Operation “Epic Fury” and the Limitations of Air Power

On February 28, the United States and Israel launched what is now termed “Operation Epic Fury” against Iran. In the wake of the operation, both the US and Israel targeted at least nine cities across the country. The operation claimed the lives of senior leadership of the Iranian government, including the octogenarian Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khameini. Iran swiftly retaliated to the unprovoked aggression, targeting US interests and allies across the Middle East with missile attacks reported in Israel, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, as well as attacks targeting US military facilities in Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain.

The “Operation Epic Fury”, which was predominantly an air operation, was no doubt an impressive display of the military capabilities of the US and Israel. However, the operation, if history is any guide, is unlikely to produce the result Trump is promising, i.e., regime change. The US president vowed to destroy Iran’s military power and demanded that its security forces lay down their arms or “face certain death”—an effort to weaken the regime’s capabilities and its hold on power. The goal, in effect, is regime change. However, the history of airpower offers scant evidence to suggest that even the most advanced aerial bombardment strategy is capable of achieving such an outcome.

Airpower possesses the capacity to neutralise fortified installations, weaken military infrastructure, and eliminate high-ranking commanders. However, it lacks the ability to fundamentally reshape a state’s internal political order. Despite a century of promises to the contrary, it has never by itself toppled a government. The critiques of the said proposition frequently referred to the case of Libya in 2011 as a counterexample, yet that case ultimately reinforces the limitation. Although the intervention commenced under a United Nations mandate that was framed around the “responsibility to protect,” it gradually expanded into an operation that culminated in the collapse of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime. It is pertinent to mention that even so, NATO’s air campaign was not solely responsible for that outcome. Instead, it was the organised and determined rebel forces operating on the ground that capitalised on the advantages created by sustained air operations and ultimately toppled Gaddafi’s regime. In the contemporary Iranian context, no analogous domestic force exists to perform such a role.

History bears testimony to this fact. Whenever a government believes it is fighting for its survival, it does not capitulate. In this regard, an empirical study of thirty asymmetric interstate conflicts involving the United States from 1918 to 2003 shows that coercion most often failed when US demands threatened a weaker state’s survival, prompting resistance rather than capitulation. Calls for regime change represent the most uncompromising form of political demand, and the Iranian government has every reason to believe its survival is at stake because Trump has said so explicitly. With everything to lose, they have no incentive to hold anything back.

It is also worth mentioning here that tactical proficiency must not be conflated with strategic effectiveness. The successful suppression of Iran’s air defenses or the targeted elimination of senior military officials, however operationally impressive, does not resolve the fundamental political question, which is: by what mechanism does the infliction of military punishment translate into regime collapse? Proponents of regime change often rely—implicitly or explicitly—on a decapitation logic, namely the assumption that removing key leaders and degrading the coercive apparatus of the state shall automatically weaken the regime to trigger a popular uprising. While this proposition possesses an intuitive appeal, it finds scant support in the historical record.

As aforementioned, history suggests a markedly different pattern. Rather than precipitating internal rebellion, external military pressure has more frequently generated social cohesion and nationalist solidarity. Even in contexts where populations harbor deep resentment or fear toward their rulers, the onset of foreign bombardment tends to produce a “rally-around-the-flag” effect, with citizens uniting against the perceived external aggressor instead of mobilizing to overthrow the regime. This is precisely unfolding in the case of Iran.

In sum, regardless of their precision or destructive capacity, air strikes in isolation are insufficient to bring about the fall of a governing regime. In the case of Iran in 2026, the more plausible outcome is a state significantly damaged yet fundamentally intact—an outcome that would stand as an expensive illustration of strategic overreach and a reminder of the inherent limitations of airpower as an instrument of political transformation.