re: WSJ/NYT - US & Israel Strike Tehran

The end goal seems like a bit of an “underpants gnome” strategy to me:

Step 1: Eliminate Iran’s military capability
Step 2: ??????
Step 3: Profit

With the fall of the Ayatollah, even if the citizens rise up and take Tehran, that’s not really going to stop anything - local Islamic Republican guard forces are mostly acting on their own without orders these days.

It’s also not clear that the protesters of the regime have a clear structure in mind for what to do if the regime falls (re-install the Persian monarchy?).

You also don’t need a military to cause chaos in the Straights of Hormuz. You might need a military to carpet mine the whole thing, but picking off 1 out of every 50 oil tankers passing through the thing with low tech crap would put the world into a panic just fine.