trajectory of armament. They’ll rebuild missile and drone stockpiles aggressively, incorporating lessons learned from which platforms are most cost effective. They’ll build back quickly to be no less a threat than that which purportedly justified this attack.
Do America and Israel have a sufficient munitions stockpile to actually defeat indefinitely Iran’s ability to develop and replenish ballistic missile stocks? Not sure.
How long will the gulf countries play ball? So far they’ve had to profligately expend interceptors. This can’t last long. Iran hasn’t even really gone gunning hard for energy infrastructure yet. Actual attacks on shipping have been relatively limited.
Mere survival of the regime (the system, not individual people) is victory for Iran in the long run. And they have a lot of screws they can turn to make their neighbours really hurt.
We’ll see a major shift in Gulf countries’ approach to integrated air defence after this, including much larger stockpiling of interceptors. But there also needs to be rapid growth of lighter cheaper options.
A lot of lessons that should have been learned from Ukraine were not, and apparently a lot of mistakes had to be repeated. Maybe this will overcome denialism of the threat. You go to war with the air defence you have, not the air defence you want.
And America has to keep a lot of dry powder for other conflicts.