> And what did the attack accomplish? It did degrade the Iranian military somewhat. It killed the Iranian leadership

Well at a minimum it did those things, which you seem to be underselling a bit in terms of effectiveness. It could cause further hardliners to come into power, but it might not if they see the folly in their ways. Ultimately we are still in the ongoing process of the war and we'll see what happens when we come out of the other side. But by significantly degrading Iran's military and obtaining the necessary air power coverage that we need to bomb nuclear sites unopposed, we stop or halt the progress of the scenario that I described.

> The nuclear material is probably still buried in the facilities attacked in the earlier strikes (not the war this year). That is a delay on any potential nuclear weapons development, but not more than that.

Well you can call it a delay but it's like an indefinite delay. With the Iranian military being degraded and the US having uncontested control of the skies, we can just keep watch on those sites and then bomb them if we need to and keep the material buried unless Iran agrees to let us take it out.

> It showed Iran and the world just how much damage they can cause with their control over the strait.

Which is precisely why we needed to act. In the future they could double, triple, quadruple their missile stockpile and that alone would make further action prohibitive. Which means they then go and get a nuke and, you know there's a lot of problems going down that road.

> In the end the odds are that this whole mess will cause death and suffering

Yea, and that's unfortunate. Iran already murdered 30k+ civilians plus through proxies helped kill many more throughout the region and via direct attacks on civilian infrastructure in gulf states. There's a simple solution here which is for them to stop pursuing a nuclear weapon and start cooperating with everyone and then none of this needs to happen. It really is quite straightforward. Iranians don't want this war, Americans don't either. The American government doesn't even want the war, they just want the IRGC to stop being crazy and destabilizing the region.

You can think about it like this:

Americans, Iranians, American government -> Good guys

IRGC -> Bad guys

If we eliminate these bad guys, we only have left the good guys who can then get back to cooperating and peaceful trade and relations.