alt Hacker NewsThe blog post said that the Iran war costs the US at least 1 billion USD per day. The US is incredibly rich and can afford the cost. What I don't see being discussed: What if the US (and Israel) does not put troops on the ground in Iran, but continues relentless, daily aerial bombing... forever (1/2/3 years)? I am not saying that you can control a country from air superiority only (this has been widely discussed by military strategists -- it cannot), but you can endlessly bomb their military assets. What would happen? Honestly, I don't know. I don't think it has been done in the last 50 years of war. (Please provide counter examples if you know any.)
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"There are a lot of people who say that bombing can never win a war. Well, my answer to that is that it has never been tried yet, and we shall see." - Sir Arthur Harris
The response is as applicable now as it was then. Time will tell.
I don't think we could see a bombing campaign like the one we've seen so far anywhere near that length of time. Partly for munitions reasons and partly for target reasons. There is only so much stuff to blow up and only so many bombs to blow things up with. We can't produce them at any where near the rate that would be required to just to do this for years.
Many of their military assets are underground out of reach of bombers. And you need somewhere to stage out of. Probably not the Gulf bases that are being wiped by missiles and drones at the moment. The aircraft carriers have been having issues and are being pushed back out of missile range. So it becomes more difficult and expensive to keep the bombing up.
That's one way to make sure people living under aerial bombing firmly support a regime defending their sovereignty, hence legitimizing the islamic republic. Example: Taliban, with boots on the ground, didn't get any weaker at the end.