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?
Iran’s ability to externalize the consequences of this war (i.e. cause a global oil and economic crisis) is a point of leverage that the other countries invaded by the US lacked. This means that the war isn’t likely to settle into the kind of stagnant forever war that characterized Afghanistan, bur rather force the US to either keep escalating or back down. I believe the US would keep escalating until they suffer significant casualties, which might create enough domestic and international pressure for them to formally offer genuine concessions.
Alternatively, they (or the Israelis), may decide to go for the nuclear option instead. The same justification that the US used to nuke Japan, that they are fanatics in highly defensible terrain and thus too costly to defeat conventionally, can easily be repackaged and sold to the public for Iran. In that case, I can’t really make any predictions beyond that point. I really, really hope that doesn’t happen, but I can’t dismiss this possibility either.
In case of a nuclear attack on Iran Iran can hit back by destroying all the nuclear power plants in the region, some parts of europe, and perhaps even hit some in the empire too, so such attacks aren’t as “free” as they were against Japan. Not that the regime would let possible consequences get in the way of attacking Iran harder.