They definitely can defeat US intervention and cause a lot of damage to their position in the middle east, but I keep mulling over what they can win. They can certainly force them to abandon some bases closer to them and maybe even keep a toll of some kind of the strait, but I don’t think it’s realistic to expect to force the US to abandon the middle east and even Israel. At that point they’d need to actually move troops or something to do that, which isn’t realistic.
Maybe just force them to give up sanctions? And make the bomb?
Good points, I’d just like to say that if they go for the nuclear option I feel like they’d have no way of whitewashing it into a good thing. And just like Japan, it wouldn’t cause a surrender, unless they really wiped out all of Iran instead of a couple of cities and at that point there wouldn’t be anyone to surrender anyway.