Stupidly, yes, with carpet bombing. Practically, no, that would be horrible. More horrible, possibly, than taking out the power and water infrastructure.
Could that work? It didn’t end well in Vietnam, which is about a fifth of the land area, and, in 1970, half the current population of Iran.
Also, they’ll pack a bigger punch, but I think the USA has way fewer bombers now.
We can't carpet bomb to regime change. But we can probably depopulate critical areas around the coasts while ships transit. It's stupidly expensive, both in materiel and collateral cost. But it's feasible. Whether we have the bomb-production is a separate question to which I don't have the answer.
(looks at map) the city of Bandar Abbas, population ~500k? It's already being hit as it contains the Iranian Navy HQ, but actually depopulating it is a much bigger project.
Carpet bombing. You don’t get to bury things in the sand, much less unbury them. It’s an old tactic—shaping movement with artillery—except done with remote pieces.
> range is so great you would have to pacify the entire east of Iran
West. Also, I don’t think so. Just critical zones. Worst case, only U.S. escorted and Iran toll-paying ships get through. (Worst case for the world. Not the belligerents. Which…that might be the solution.)
The vast areas in the East are where you can strike shipping. You would only strike the West if your intention was to kill Iranians rather than end the war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Củ_Chi_tunnels#U.S._campaigns_...:
“Operation Crimp began on January 7, 1966, with B-52 bombers dropping 30-ton loads of high explosive onto the region of Củ Chi, effectively turning the once lush jungle into a pockmarked moonscape. Eight thousand troops from the U.S. 1st Infantry Division, 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team (including an artillery battery of the Royal Regiment of New Zealand Artillery), and the 1st Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment combed the region looking for any clues of PLAF activity.
The operation did not bring about the desired success. […]
By 1969, B-52s were freed from bombing North Vietnam and started "carpet bombing" Củ Chi and the rest of the Iron Triangle. Towards the end of the war, some of the tunnels were so heavily bombed that some portions actually caved in, and other sections were exposed. But the bombings were not able to destroy most parts of those tunnels.”
But the Russians have been doing it. Iran may have targeted an Israeli power plant. The precedent, unfortunately, is set.
Different goals. Carpet bombing to deny Iran access to its coast is maneouvre warfare. It’s tactical. Carpet bombing to force Kyiv to capitulate is strategic bombing. It has never worked.
If you wanted to try it with bombs, it would take continual re-dropping of hundreds of thousands of bombs every few hours to cover (1600km * 8km) to keep people out, even assuming they have 0 shelter or cover.
I think this is more an open question than “it has never worked.” Nobody has tried to area deny FPV-drone navigators. Bases on lines of sight and line channels, one could probably back out from transit paths to the places one would need to be to hit that target, and then ensure anything there is turned from psychology to biology before a critical moment. You couldn’t do this with smart munitions, and couldn’t along the entire Hormuz coast. But for critical junctures that our closest allies (minus Kuwait) need to export? The math seems feasible, if fundamentally untackled.
I don't think so – we were talking about continually carpet bombing Iran to continually deny them access to a 1600km-long coastline. That simply has never worked. Not in Iran, not elsewhere to my knowledge.
> Bases on lines of sight and line channels, one could probably back out from transit paths to the places one would need to be to hit that target
That describes pretty much anywhere in the 7000+ square kilometers we're talking about. A drone doesn't need a runway. Anywhere you can fit a large pickup truck, you can launch a Shaheed drone.
> Nobody has tried to area deny FPV-drone navigators.
I'm not sure what you're saying here. Deny the area to Iran's FPV drones? If so, how? Use FPV drones to deny the area? If so, how? We're talking about continually patrolling 7,000+ square kilometers. The USA has never fielded such a system, and has no publicly known capabilities to do so.
I personally think there is a wide barrier between electrical and water infrastructure. But given water infra has allegedly been hit already, it doesn’t feel like it’s off the table for both sides the way it once was.
The thing is that while Iran's water infrastructure is vulnerable, the Gulf states are much more reliant on desalination ... and hitting them hard there would be a total disaster ... which Iran is capable of doing, but has so far refrained.