There are limits to what you can do with bombing in practice. If you want to hold territory then you have to put boots on the ground sooner or later. And of course, Hamas now has a very extensive tunnel system all over Gaza. This is a great watch on how difficult it is to counter such tunnels. So, all IDF can do is just massacre civilians, and then the whole world sees these atrocities making it very difficult for their western sponsors to continue providing support.

I also don't expect that Iran would want an open war, I think it's much more likely that there's going to be a lot of asymmetric warfare happening. We're also starting to see attacks on shipping from Yemen which could cause serious economic damage in the long term as well.