You're not seeing the big picture. The US is losing in Iran. How can that change? It would require a ground invasion. The losses there would easily be in the te

You're not seeing the big picture. The US is losing in Iran. How can that change? It would require a ground invasion. The losses there would easily be in the tens of thousands, and very likely order(s) of magnitude higher. And at the end, it's reasonably doubtful that even that would be successful. So on the cost the constraint is not just in dollars, but blood. Although even in dollars - I'd also observe another issue. Inflation and money printing is making money increasingly meaningless, but 'things' are not. You can fart a quadrillion dollars into existence, but you can't fart a trillion artillery shells into existence. During WW2 certain metals became so scarce that we started making nickels out of silver and pennies out of steel to have more copper and nickel for war purposes. The US is already blowing through massive resources against Iran, and we'd likely need orders of magnitude more for a ground war. These sort of resources simply do not exist, and arguably cannot exist. The defender has always had an easier time in war, but drones have bumped up this power by orders of magnitude. Decentralize your drone production, organize your military to prepare for assassinations, ensure significant decentralized under-ground logistics and production facilities, and you're basically good to go. I don't really understand what you think I'm straw manning. We're disagreeing while agreeing in a way that's slightly bemusing to me.