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Iran was the most successful failure in US airpower history
The US entered the conflict with a detailed plan for a war of destruction, but no serious plan for Iran’s war of disruption.
By Col. Maximilian K. Bremer and Kelly Grieco
July 02, 2026
https://breakingdefense.com/2026/07/iran-was-the-most-successful-failure-in-us-airpower-history/
Excerpt:
Nestled inside the four months since the United States launched attacks on Iran was six weeks of the most intensive air campaign since the “shock and awe” opening of the Iraq invasion. Yet the deal it produced, while still in final negotiations, seems to be a draw at best and, in many ways, favors Iran. Threatening to resume the bombing, as President Donald Trump has done several times, misunderstands why.
The US was engaged in two air wars simultaneously — one of destruction, and one of disruption. It lost the one that mattered most.
The first — the air war of destruction — centered on the US and Israel seizing the airspace high above Iran and exploiting it to strike at scale. Above 20,000 feet, where stealth and precision-guided munitions decide outcomes, the US military performed exactly as designed. It achieved air superiority over large swaths of southern and western Iran, degraded air defenses, sank much of Iran’s traditional navy, and damaged elements of its missile and drone capabilities. The war of destruction was measured in targets (DMPIs, or “desired mean points of impact” in military parlance) hit and capabilities destroyed. By those metrics, the US won.
Yet Iran managed to keep the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed. A second air war — a war not of destruction but of disruption, imposing psychological and economic costs until the fighting became politically unbearable — decided that.
From the first day of this conflict, Iran’s drones and missiles were aimed not at preventing American air superiority over Tehran, but at making it beside the point. Having largely ceded the higher altitudes, Tehran shifted its military effort downward, to the air littoral — the low-altitude airspace — over and around the Strait of Hormuz, where inexpensive drones and missiles proved sufficient to make the world’s most important energy chokepoint too costly and dangerous to transit, for commercial vessels and the US Navy alike.
Put another way: Iran did not need to win the war of destruction. It needed to make winning it not feel worth it to the US.
[big snip]
The framework agreement now being worked out is a measure of which air war mattered more. Trump’s threat to hit Iran “very hard again, only harder” misses the point. The US air campaign did not fail because it was not intense enough. It failed because it prioritized the air war that did not decide the outcome. More bombs will not win the war that mattered.
The question was never who controls the skies over Tehran. It was always who wins the war of disruption below them.
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Maximilian K. Bremer, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel, is a nonresident fellow with the Reimagining US Grand Strategy Program at the Stimson Center and head of Mission Engineering and Strategy for Atropos Group.
Kelly A. Grieco is a senior fellow with the Reimagining US Grand Strategy Program at the Stimson Center and adjunct professor in the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University.
Well, ‘it ain’t over ’til its over’…..
well..welll..they destroyed all our military bases in the Gulf states…..to the point I doubt they(monarchies ) would like to rebuild them…saaaaaaad…..
Nonsense. The war is not over. Trump is pursuing an unconventional strategy, to be sure, but there are many(!) ways that the underlying 47-year old conflict can be settled.
The simple-minded way is the obvious one: simply bomb them out of existence, civilian and Mullah alike. Kill everyone indiscriminately. Destroy it all.
President Trump can simply give that order. “Sir! Yes Sir!!” Fifteen minutes later it’s happening. Yes, he can give that order, and it will be done.
Well, that might feel really good. And the Mullahs, who adore violence, might appreciate it. This is, after all, “what they understand: death and destruction.” But it’s not the only way, nor the best. Explosions wipe out everything around them, except the root-cause problem itself.
47 years ago, radicals hijacked the country of Iran. That’s the actual problem here. The proud and ancient land of Iran/Persia is still there, somewhere. We must eliminate the problem, decisively, without eliminating them.
Mike…VSGPDJT…will not attack Iranians before election… damage is done on both sides and world economy…….
I do not think that “the mid-terms” are a factor in a military decision. This thing isn’t going to wait around.
I’ve posted a long explanation before under one of your posts why “simply bomb them out of existence” isn’t viable. You didn’t read it nor did you read the article above about why that won’t work.
The Iranians have threatened to respond in kind against their neighbors to any attacks on their long lead time for restoration infrastructure that would “bomb them back into the stone age” which is why Trump has threatened that a number of times, sometimes wildly, and then backed off.
