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How is Iran going to rebuild their manufacturing when we can bomb it whenever we want and they are running out of money?
Cute, but California’s GDP is ~10x Iran’s. There are military bases in San Diego with more military capacity than Iran.
We can bomb things, we can't bomb everything.
The US has made building things 1000x more difficult than it needs to be. A US with the military efficiency of WWII US and modern weaponry would spank today's US. So a much poorer Iran can do quite well.
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The last time the USAF tried switching from using stand-off munitions to dumb bombs they began rapidly taking airframe losses and nearly had a pilot taken hostage. Hence why they instead used up nearly the entire inventory of ATACMs and PrSMs.
Is there any evidence that the USAF used dumb bombs at all?
The go-to bomb is JDAM, which is a guided bomb with maximum ranges in the double-digit miles - not considered a standoff weapon, but not a "dumb bomb" either. The JDAM-ER triples the range, making it arguably a standoff weapon.
I am also skeptical of your broader claim. Overall, Iranian air defenses likely performed worse than Iraq's in Desert Storm against manned aircraft.
In terms of a concrete timeline, Hegseth said that the US was switching to bombs on March 4, 2026. There's at least evidence of mines dropped in Shiraz dated to March 26, the US bombed the Karaj bridge with a JDAM on April 2, indicating strikes by bombs against targets far inland by that point at a minimum. Iran hit one F-35 on March 19 and 1 F-15E and 1 A-10 (doing CSAR for the F-15) on April 3. A ceasefire was declared on April 7, but on April 5 (the same day the WSO was recovered) Iranians are said to have reported a number of aircraft overflights, including over Isfahan and Alborz - hardly exterior provinces.
And as far as MQ-9s go, by my count the US lost (to ground fire) 16 Reapers in March (12 of them by the 19th), 8 in April, 3 in May, 2 in June, 5 in July.
I don't think that this data (which I am eyeballing, so welcome for any corrections) necessarily excludes the narrative you put forward, but I don't think it maps cleanly onto it. There's no real indication that the US slowed down after the F-35 was tagged on the 19th and there's evidence of a surge on the 5th, after the F-15E and A-10 were shot down.
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ATACMs are old missiles from 1991 that have been gradually replaced with newer models.
PrSMs are brand new missiles essentially being prototyped tested live on the battlefield.
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