Supporters of the war in Iran have increasingly begun to acknowledge the high "costs of action" but to claim they are still lower than the "costs of inaction." Fair enough as a framework, and maybe even compelling if the result of the war was the permanent elimination of Iran's nuclear, missile, and drone programs or the installation of a new, less threatening, and more tolerant leadership.
In the absence of achieving those goals, however, their case depends on arguing that degrading Iran's conventional military capabilities (a valid objective) is worth large numbers of civilian deaths and wounded, U.S. military casualties, soaring energy and food prices, mounting costs to U.S. taxpayers (now reflected in a potential supplemental funding request of $200bn), rising inflation and interest rates and recession risk, a financial and strategic windfall for Russia, the diversion of military assets from the Indo-Pacific and Europe, the risk of U.S. and allied missile-defense interceptor shortages, stress on U.S. force readiness, growing tensions within NATO and the transatlantic relationship, further erosion of U.S. "soft power," the collapse of trust in Washington, civil aviation and shipping disruptions, costs to Gulf economies and their reputations for stability, rising violence and instability in Lebanon and Iraq, the possibility of Iran sliding into enduring internal chaos, conflict, and violence, and whatever other unintended consequences may emerge down the road.
That is a hard case to make that is getting harder every day.
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