If you’ll look hard enough, you can also find an idiot who tells you the Revolutionary War was a failure.
Do you have your own opinion, Winston? Or you only copy and paste (spam) to create adversity?
Copy and pasta— no sauce.
AI being curated by lefty clowns makes it easy.
Val1…is opinion military personnel who know real situation on the ground hurst ?????? I recommend to you listen Cololonels Wilkerson/Macgregor..and after make up your mind…..is not adversity it will enlight your mind….
POTUS is always working! ‘The Art of the Deal’ in action. He’s truly genius!
Almost 250 years our Republic has endured, now we finally seem to be facing up to the seeds sown in the 60’s and the hairbrained Counterculture.
They knew to destroy the USA they had to destroy the foundations of our Great Land…God.
Not to become overly sanctimonious, but as a former Counter culturist, remember, God is square, old fashioned that with the new high-minded thinking had no place for the imaginary man in the sky crap. Specifically, Christianity.
Remember, “if it feels good do it” Sex, Drugs and Rock-n-Roll.
We can see the insipid result now in some of the Blue Hives, NYC, LA, Chicago etc. with the DSA Democrat Socialist of America, replacing loons for loonier loons. Seriously no-account nitwits, whose great accomplishment is to breathe, walk in a straight line and complain.
Remember “Peace & Love”. So, the great concept was we’ll get rid of the Prince of Peace, the King of Love and replace that with “if it feels good do it”.
I picked this spot because it’s the ultimate proclamation of the flesh where absurdity and chaos reign. This is why they had to confuse something as basic as what makes a boy or a girl and try and force society to meet this lunacy halfway.
To the point where if you said anything about this sickness, you could be deplatformed from Social Media sites, weakening our 1st Amendment rights of Free Speech. Another goal of the Counterculture, you know “stick it to the man”.
To me this clarifies with zero ambiguity of who and what they intend if allowed to achieve their America. Like every Marxist revolution, They Will Not Hesitate! …to line anyone who disagrees with them up against a wall, and BOOM! …in a ditch with any dissent against their wicked agenda.
The best and most illustrative example for me was C-19 the Wuhan Con. Think about the rampant idiocy of the left, creating the “Karen’s” these shrill women screeching science denier and pointing if you weren’t wearing a mask.
Do you think they’d hesitate to put anyone in a reeducation center or even purging free thinking Christians/Americans to create their Marxist utopia? Not for a nanosecond folks, like the women (Karen’s) in the French/Bloody Revolution watching and knitting, screaming for blood while enjoying the work of the Guillotine.
“The fearsome Madame Defarge of Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities sticks in most people’s memories as the merciless, bloodthirsty knitter recording the fates of the nobility in her knitting. And someone had to make all those red Phrygian caps for the revolutionaries.”
We as a Republic must understand that if we don’t push back and push back hard, history is replete with failed nations/empires who grow fat, lazy, apathetic and disappear.
MAGA! …with God is the only way.
Please Father God, keep us and protect us as again we go against darkness we’ve allowed to get hold of the helm driving the ship of state into the rocks, fervently trying to finish off Your Shinning City on a Hill, the USA. Thank you, Lord, for the many blessing that you’ve bestowed on our Republic and Father God may we have anther 250 years or Your love to blossom for all of mankind, we ask these things in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ.
Amen!
FYI: “Social media?” Never used it. Never will. So, you can’t “de-platform” me. 🤷
Same here. Good for you.
You write very well and all truth. always enjoy reading your post.
Thank you for sharing.
Vatican excommunicates bishops of breakaway traditionalist sect–PMSN:
“ROME —The Vatican on Thursday said it had excommunicated top clerics in an archconservative Catholic sect as well as any parishioners who remain loyal to the group that claims hundreds of thousands of followers largely in the United States and Europe, triggering the most serious schism in decades within the world’s largest Christian faith.” …….
Weird–clerics can go full-Globalist with submission Islam, Trans Rights and Open Borders, yet you will never hear them called “arch”-liberals.
Who was it in the Francis/Leo Deep Church who ordered the FBI to target traditional Catholics, anyway?
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DaVAENjMYzb/?l=1
COVID Vaccine designed to CAUSE cancer ???