Although the conflict in Iran and the Strait of Hormuz is far from over, analysts are already rushing to declare what lessons should be learned from it. An emerging genre of security policy articles highlights the various logistical and tactical shortcomings of the US operation against Iran: a lack of preparation for disruptions in oil and fertiliser shipping, insufficient magazine depth in precision munitions and interceptors, a general failure to prepare effectively to counter cheap one-way attack drones, insufficient minesweepers, and so on.
These are useful lessons that may help the United States prepare for future conflicts, but they are not the fundamental cause of the country’s failure in the Strait of Hormuz. Even if some or all of these concerns had been addressed long before the conflict, it is hard to see how they might alter the Trump administration’s failure to achieve its initial war aims of regime change, the destruction of Iran’s long-range strike capability, or major alterations in Iranian policy toward nuclear weapons and regional proxies.
While greater magazine depth and preparedness for oil shortages might have enabled a longer bombing campaign or a greater degree of economic pressure, that is no reason to suppose that seven months of bombing or blockade might achieve what nearly six months thus far have not. Strategic failure, leaving Iran with a freer hand to pursue nuclear ambitions, a far greater degree of control over the Strait of Hormuz, and consequently a greater degree of influence over the Gulf states, now seems the most likely outcome of this military debacle.
The US military remains remarkably capable, demonstrating even in this poorly conceived war technical capabilities that no other military can currently match, projecting military force more than 7,000 miles from American shores, and seizing control of Iran’s skies with the apparent casual ease the world has become accustomed to in America’s wars.
The resulting damage has been remarkably lopsided, with the United States suffering at least 18 dead and more than 600 wounded against Iranian losses that almost certainly number well into the thousands, though a precise total is not known. In short, even with failures of planning and logistics, the US military has shown that it remains remarkably dangerous.
No amount of technical excellence, however, can make up for the strategic incompetence of demanding that the military accomplish the impossible. US President Donald Trump has demanded not one impossible task of the military, but three, and then reacted with shocked anger when it failed.
The first of these impossible tasks was the administration’s stated aim of achieving regime change without any ground operations. Achieving a strategic victory entirely through airpower has been the coveted aim of independent air forces around the world ever since Italian theorist Giulio Douhet predicted in 1921 that future wars could be won with bombers alone, even going so far as to suggest in 1928 that just 300 tonnes of bombs dropped on a mid-sized country could end a war in a month.
The thesis that wars can be won entirely from the air is now one of the most thoroughly tested in all of modern industrial war, and 40,000 tons of German bombs dropped on London during the Blitz merely hardened the British will to resist. The 2.5 million tonnes of bombs the Allies dropped on Germany during World War II in return inflicted serious damage and imposed stark choices on Adolf Hitler’s regime, but they likewise did not force it to collapse and indeed seem to have reinforced public commitment to the war.
The 8 million tonnes of bombs that the United States dropped during the Vietnam War likewise accomplished little and may even have been broadly counterproductive, serving to secure the civilian populace’s support for communist war aims while alienating the American public.
