: Stupidly, yes, with carpet bombing. Practically, no, that would be horrible.

Could that work? It didn’t end well in Vietnam, which is about a fifth of the land area, and, in 1970, half the current population of Iran.

Also, they’ll pack a bigger punch, but I think the USA has way fewer bombers now.

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JumpCrisscross 7 hours ago | parent [-]

> Could that work? It didn’t end well in Vietnam

We can't carpet bomb to regime change. But we can probably depopulate critical areas around the coasts while ships transit. It's stupidly expensive, both in materiel and collateral cost. But it's feasible. Whether we have the bomb-production is a separate question to which I don't have the answer.

	▲	pjc50 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> probably depopulate critical areas around the coasts while ships transit. (looks at map) the city of Bandar Abbas, population ~500k? It's already being hit as it contains the Iranian Navy HQ, but actually depopulating it is a much bigger project.