The question was who was winning, not who was doing more visible damage.
Americans are too uninformed and too stupid to understand that distinction, which is why they keep giving the wrong answer.
It is like a fat guy beating on a skinnier guy, failing to knock him out, and then collapsing from exhaustion before the fight is over.
Everything Iran is doing now is moving the situation closer to breaking America itself as a state.
And it does not look like the US can do enough damage to a country this large and durable before the pressure starts snapping back and tearing through its own economy, politics, and society.
The Iranian state still functions. The street energy there is against the US and Israel.
In America, millions are already out protesting against the war.
And that is before even 10 percent of the real economic and social fallout has arrived inside the US. The harder part is still ahead.
People talk about this like it is just about destruction totals, but war does not work that way. Strategy and politics are the war effort.
This is not a shooter game where the winner is whoever racks up the bigger body count.
The US lost in Vietnam, Iraq, against the Taliban, and against the Houthis in strategic terms, because war is about political outcome, not just about who can blow up more things.
Why lose to Iran now? Because the path forward clearly leads to only two outcomes: surrender or collapse.
And honestly, this quagmire was so deep that you could already see that within days of the war starting.
And in those earlier cases, the US mostly just burned trillions and paid the opportunity cost.
In Iran’s case, when the damage fully settles, the US will probably lose everything.
