1) The Americans in this iteration have forgotten the notion of staying power. Whether I agree with the reason to go to war or not, once that first round goes downrange, you are committed to the stated mission, in this case originally stated as regime change.
2) A mission statement is not a matter of fluidity, though in this case getting the US to state the real reason for this war, if there was one, is like nailing jello to the wall. If the statement of the mission needs obfuscated because won't survive scrutiny, public opinion, or Congressional buy-in, that should be a good indication one should perhaps not embark on the enterprise.
It started as regime change, then eradication, then the denial to Iran of nuclear weaponry, the last of which is flimsy as hell. If one remembers the previous US strikes on Iran in 2025, the President declared success and that Iran's nuke capability was neutralised for hundreds if not a thousand years. It was then reported he became angry with and proceeded to fire several members of his intelligence community for disagreeing with that assessment. Not even a year later, that same reason, denying Iran nuclear weaponry, became the last mutation of the rather fluid mission statement while the 2025 assertions quietly disappeared. I can't help but doubt that situation has been changed this time.
The MOU does not spell out how the Iranian nuclear programme would be "terminated forever", but merely commits Iran to talking about it. If anything comes from that clause, I'd expect the UN inspection route will be where this goes. We all know how effective that was without regime change in the case of Iraq.
3) The lack of military experience is telling. There was apparently no coherent planning defining the current situation, the mission, the "scheme of manoeuvre" (how that mission is to be accomplished), service & supply, and command & signal that was accepted let alone adhered to by the commander in chief. No thought that was given to the phasing (classically assault, occupation, and reconstruction) survived. If any of this did exist, and I can't believe it didn't, there was no commitment to see the entirety of the op-plan through. Now that the thing is ended, there seems to be no perceived need to re-assess the situation now versus how it was before first round to see if there is indeed any resulting improvement; it just doesn't occur in the mind of the US administration as something needing done.
If you go back to the framework of the classic operations order, situation, mission, execution (scheme of manoeuvre), service & supply, command & signal, let us focus on the fourth one a bit. It has been said that, in military affairs, amateurs study battles; professionals study logistics. No-one has said much here, but this certainly has all the hallmarks of an assault that exhausted its supplies and no-one responsible considered the need to establish a supply chain to replenished the basic load each American element carried so as to be able to continue the assault uninterrupted. This becomes especially important when you are both in the attack and you have by far the longer distance over which you are projecting. The Iranians had both the advantage of far shorter lines of supply and of being in the defence. One wonders whose professionals had more freedom to do their jobs unencumbered.
4) Getting back to the notion the US leader did not have the patience to see this through nor was he open to accurate assessments of the results and appropriately re-adjust accordingly, during or after. Like his agreement with Afghanistan (that his successor foolishly followed through on), this one is simplistic almost to the point of childlike. The reality is that the situation (that first item in a military plan previously described in #3) is no different than it was with respect to both nuclear weaponry and delivery systems, the US has conceded on every financial point (sanctions, impounded assets, &c) and Iran has successfully assumed a right of control over the Straits of Hormuz it didn't clearly possess before the US (and Trump is the US) started the war. It is inarguable therefore that the US suffered a strategic defeat at the hands of an adversary it attacked, one who understands strategic projection.
6) I have not mentioned that these operations (2025 and 2026) have both involved Netanyahu's government in Israel, and therein might lie the true initial purpose for this enterprise. Without getting bogged down in guesswork regarding that relationship and its motivations, there remains this fact. By negotiating a separate peace this time round, the US has left its partner outside in the rain, something the rest of the world cannot help but notice and chalk up on the negative side of the ledger regarding US reliability and honesty in its foreign policy.
7) I can only conclude from detached observation that a US administration that has been relying solely on initial intimidation as its foreign policy got caught short. While intimidation might work in ("gunboat") diplomacy, it does not go well if things go beyond the purview of the diplomats without having the patience to plan an operation of this sort, the ability to sustain it, or the will to see it through.
A target nation only has to keep its head down, resist intelligently, and not cave to what was correctly assessed as little more than a bluff, wait until the US leader gets tired of it, and it will at the very least "not lose". In this case the strategic victory must go to Iran, for it now has recognised authority over the Strait while all other elements of the original situation appear to either remain unaltered or have been conceded point by point by the US.
While the administration has been "crafting" its own truth after this debacle, those outside their sphere have a clearer picture of the damage done to American prestige. As an interesting aside, it is reported today that the Sec'y of Defence on behalf of the administration has asked Congress for $80 billion supplement atop a $1.5 trillion budget, the additional to pay for this adventure.
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