I think what you are missing is how vulnerable the United States and its allies are in the region.

There are much much softer targets than Tel Aviv, many of which Iran has successfully attacked in the past.

The argument that the Iranian people hate their autocratic government might be correct. But a symmetric argument can be made about many of the regimes which work with the United States. No one in those countries is going to war with Iran to defend the US right to have military bases in the Middle East.

One way of looking at last week's ballistic missile attacks is that they were a way of demonstrating Iran's ability to retaliate in the wider region.

If Ramat Gan is not safe, then the UAE's resorts and airports, Saudi's oil processing facilities, the US installations in Iraq and in the Gulf, etc are not even remotely safe.

Israel reportedly took out >50% of the launchers. With complete control of the air space a launcher becomes a single use rather than its intended multiple use. The USA can defend its positions with Aegis/THAAD and its detection capabilities give early warning.

Israel has taken a lot of damage but relatively little loss of life.

Iran would be foolish to expand the war and they know it. They're not going to attack the UAE or Saudi. Iran's bluff has been called.

well israel would, because israel's existance depends on them.

from an israeli perspective, things cant be going better. if the US gets pulled into invading iran, then their only effective opponent in the world is vietnam'd. which is great if your soldiers arent the ones dying to IEDs.

without iranian funding/management, Hamas shrivels up and palestine is open to be ethnically cleansed. israel wins a 3000 year old war, and only has to deal with sternly worded letters from the UN for it.

> israel wins a 3000 year old war

against who? the persians beat the babylonian tyrants and enabled the rebuilding of the temple way back when. Cyrus is a messiah rather than ancient enemy

Against the philistines/palestinians

Then wouldn’t it be best to prop up groups on the inside? Start with providing restricted airspaces to groups who hate the regime, and let them be autonomous regions. That wouldn’t need any boots on the ground.

Say you give the Kurds their own part of Iran and help protect their area could weaken the rest. I think there is already such a deal in in Iraq afaik.

> or it's going to get crippled to the point of irrelevance or removed.

how are you gonna do that without boots on the ground?

Trump talking about annexing canada made them go from being sick of the liberal party becuase of trudeau to swinging back around to supporting it to an upset victory because they were the only ones standing up to america. and thats america's closest ally, iran is their most bitter foe

this is either gonna end any chance of cooling things off with iran (and make them realize they need a nuclear deterrent yesterday), or turn into another vietnam/afghanistan

the regime was unpopular, the US could have collapsed them slowly like they did the soviets, but instead they let israel's "trust me bro" on nukes pull them into another quagmire.

So you are betting on a quick regime change? Perhaps a 3 day special military operation? What if that does not happen?

Can't compare Ukraine, which is a democracy where the government enjoys broad support, to Iran, which is a dictatorship where 80% of the population wants the government gone and rules by an iron fist and public executions.