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Nuking Tehran wouldn’t destroy the regime. Tehran is actually a comparative hotbed of opposition compared to other cities. Power and the IRGC are highly distributed, as are weapons stockpiles, missiles, the conventional military, and the nuclear program. Iran is too big to defeat militarily with anything other than a ground invasion, a spontaneous revolution, or both. Even the Japanese only surrendered because they knew the alternative was full invasion. Israel can never invade Iran.
Iran is actually more vulnerable to nuclear weapons than the US or Russia because a larger portion of its military and economy is concentrated in its capital compared to Moscow or Washington, D.C.: nearly 20% of Iran's population and more of their economy is in the metropolitan area of Tehran. And speaking of power, the list of targets is, as I understand it, a target set of less than 150 to take out 90% of the country's power.
I suppose Israel emptying the silos to kill or mutilate the wealthiest and smartest fifth of Iran and turning off the power for the survivors might not "destroy the regime" but I do think it would count as a military defeat for Iran.
Depends on the propaganda and PR, doesn't it? There's plenty of people out there who think the US has had more significant materiel losses in terms of planes/ships than Iran has.
Now I'm imagining Star Wars as rebel propaganda to explain why having Alderaan completely obliterated was actually a huge rebel victory! when in real life there is zero reason to believe that the Death Star was in fact destroyed by a small team of X-Wings, it's borderline impossible and even the rebel copium-huffers have to insist that it only happened due to literal magic.
Write that down! Write that down!
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