I highly recommend you to open a few foreign newspaper and lurk in foreign forums, groups, &c. you're either misinformed or blind

> don't even have boots on ground

Anyone with half a brain cell knows this would be the biggest strategic, tactical and political blunder of the century

> What do they hold, exactly?

What they hold exactly is:

- middle eastern countries who've been greasing Washington's palms for influence and protection received 0 protection, it'll take decades to rebuild any trust here

- Americans deserted their bases in the region instantly, they are now damaged or destroyed, the US conveniently ask satellite image providers to delay the release of new data

- Lost a bunch (most?) of radars from their early warning system in the region

- US sailors seemingly set their own ship on fire to avoid deployment

- Depleted israel interceptor stocks, more and more things are passing through the dome

- the US spent 12b so far to fuck up Iran, Russia made 6b from the gas price increase in the meantime, big brain move

- the US pulling out of asia to send more shit to the middle east, eroding trust of countries like South Korea

- Israel support in the US is falling fast, in the EU it's gone

- the price of everything will slowly rise, because everything we use rely on gas one way or another, they've been sanctioned for 50 years they don't give a shit anymore.

- the US showing their complete lack of strategical vision, saying something on monday, the opposite on tuesday and denying they even said either things by wednesday

The strait of hormuz is still closed, and a new government has not been installed.

From a conventional perspective Iran is by all means "losing" the war. However, the United States and the majority of the world desperately want the strait to be opened and have so far been unsuccessful in preventing Iran from blocking it. The US is also greatly interested in regime change, which has also been unsuccessful.

Agree with what others have said. And will add that under Trump US was losing soft power around the world. But attacking Iran accelerated that process significantly.

Most of our allies feel that they can give us the middle finger when we ask for help. More people around the world than ever before now think that US and Israel are the biggest threat to world peace.

This is new and uncharted territory for us. We will pay a bigger price for this over the coming years and decades than whatever we did to Iran.