Iran is not some fragile backwater that will crumble under the weight of American bombs. It is a civilization state with thousands of years of continuous existence, a population of ninety million people, and a geography of mountains, deserts, and underground fortifications specifically designed to resist foreign subjugation. The notion that air power alone can decapitate its leadership, destroy its infrastructure, and produce regime change represents a fantasy that scholars have debunked repeatedly over the past century. Yet here we are, over a month into Operation Epic Fury, watching Washington learn these lessons the hard way.
As of early April 2026, the United States and Israel have struck more than 12,300 targets inside Iran according to CENTCOM, with more than 8,000 combat flights flown and more than 850 Tomahawk cruise missiles launched in the first four weeks alone, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke to The Washington Post. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is dead. So is Ali Larijani, described by analysts as Iran’s de facto leader after Khamenei’s death and secretary of its Supreme National Security Council.
Despite all of this, roughly half of Iran’s missile launchers remain intact and thousands of one-way attack drones remain in Iran’s arsenal despite the daily pounding, according to recent U.S. intelligence assessments obtained by CNN. “They are still very much poised to wreak absolute havoc throughout the entire region,” one source familiar with the intelligence told CNN. The IRGC Navy still retains roughly half its capabilities, with “hundreds, if not thousands, of small boats and unmanned surface vessels left,” a second source told CNN.
The Strait of Hormuz remains under Iranian influence. No internal uprising has materialized. No regime fracture has occurred. Iran continues launching missiles and drones at American forces and regional allies.
None of this should surprise anyone who has studied the actual historical record on air power and coercion. Robert Pape, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago who also taught at the U.S. Air Force’s School of Advanced Airpower Studies and authored Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War, has analyzed over a century of air power history. His conclusion is unambiguous.
“I’ve studied every air campaign since World War I, and in all that time, over 100 years, air power alone—without ground forces—has never toppled a regime,” Pape told MS Now. “There have been times when there have been pro-democracy movements in combination with the air power; it has never worked. It has not worked in the dumb-bomb age, the smart-bomb age. We’ve tried so many different combinations, so much intelligence, and it has never worked.”
The reason, Pape explains, is political rather than technical. “It’s ineffective not because the bombs are technically ineffective. It’s ineffective because the bombing triggers politics in the target government and in the target society that work against us. It’s a politically self-defeating strategy.”
On the current Iran campaign specifically, Pape has written that bombing triggers nationalism in the target society, making positive regime change “almost impossible” and instead producing leaders “more anti-American, more dangerous, more willing to take aggressive risks.” The promise of air-led regime change, he argues, is “control without commitment”—while the reality is “escalation without ownership.”
Mark Clodfelter, Professor Emeritus of Strategy and Policy at the National War College, documented similar dynamics in his study of the Vietnam air campaign, The Limits of Air Power. The United States dropped roughly eight million tons of bombs over nine years in Southeast Asia and failed to achieve its objectives because “airpower could not affect the outcome of the conflict as long as the VC and North Vietnamese chose to wage an infrequent guerrilla war.” His broader conclusion remains relevant today: “Ultimately, Vietnam demonstrates both the limits of airpower and the limits of a strategy dependent on it when trying to achieve conflicting political goals.”
Stephen Biddle, adjunct senior fellow for defense policy at the Council on Foreign Relations and professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University, has emphasized that decisive results require ground forces working in concert with air power. “Precision weapons are making that ground-air combination ever more capable, but against resolute opponents, neither air power nor conventional ground forces will be able to prevail without the other any time soon.”
Karl Mueller of the RAND Corporation has written that strategic bombing campaigns “failed to produce the sort of rapid, decisive results originally envisioned by many of their proponents” and that populations subjected to bombing “did not rise up against their governments, demanding capitulation.”
Alexander Downes of George Washington University, author of Targeting Civilians in War, has documented that bombing civilian populations historically reinforces rather than breaks the will to resist. The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey’s own findings on Germany and Japan confirmed that even sustained aerial bombardment of cities strengthened civilian resilience rather than shattering it.
The scholarly consensus points to an uncomfortable reality the Trump administration refuses to acknowledge. If the objective is regime change in Iran, and air power cannot deliver that objective, then the logic of the campaign leads inexorably toward ground invasion.
This is not in the American interest by any rational measure. Iran poses no threat to the American homeland. It was American actions that transformed Iran into a hostile actor. Crushing sanctions, the assassination of General Qasem Soleimani, and decades of bellicose posturing created the adversarial relationship that now supposedly justifies war.
As Pape has warned, the current approach produces “leaders from the second generation who are more anti-American, more dangerous, more willing to take costs in order to punish America, and allies of America.” One intelligence source reviewing the current assessments dismissed the administration’s two-week timeline for finishing operations. “We can keep f**king them up, I don’t doubt it, but you’re out of your mind if you think this will be done in two weeks.”
The administration will eventually face a choice. Accept that its objectives are unachievable through air power and negotiate or escalate by introducing ground forces into a country of ninety million people with terrain purpose-built to destroy invading armies.
Perhaps it is time for the United States to abandon the fantasy that it can reshape the world through bombs and instead pursue a genuinely non-interventionist path. Focus on domestic affairs and the Western Hemisphere. Stop creating enemies where none need exist. Recognize that civilizations with thousands of years of history do not simply collapse because Washington wills it. The alternative is watching this conflict spiral toward an outcome that serves no American interest whatsoever, only the interests of those who profit from endless war and the state of Israel, which has long sought to turn Iran into a weakened rump state.
