IMO this is going (predictably) disastrously. Air power is not effective at causing regime change (rally-around-the-flag effect). I think the Iranian public are more likely to mainly blame the guy explicitly saying “we’re going to bring them back to the stone ages where they belong” than the local leadership. It also seems to me that the Iranian leadership would be highly motivated to immediately rebuild any degraded capabilities after the war, in order to rebuild deterrence against future attacks.
There is some talk about a land invasion, but taking an island or two (even Kharg) probably wouldn’t compel them to surrender, while also being highly vulnerable both directly and in terms of logistics to drone attacks; and a full scale invasion would be a massive undertaking and probably not politically feasible (for good reason).
IMO this is going (predictably) disastrously. Air power is not effective at causing regime change (rally-around-the-flag effect). I think the Iranian public are more likely to mainly blame the guy explicitly saying “we’re going to bring them back to the stone ages where they belong” than the local leadership. It also seems to me that the Iranian leadership would be highly motivated to immediately rebuild any degraded capabilities after the war, in order to rebuild deterrence against future attacks.
There is some talk about a land invasion, but taking an island or two (even Kharg) probably wouldn’t compel them to surrender, while also being highly vulnerable both directly and in terms of logistics to drone attacks; and a full scale invasion would be a massive undertaking and probably not politically feasible (for good reason).