As of March 7, the military operation launched by the United States and Israel against Iran has lasted a week: since the first large-scale air strikes on February 28, the battlefield situation has become basically clear: both sides have gradually moved from the initial "decapitation" and high-intensity bombardment to a low-intensity confrontation phase characterized by attrition and stalemate.

At the beginning of the war, the strategic core of the US and Israel clearly relied on a "decapitation operation" to trigger a chain reaction. The first strike on February 28 directly targeted Iran's Supreme Leader Khamenei and other senior officials, highlighting the US-Israel intent to eliminate the decision-making center to once again incite unrest and ultimately overthrow the Iranian regime from within and without.

The "Lincoln" aircraft carrier

But reality quickly extinguished this idea. Several American media outlets repeatedly mentioned the same awkward fact in subsequent reports: the "unrest" that the US and Israel had imagined did not occur. The "decapitation" operation failed to cause political disaster, but instead strengthened the nationalist sentiment of the Iranian people.

For this reason, after the "decapitation" strategy was frustrated, the US and Israel quickly adjusted their strike priorities, shifting from bombing military facilities to attacking civilian facilities such as oil refineries and airports, aiming to create a severe humanitarian disaster to force Iran to surrender, similar to what Israel did in Gaza.

However, after a week of high-intensity air raids, the issue of ammunition supply for the US and Israel began to emerge.

The US think tank "Payne Institute for Public Policy" pointed out that in the first 36 hours after the war broke out, the US and Israel poured more than 3,000 various precision-guided weapons and intercepting missiles into Iran, among which Israel alone carried out about 1,600 strikes.

But as the situation became stagnant, the subsequent pace of attacks significantly slowed down, and the current daily average number of bombs dropped by the US and Israel has been reduced to around 400 to 600, far below the dense firepower of the first round.

Similarly, Iran also fell into fatigue. Earlier, the US Central Command claimed that in the first four days of the war, Iran fired approximately 500 missiles and 2,000 drones. However, its long-range strike intensity clearly declined afterward.

Israel intercepts Iranian missiles

According to the report from the UAE Ministry of Defense, the number of Iranian ballistic missiles directed at the UAE has dropped sharply from 137 on February 28 to 28 on March 1, 9 on March 2, 12 on March 3, and only 3 on March 4.

The decline in the frequency of Iranian attacks can be attributed to two possibilities: either its missile launchers, production factories, and storage bases were destroyed in US-Israel air strikes, or Iran has adopted a "ammunition conservation" strategy, intending to preserve limited resources for a longer protracted war.

But regardless of the case, it indicates that Iran has shifted from the initial "equal retaliation" to a defensive posture of "waiting for changes." This change in missile usage from "wildly pouring" to "gradual flow" also marks that both sides have entered a resource control phase.

Additionally, one costly loss incurred by the US military during the week-long confrontation is not personnel casualties, but the serious damage to key radar facilities around the Persian Gulf.

According to the magazine "Foreign Policy," the "Pave Paws" radar (AN/FPS-132) destroyed by Iranian missiles took 5 to 8 years to build, and its core components rely on gallium metal - and China currently controls 98% of the global gallium supply. Therefore, the report claims that this loss not only weakened the US military's perception capabilities in the Middle East, but also exacerbated the bottleneck in US defense production.

Rubio and Hagel disagree on the deployment issue

Therefore, Trump's recent statements have appeared very anxious and defensive, constantly threatening to increase the intensity of strikes - but the reality is that if Trump wants to "honorably end this war," he has few cards left to play, unless he really intends to use intercontinental missiles as an extreme measure, otherwise simple bombing has already been difficult to break the deadlock.

As for whether to deploy ground forces to invade Iran's territory, Trump has indeed shown a relatively positive inclination recently, but his cabinet is divided on this issue: Secretary of Defense Hagel tends to send troops, while Secretary of State Rubio opposes it, and Vice President Vance never supported the military action against Iran from the beginning, and in recent days has chosen to stay quiet and avoid getting involved in the turmoil.



Original: toutiao.com/article/7614845156994318848/

Statement: The article represents the views of the author.