The history since 1945 has been the resounding and repeated success of asymmetric warfare. Specifically, the US has not actually won a war since 1945 despite starting or providing material support to many. We've been unable to topple
Cuba, a tiny island 90 miles off our coast despite repeatedly trying to 60+ years.
We spent 20 years and $8 trillion on the War on Terror. The Taliban was in charge of Afghanistan before we started. they're in charge now.
Iran is a country of 93 million people in a country 5 times as large as Texas whose entire economy is built to withstand economic pressure who view the US as the Great Satan and who can blame them given all we've done to them since 1953. However unpopular the current regime may be, the US is more unpopular.
The US did not consult any allies (other than Israel, of course) so most of the world is taking a "you broke it, you bought it" stance. Iran is saying if your country doesn't provide material support to the US invasion, your ships can go through, which will further undermine support.
It's interesting that Russian and American militaries are kind of victims to corruption but in different ways.
In Russia, generals basically stole money for tanks they never got built and nobody really found that out until Ukraine. Russia is sort of a paper tiger now.
In the US, the leeches we have are defense contractors who are sucking more than half a trillion dollars a year in weapon systems from the government coffers. We build really expensive things that... don't really work that well. We have anti-missile systems that are a coin toss at working against cheap Iranian missiles, which we're also running out of interceptors for and replacing them will take years. We have no answer for the drone threat that is incrdibly cheap, easy to scale production and almost impossible to disrupt the production and launch of because the Iranians have buried bases and facilities deep underground for obvious reasons.
In Iraq we turned drones into mobilee assassination vehicles (ie Reaper drones with Hellfire missiles) but those drones are $10M+. The "enemy" turned around and basically bought off the shelf commercial drones and turne them into suicide drones for $10-30k each and can produce hundreds if not a thousand or more per month.
You will not find any military planner or general that isn't a snivelling toad to the administration that thought this was a good idea or that there was any path to victory, whatever "victory" means here, which we still don't know.
So my answer to you is... just look at a map. How do we invade? Where? To what end? What happens when they start raining done drones on us that we can't defend against sufficiently? We can't occupy a country this large even if we can take it over. Conservatively we'd need 1-2 million troops for that.
Put it this way: Ukraine is a fifth the size of Iran and has half the population and there was no way Russia, who has access to a much larger army thanks to a draft, could occupy and control Ukraine long term even if they could topple the regime.
To occupy Iran we'd need to accept casualties in the tens of thousands. We haven't seen casualties like that since Vietnam, possibly WW2. This is also a war that hasn't gotten Congressional approval yet. Why do you think that is? I know. Because that resolution might fail then what. This war was historically unpopular for a war before it started. How popular will it be when we have $8 gas and the bodies start rolling home? What do you think will happen in the midterms?
Despite the buffoonery and sheer incompetence of this administration as well as the pack of moronic sycophants around the president, I'm actually surprised it went this far.
Take even more moderate objectives like Kharg Island. Well we have to go through the Strait for get there. We can air drop enough troops to take it but then what? How do we supply it? Waht if Iran starts raining drones down on it? It's only 8 square miles. There's nowhere to hide there. And then what? Iran just blocks ships departing from a US-controlled Kharg and removes more oil from the global market.
Their Navy doesn't matter. Their Air Force doesn't matter. You can if necessary lay mines with fishing boats. But you don't even need to lay mines. You simply have to say you will and insurance premiums go 10x and ship owners refuse to travers the Strait.
The US may still be the 800 pound gorilla in the room but absolutely everybody who isn't Israel hates us thanks to this war as well as the tariffs fiasco. I haven't seen a single realistic achievable and worthwhile military scenario out of this from anyone who knows anything about military planning and logistics. I really do think Trump thought he could do Venezuela 2.0.