Iraq was a genocide and full blown regime change war, with large scale ground invasion and occupation. The US public is heavily against any Iraq war repeat, which was pure evil, chaotic, and cost trillions of dollars for Americans. It was also some retarded fit of rage following 9/11 that Iraq had nothing to do with.
The war strategies of today have evolved heavily to be more cost effective and efficient. They don't seem to include any shock and awe effect anymore. They're more rapid, short term but intense. You saw the two months of US strikes on Yemen didn't inflict more than 250 casualties.
It's only the terrorist piece of shit Israel thats military doctrine is purely genocide centric and seeks to dominate neighbors through threats of total a annihilation.
The US doesn't seek to occupy nations and withdraw/leave. Israel on other hand doesn't want to leave and would love to bend international law to exterminate people of region to take over because they're pure evil.
My opinion of Israel is that it's a terrorist nation with a terrorist population that have to be annihilated before they annihilate us.
The US on other hand is not going to seek to annihilate Iranian people and the military assets in region are not even suitable for shock and awe style operation. It can be high intensity and suistained, similar to Israeli strikes on Lebanon (but even less imo) and more targeted at industrial/military sites as opposed to civilian apartment blocks like terrorist Israel does.
The US should ditch Israel and ally with middle Easterners. They have a lot more to offer than that scum state.
That being said if they do attack -- they're going to hit around 1,000 or more targets in the first day or days. Which seems like a lot, it is. Wouldn't be good for IRGC and Iranian military but in context of Iran's size, it is not that massive as a shock and awe operation. But would rapidly weaken Iran.
If Israel is involved in opening strikes it can be even more than that.
Then it would go down to around 300-500 targets a day for a few weeks then 100-200 a day.
US would not target families of IRGC members. I don't think so. They did with ISIS in Iraq and Syria, Libya, but if they are going for regime change they want to flip positions of those in power and would make sense to not target Iranian civilian population. Iran is too large to go after civilian families, imo.
They are however going to target many sites around the whole nation. Especially around coast area.
It's unlikely to be limited if Trump approves strikes.
Iran's success depends on how long it can hold out for and keep delivering retaliatory strikes even if smaller scale but ability to keep inflicting damage.
US military strategists are taking that into account and likely trying to deliver strong decipation packages to limit Iran's ability to lash out afterwards.....
I don't know how well fortified/protected Iran's weapons systems are. But the hesitation by the US makes me think they don't like the state of alert Iran is in and aren't quite finding conditions suitable for their decipation strike package ....
They definitely can see some Iranian leadership that's not what's causing the delay. It's probably the weapons systems that are well enough protected giving Iran relatively extensive retailatory capabilities
