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From where I sit, the situation is exactly the opposite. The first week of the war was spent going high priority targets (missile launchers, SAM batteries, military leadership, etc) with expensive long-range missiles. They also had to focus a lot of attention on shooting down Iranian counterstrikes. But at this point, their air defense is gone, and their missile attacks are down 92%. The US and Israel are now free to focus on low cost, relatively low-intensity bombing, using cheap drones and JDAM bombs. This is where they'll start to focus on targets like the lower-level IRGC commanders and barracks. The IRGC might be "well trained" at massacring protesters, but it's pretty useless at defending itself from this kind of bombardment, and once all they're military is destroyed they'll be in no shape to handle mass protests or Kurdish insurgents. Their nuclear program and everyone who ever worked on it will be killed, probably by Israel if the US for some reason doesn't do it.
Iran's last hope was shutting down oil through the straight of Hormuz. They've done that so far my making it too risky to be worth the trip, but not actually mining it or making it impossible. Oil prices have risen, but not to crazy levels- oil futures still seem to be assessing that the flow will resume before too long. Saudi Arabia can build new pipelines to avoid the straight of Hormuz, while other countries like the US, Canada, and Venezuela can ramp up production. The only country that really needs to export oil through the Persian gulf is Iran.
What it shows, mostly, is that Trump is not an isolationist- he's perfectly willing to go to war overseas if he thinks its necessary. That should be good news for the people of Taiwan, although perhaps bad news if that means the increased risk of WW3. I think it will pressure Congress to approve a large increase in military funding to increase stocks of the high-end missiles that were depleted in this conflict.
If killing leaders was a sign of success the US defeated the taliban 10x over. Loads of vietcong leaders died. The US replaced the Ayatollah with his son.
The air defences in the gulf states and Israel are so degraded that the number of successful strikes by Iran haven't diminished even though they are using less ammunition. Iran is holding 15 million barrels of oil a day hostage while the US can't even come close to doing anything that resembles winning. The US largely abandoned the gulf states and let them fend for themselves.
The Epstein fury has to fire expensive long range munitions that are of limited supply which clearly weakens them against China.
The US operation against China might be 2x the current size of Epstein fury which would be inadequate against China. The US has lost several long range SAM-systems and used an unsustainable amount of interceptors while failing to defend its bases in the region. With Chinese level of level of bombardment these bases would be completely smoked.
Compared to 2003 this invasion is lack luster and clearly shows the US would not be able to take out China.
We did. Then we stationed American soldiers in Afghanistan, gave them rules of engagement that prevented them from killing anybody, and spent billions of dollars on liberal NGO projects that did things like feminist opera in Kabul. We're not doing that anymore.
So far all that's been produced is a cardboard cutout.
The Gulf states asked us to do this.
Oh.
Hundreds of thousands died in Afghanistan and they completely failed. Bombing countries is far less effective and the bombing is minimal compared to Vietnam or Laos. Bombing barely worked at the scale that it was used during WWII. That scale simply isn't possible today.
The new Ayatollah is 56. He is less likely to suffer from dementia than various other world leaders.
Move away air defences, abadon bases and let them fend for themselves?
This is not really true. US tactical strike aircraft can carry larger bomb loads than strategic bombers in World War Two, and they do so with much more efficient and effective weapons, of which the US has hundreds of thousands.
There is a big difference, LRASM is less than 1/3 bomb and the rest is missile. Since the US doesn't have bases near by and because of air defences the US is relying on expensive, difficult to manufacture and limited stockpiles of guided munitions. These are also the weapons the US is basing its plans for a war against Russia or China on. The school with 150 killed girls was hit by two tomahawk missiles. The US only manufactures a bit over 100 per year.
The post I linked to is talking about JDAMs, which the US has hundreds of thousands of.
Although you have to be careful with public statements and photes, yes, there's reason to believe the US is using JDAMs in its Iran campaign. There's even signs that B-1s have switched to JDAMs from standoff munitions with strategic bombers, which indicates a willingness to commit very valuable assets to comparatively close-range work.
The way modern air warfare works is that you "kick in the door" with bespoke standoff munitions to degrade enemy C&C and surface-to-air weapons. Then you hit them with cheaper weapons, like JDAMs and SDBs (Small Diameter Bombs). This is why US officials have been talking about recently when they have been talking about switching to cheaper, more plentiful munitions.
They levelled Gaza and couldn't win. They failed at fighting Yemen in the red sea for a year despite relentless bombing and couldn't get cargoships through. Epstein fury is a bigger failiure as the straight of Hormuz is closed so we can't have years of crusading for LGBTQXYZ in the middle east and mass immigration into Europe.
This is all irrelevant to the technical point I am making about mass bombardment capabilities. If you're following this thread as a whole you will see that I am skeptical about the efficacy of using mass bombardment by itself for regime change. That's a separate question from whether or not the USAF can still manage "WWII scale" bombing.
Why does this matter? If you get the facts wrong on little things like "US offensive munitions stockpiles" you can more easily misunderstand how a tactical situation will play out, which can cause you to misunderstand a strategic situation, which can cause you to misapprehend the geopolitical situation.
These things are hard enough to understand even if you do have a security clearance and are kinda autistic about them (I don't have a security clearance and uhhhh I throw myself at the mercy of the Motte on the second question) and one of the things I appreciate about the Motte is that people on here are willing to correct me or call me out if I am getting something wrong. Please forgive me if I come across as pedantic, but I find this stuff interesting.
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