Recently Donald Trump stated that Iran has about 20-21% of their missile arsenal left.
The first thing to notice: Trump's taking notice and paying attention. There's nothing flaky about his evident interest in the situation.
Secondly: 80% smashed is pretty smashed. My guess (based upon public information) is Trump and his administration are facing some internal resistance ( e.g. Gabbard's resignation) but mostly: they're upset about NATO and the West failing to support them militarily and strategically. The kind of America First protectionist politics that Trump does is naturally going to involve he and Rubio throwing their hands up and saying "Okay. So be it. If you don't want to contribute, we don't have to do it ourselves. Let's see you deal with the IRGC once they start to re-arm and get bolder."
The challenge for Trump is psychological, political, and linked to economics. The rest of the West and NATO know that the America First protectionist line was the conceptual, ideological, and operational motive for Trump's action on Iran, and that's likely making them sit on their hands, check their watches, and politically snipe.
Ethically speaking they probably should be assisting, but there are other hard-nosed political and economic realities to face. For example: why spend resources when they know that Trump (rightly) links suppression of the IRGC with US national security? Their cynical and psychologically sound bet may well be that he will be forced to act anyway, and already feels compelled to do so.
This is largely a self-fulfilling situational prophecy at this point. I would surmise that--given their extreme group psychopathology--the chances of Iran's Islamic hate cult not escalating acts of outright aggression in a crescendo of bloodthirsty insanity that makes their February slaughter of protestors and liberal women look mild is diminishingly close to zero. When they do it (if Trump waits long enough to give them the chance), the US domestic political opposition to further military action will have eroded to ineffectuality.
I moreover still think that strategically and tactically, Iran's posturing and stubbornness has been a mistake. It's very likely that US Central Command is using the time to produce a mass surgical drone capability on multiple levels of capability from LUCAS to new anti-personnel drone swarms. Once those are tested to satisfaction, CENTCOM's hawks will be keen to field test them. Trump will oblige, and recently planned interdictions by the US in Iran have a terrifying success rate. To make matters worse for Iran, the kind of AI that the US is busy evolving right now is not only world-leading, but simply unaffordable for a nation like Iran to match in any meaningful sense. US LLM technology promises to sustain the nation's super-power status even in the face of a monumental foreign debt.
