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I agree completely with the rally-around the flag effect, I expect there's probably enriched uranium or plutonium dispersed or hidden somewhere too.
But also I think air power is a bit of a mirage.
If US/Israeli air power was so great, why haven't they been able to destroy Hamas? That was their goal right? Hamas didn't have any air defences whatsoever. Israel's bombing has been extremely intensive, they've wrecked most of Gaza and gotten lots of lefties upset with how intense the bombing has been, people have been throwing out terms like 'absolute destruction', just look at all the footage. In addition Israel controls entry and exit into Gaza so they've been able to quasi-besiege it and block off food imports. But it still wasn't enough to destroy Hamas!
Nobody in the West really likes Hamas that much, they're considered a terror group. Gaza is a pretty small mini-state right next to Israel. Hamas is a tiny fraction of the Iranian military in strength. There have also been Israeli ground attacks. Even if Hamas was destroyed and Israel achieved a full victory it would not necessarily show that airpower would work in Iran, since just about every factor is much worse for an Iran campaign. And yet Hamas is still around, they're shooting collaborators.
If air power was so great, Hamas should be gone, right? You can blow up a commander, they just replace him again and again and again. I suppose that Hamas and Gazans are highly motivated to be anti-Israel and this compensates for being bombed? But it also seems that the strength of airpower is overrated if in even a highly favourable environment it fails.
The Iranian opposition don't seem to be armed, unless they're armed I don't think they're too relevant, the government can crush them if they want Tiananmen style, it's just that they don't particularly want to.
I would not consider Gaza a place where air power is well suited. Air power works on opponents who are at least moderately sophisticated and organized. A tiny band of terrorists who belt toddlers to themselves instead of bullet proof vests every morning is exactly the opposite of the type of target that air power works well on.
I think the way it works well is in combination with good intelligence to wage assassination campaigns against enemy leadership and important weapons systems. You can’t destroy an enemy organization, but you can degrade them and scare whoever the next guy is. I think the right way to think of it might be like a correction for a dog. If you just assassinate their top 10 guys every time they cross some line, they’ll keep filling those spots but the next 10 guys might start to think twice about being as oppositional. It’s definitely not a silver bullet, but I don’t think that means it is useless.
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Obviously in this day and age you can't trust anything (and I can't even dig the video in question back up), but Russian telegrams were circulating something that purported to be a CCTV video of protesters acting like a not completely incompetent fire team with some sort of machine guns. I'm sure the Americans and Israelis would have no trouble getting some of them trained and equipped if they wanted to.
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Hamas are deep inside thousands of tunnels and tightly embedded among civilians, counting on Israel (who are being held to first world standards) to value Palestinian childrens' lives higher than Hamas does. They have solid intel on Israel and their capabilities and prepared for just such a war for decades. Why are you ignoring that?
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