My point is that you can't bomb a country into submission. You can use strategic air power in addition to other methods, but the bombing alone was proven again and again to fail. More often than not, it hardens the enemy's resolve.

Bombing Britain failed. Bombing Germany failed (except for dragging the Luftwaffe into a war of attrition). Bombing Japan failed on its own until Japan had no navy left afloat, and the Russians savaged their army in China. The bomb accelerated a victory achieved through other means.

In Korea, Americans levelled cities and infrastructure until there was nothing left to bomb. That did not win the war.

In Vietnam, Linebacker failed. Linebacker II bought slightly more favourable terms for the US in negotiations, but in the end, North Vietnam won.

Even the Desert Storm curbstomp would not have worked without boots on the ground.

I'm just rehashing a better post on this exact topic: https://acoup.blog/2022/10/21/collections-strategic-airpower...

> This weakened Iran would have no ability […], close the strait, […]

Here is where we disagree. And i think this is the only point which matters.

I agree with you that the US always had the ability to destroy Iranian civilian infrastructure. I agree with you that doing so would cause catastrophic economic damage, civilian unrest, regime overthrow etc. It would seriously disrupt their nuclear program for sure.

What it wouldn’t do is reopen the strait. As long as some ships pay the toll those monies can be used to pay the “warfighters” and their weapons. It is relatively cheap to do so. Ukraine demonstrated this with their unmanned surface vessels. This they can do even if the whole hinterland of Iran is in flames and turmoil.

In fact the more their economy collapses the more lucrative this coastal piracy “business” relatively to other opportunities becomes. People who “before the bombing” had better things to do will find that shaking down foreign ships is still doable “after the bombing”. Some of it will be out of ideology and hate for sure, destroying all the civilian infra of a country tends to whip up emotions in people. But fundamentally they can keep doing it because it is a business which pays.

And regime overthrow won’t help with this either. In the absence of a strong central coordinating force you might get multiple separate pirate outfits camping at different parts of the coast trying to take tolls. That obviously wouldn’t improve their economic success, but would increase chaos and hinder transportation even more.

In short while the USA could destroy Iran as a nation, doing so would not eliminate the threat to shipping in the region.

Turning Iran into another Afghanistan would not have been a win for anyone with a memory longer than the last two election cycles.

"Without ability to manufacture missiles, Iran would be unable coerce people to buy into it's Hormuz transit toll system, and the strait would reopen."

You don't need missiles to keep Hormuz closed. Cheap drones, naval mines and such are enough, and those don't require that much production capabilities, especially if you get some help from Russia. It's enough to hit a ship every now and then, which keeps the insurers away.

Even without any infrastructure IRGC could wage a guerrilla war for a long time.

Putting aside the fact that the humanitarian disaster you envision would not produce the simple result you expect, it's quite disturbing that you have completely glossed over the fact that destroying Iran's ability to produce electricity is a war crime.

Committing an act of genocide against a country of 90+ million people would be the death of the US as we know it.

Nobody with any slight acquaintance with history could believe any of these.

Well yes, if cruelty is the goal, bombing civilians is cruel.

If I'm not mistaken, the Obama administration was about to accomplish every single one of those goals with a treaty, which the Trump administration cancelled. Bombing a country into accepting terms that they had already agreed to is not that impressive.

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