Yeah, I don't think so. I don't want to start repeating myself over and over again here, but US interests and our goals with Iran are much more limited than our goals with Iraq. When the US invaded Iraq, we formulated our goals in Iraq as democratization of the country. That required invading it, occupying it, dismantling the government, and installing a new one. We simply wouldn't make that a goal for a war with Iran. So how would we formulate our goals if we fought Iran?
What we don't like about Iran is (incomplete list):
1) that its destabilizing the state system in the Middle East, taking advantage of weak states to extend itself across the region and threaten US allies and our military assets
2) its nuclear program
3) its theocratic anti-democratic and anti-American authoritarian regime and its expansionist and fundamentalist ideology
4) the way that 1 and 3 together undermine US military objectives in the region
The reason why Trump left the JCPOA is because, while it kicked the can down the road on 2 (and who knows whether things would be better when the sunset provisions expire -- it was possible, but probably not), he thought that the agreement, which constrained us on sanctions, didn't give him enough latitude to address 1 and 4. One way to think about the admin's so-called "maximum pressure" sanctions campaign with Iran is that it's making 2 a lower priority, so that it can directly address 1 and 4. There's actually evidence that it's working, by the way, and that Iran's proxies are hurting, because Iran has to decrease its funding for them. (
WashPo article about that) Still, a problem is that it puts the question of 2 back on the table and makes it potentially a problem that requires a short-term response, rather than a long-term one, as was the case under the nuclear deal.
Now here's the thing. After Iraq, we don't really want to do anything about 3 directly, so we're not going to go into the country and install a new regime. Avoiding that kind of war is itself a US interest at this point. In its rhetoric on the issue, the admin largely seems to recognize that it can't do anything about the regime but accept that it isn't going away.
But there is still a danger of war. It stems from the fact that Iran and its proxies
already thinks they're at war with us. Look at that article from WashPo. They see the sanctions as economic war on behalf of the US on them.
For that reason, the way to understand the recent oil tanker attack is as a form of asymmetric warfare: we hit them by hurting their economy, and they're hurting us by attacking oil tankers. It's a form of retaliation. Which takes us to the danger of war. It's very possible, given the current situation, that there will be a cycle of escalation that could spiral out of control. The problem then would be that we wouldn't really have any objectives, or any strategy. We'd just have a back and forth of exchanging increasingly destructive retaliatory measures.
And that's one reason why I think we're not going to see a war with Iran. Trust me, there's no shortage of hawkish experts from FDD or whatever other right-wing/Neocon adjacent think-tank complaining about the Trump administration not using its military to retaliate, claiming it will weaken our deterrent, will encourage Iran to attack again, and everything you'd expect them to say. (Maybe you don't have to trust me. Maybe you've observed it yourself.) The fact that the administration is completely ignoring them is heartening to me. I think it points to the admin seeing the maximum pressure campaign as the most effective instrument for achieving its goals.