A population of 90 million people is irrelevant to the question of military capability. It is absolutely relevant to a discussion about the insurgency and guerilla warfare that would inevitably follow the conventional war, but I think you and I already agree that there’s no way for the U.S. to win that (nor should we try).

But I don’t think the bits of relatively small damage Iran has done to U.S. forces in the region is convincing evidence that they’re capable of taking on the full brunt of U.S. capabilities, even without going nuclear. Launch enough drones and missiles and a few will inevitably get through. But we’ve also been using our own drones for more than 20 years now, longer than most other countries. Most importantly though, we have significantly more resources poured into everything that would follow the drones in a full-scale invasion.

And just to reiterate: I don’t think any of this is a good idea, and I don’t support any of it. But when you’re talking about the significance of damage and casualties caused by Iran, you can’t ignore the fact that the U.S. is holding back so far.