US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sauntered up to the podium in the Pentagon press room 10 days ago.
“The combination of the world’s two most powerful air forces is unprecedented and unbeatable,” he boasted of US and Israeli airpower flying over Iran. “Fighters and bombers all day, picking targets as they choose, as our intelligence gets better and better and more refined.”
Indeed, when it comes to airpower, Iran is overmatched. Tehran can do nothing to keep Israeli and US bombers from striking where they want, whenever they want.
American and Israeli air superiority enables many things — picking apart Iranian air defenses, assassinating enemy commanders and destroying entire weapons industries.
But experience shows that air campaigns can only do so much without complementary boots on the ground.
Toppling the regime, which both US President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu see as a desired outcome for the war, would seem to be beyond the reach of an aerial campaign, judging by their century-plus history.
Read the full article at The Times of Israel.
Published originally on March 23, 2026.