This is going to be a long long war. Iran should fight this with intelligence and not emotion. There is a lot of Iranians who are emotional(and rightly so!!!!) and want a like for like thinking that is the correct approach to the war. The purpose and strategy (imho) is not to respond on a 1:1 basis as that will exhaust Iran's resources, and that strategy will cause Iran to fail this war in the long run as the USA has unlimited resources and Iran's are limited due to sanctions(this is a reality..) and economy.
The purpose is to understand there is a strategic chessboard here, where the current stage is now is on "who controls the straits". The Americans want to remove Iran's control of the straits. Iran, needs to maintain that control at minimum cost in this stage, so that for the next stage of this strategic war, Iran still has resources to fight that next stage. Iran should do what it is doing, i.e. cause global economic chaos to force pressure on the world, and selectively and surgically take out parts of the USA infrastructure in the region with each round and stop USA's attempts to exert control over the straits. Iran will take some heavy blows, but that is the reality of the asymmetry and despite the visuals and optics, Iran is still winning the battle of "who controls the straits".
Once Iran wins this battle, the Americans may attempt to come back with another battle, ie a land invasion of some sort.
I do think the core Iranian war fighting military strategists of this war are being far more cold, calculating and clinical in their decisions and this is massively frustrating the USA right now and the civilian strikes are a reflection of that.
This is game theory of war, at its extreme that we are witnessing.
Iran is not getting trapped in the theatrics of war that some here want, but more objective based.
