President Trump’s threat to “decapitate” Iran if no agreement is reached raised a question for me: How do you decapitate an organization that has no single head?
One lesson of the conflict so far is that Iran’s military and political structure appears decentralized enough to continue functioning despite heavy losses among senior leaders. Leadership strikes may disrupt operations but they have not produced collapse.
A prolonged war of attrition could eventually deplete Iran’s missiles and drones. Whether it would similarly deplete the willingness of people to continue resisting is a much more difficult question.
Link goes to a list of our major bombing campaigns since WW2, also including bombing campaigns by other countries. They have a low success rate. Personally, I think the only clear case of success by bombing alone was the NATO bombing in Yugoslavia and in that case we were just trying to get an invading military to leave. ( I dont think Japan fits. We had firebombed them pretty successfully and they dint quit and we had land armies plus navies fighting for years.)
Israel has been bombing Gaza for 3 years now, and ground troops, and no end in sight. Also, I think some of the claims about munitions shortages are pretty credible. The only option I see if Trump wants to achieve his (apparent) goals is to invade and occupy.
Steve
https://247wallst.com/military/2026/03/25/the-most-devastating-bombing-campaigns-in-military-history/
Replacing Trump solves nothing, because, in hindsight sight, he is the predictable minion of the criminal class that rules us.
The regime in Washington is a rogue, terrorist state, with nukes. Its denizens are, almost without exception, proven war criminals. It has been this way forever. Since 1945, the regime, all Epsteins, has started over 80% of all the wars that have occurred, almost always against countries that were at peace with us and our allies.
The Epsteins have also attacked working class and middle class Americans, seizing for themselves all the productivity that has occurred since 1965.
Iran has to all intents and purposes won this war, which we started at Netanyahu’s behest, to impose a puppet regime on the Iranian people. Iran won, because its government remains intact, and it has even greater support than before we started killing its leaders and school girls. It won, because it now controls the Straits of Hormuz, which it didn’t before the war.
Iran has also humiliated our military, and in a sense it wrecked it, revealing just how incompetent our senior officers are and just how thin our military capacity is. We can conduct air raids for a few weeks, and then must withdraw to rearm. We cannot defend our most valuable assets and people from determined counter raids.
These problems go back at least one generation. At its peak, Westmoreland had at his disposal 500,000 American ground troops and 1.5 million ARVN, plus as much of the US Air Force and Navy as he desired. Our forces were tripping over each other. And we lost.
God forbid the Epsteins launch a ground invasion of Iran. Would it even be possible? What is the assembly area? The slaughter of American troops would approach WW I levels (130,000 dead in 11 months).
“The statement “You know you never defeated us on the battlefield,” followed by “That may be so, but it is also irrelevant,” was made by a North Vietnamese colonel during a conversation with an American colonel in Hanoi in April 1975. ”
The loss in Vietnam was a strategic loss, not a tactical one. We went in under false pretenses, tried to support weak and corrupt S vietnamese governments, didnt have a clear endpoint and our government lied to us about how well the war was going and the likelihood of achieving our goals. The constant deaths, no achievable goals and the realization we were being lied to lead to major domestic unrest. That meant we had to leave. (Things like My Lai didnt help either.)
This war like our other recent wars is again lacking on the strategic level. Tactically we are fine. However, we ignored the fact that there is no good way to keep the strait open*. We (meaning Trump mostly) believed that if we bombed Iran a lot they would give up, despite our past history showing that seldom works. We believed that the people of Iran would be so happy about being bombed they would overthrow their govt. Anyway, our issue is the civilian leadership.
* I hope our military leaders were clear about this with Trump. I have heard several generals claim we can keep it open but I have to think they are referring to keeping it open for our navy. yes, we can keep it open for fast moving, heavily armed destroyers. Not so much for slow, wallowing tankers carrying 2 million barrels of oil, basically a large target.
Steve
The key problem is a flawed theory of victory.
steve: They have a low success rate. Personally, I think the only clear case of success by bombing alone was the NATO bombing in Yugoslavia and in that case we were just trying to get an invading military to leave.
Even that required ground forces to press the issue. Consider WWI. When faced with bombardment, the enemy dispersed and entrenched. Even when somehow managing to decimate the enemy (death, injury, shellshock), once the bombardment ceased, the remainders emerged with machine guns and other weaponry sufficient to repel any conventional attack. The problem with dispersal and entrenchment is being subject to defeat in detail, so when confronting ground forces, the reverse occurs, forces are concentrated.
In Kosovo, NATO initially relied almost entirely on air power, including attacks on infrastructure and military targets. One important development came during the Battle of Paštrik, when the KLA ground offensive compelled Yugoslav forces to reinforce and concentrate along the border. Those concentrations created more opportunities for NATO aircraft to attack artillery, armor, and logistics. Paštrik increased the military pressure on Yugoslav forces and contributed to the broader campaign that ultimately led Belgrade to accept NATO’s terms. In other words, bombardment alone did not force an end to the hostilities.
Might want to mention the difference between WWI and Kosovo. In WWI, artillery had to cease before ground operations could begin to avoid friendly fire. So, it was artillery to weaken a point on the enemy line, then attack with everything you got. Unfortunately, for the attackers, it only took a few survivors emerging from the trenches with machine guns to rake the attackers.
In Kosovo, NATO had smart bombs, so they could attack very near to KLA positions. The KLA acted as the anvil while NATO was the hammer. KLA fighters said they watched as the Serbian positions were lit up by the bombardment.
Same problem in Iran today. Bombing alone can’t destroy an army that is dispersed.