Robert Malley

How many people have been killed?

What's the economic loss that Iran has suffered?

And all of that, if you go back and look at the history books, those are the kinds of metrics.

that President Johnson, President Kennedy, their respective secretaries of defense would like to tout and say, look how well we're doing, and yet...

They were not winning the war because their war had objectives that the Viet Cong, the Vietnamese, could thwart at every turn.

Same here.

The U.S.

could have all the metrics it wants, and the president is very proud to recite them.

But when it comes to the genuine objectives of the war, which is either to change the nature of the regime in Iran or to make them utterly capitulate and surrender, those things are not going to be achieved.

And

And this is really, you know, in some ways the first globalized guerrilla warfare, that asymmetric warfare that Iran is waging.

In any such warfare, what matters is for the great power, the U.S., anything short of victory is defeat.

And for the lesser power, the weaker power, in this case Iran, anything short of defeat is victory.

What would be the point?

It would be more of the same.

And again, I don't want to underestimate the fact that Iran is suffering immensely and that the regime after the war is going to have a very hard time addressing the needs of its ordinary citizens.

And so the time will come

where there will be a reckoning in Iran.

But again, just take a picture of the war itself.

Yes, the US could bomb more bridges and more electrical infrastructure and more petrol infrastructure, all of which, or some of which at least, would qualify as war crimes.