Would Air Strikes Against Iran Work

Critical Questions by Clayton Swope

Published January 13, 2026

As of January 13, 2025, President Trump is reportedly considering air strikes, among other retaliatory measures, in response to growing evidence that Iranian efforts to suppress widespread anti-government protests had led to hundreds of civilian deaths. To date, there is no sign that the president would consider deploying ground forces in Iran, meaning that U.S. kinetic action would involve military airpower alone. The United States has a long history of leaning on airpower to accomplish policy objectives-and history shows that the results of such efforts are mixed. The strength of airpower is that it can strike suddenly and accurately from afar; its weakness is that it has a hard time controlling subsequent events on the ground. This means airpower alone has proven to be an imperfect tool for compelling behavior, like ending attacks on civilians. But in the case of Iran, airpower could help bring about a different goal that would bring about an end to the violence against demonstrators: regime collapse. But what would come next is an open question.

Q1: When has the United States relied on military airpower alone?

A1: Beginning in World War I, airpower emerged as an important new military tool. Military airpower, employed alongside other types of military power, such as naval and land power, has played a critical role in U.S. military operations for over 100 years. Evolving from single-seat biplanes carrying small bombs to a suite of weapons, such as bunker-busting bombs, cruise missiles, and one-way drones-many launched from surface ships, submarines, and stealth aircraft-military airpower remains unmatched in its ability to strike quickly and deeply into hostile territory. Because of its ability to quickly deliver larger amounts of munitions to targets over long distances, at less risk in both terms of money and human life than using ground troops, the United States has used airpower to accomplish its objectives.

The United States has often leaned heavily on military airpower to advance its desired outcomes. Between 1963 and 1974, the United States relied extensively on airpower in Laos during the Vietnam War, aiming to disrupt communist supply chains and aid Laotian anti-communist forces. In 1986, the United States struck targets in Libya in response to the terrorist bombing of a nightclub in Berlin that was carried out by Libyan agents. In 1993, the United States and NATO partners used airpower to enforce a UN-imposed no-fly zone over Bosnia and Herzegovina-by the end of the operation, NATO pilots had conducted over 100,000 sorties. In 1999, NATO jets bombed targets in Yugoslavia for nearly three months to halt Serb attacks on ethnic Kosovar Albanians in Kosovo.

In 1998, in response to the al Qaeda bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the United States conducted cruise missile attacks on a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan and al Qaeda's training camps in Afghanistan. Also, in 1998, the United States conducted a bombing campaign against Iraqi targets in response to Saddam Hussein's refusal to comply with UN Security Council resolutions, intending to degrade Iraq's ability to produce weapons of mass destruction. In 2011, the United States and NATO allies used air strikes and enforced a no-fly zone in Libya, aiming to stop attacks by Muammar Gaddafi's forces against civilians. More recently, U.S. air strikes in June 2025 aimed to destroy facilities associated with Iranian nuclear weapons programs, and strikes in Yemen in March and April 2025 targeted Houthi rebels. The United States also conducted air strikes in Nigeria in December 2025.

Q2: Have operations relying solely on airpower achieved their objectives?

A2: The record is mixed. Operation Barrel Roll, the U.S. bombing campaign in Laos, did not prevent North Vietnamese forces from using the Ho Chi Minh Trail to supply communist forces fighting in South Vietnam, and communist forces eventually took control of Laos. But it did cause disruptions to the supply line and may have helped protect Thailand from a communist takeover. Gaddafi continued to support terrorism after 1986-Libya was responsible for the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing in 1988. The UN-imposed no-fly zone over Bosnia and Herzegovina was effective at limiting the operational freedom of Republika Srpska forces, particularly after coalition forces shot down Serb attack jets in February 1994. However, even airpower working alongside UN troops in Bosnia failed to deter Serb aggression, leading to the Srebrenica massacre in 1995. Although the NATO bombings during the Kosovo War did compel Belgrade to come to the negotiating table, the attacks ended up killing hundreds of civilians, including refugees from Kosovo.

While U.S. cruise missiles destroyed the Sudanese pharmaceutical factory-though it apparently was not producing chemical weapons-and the Afghan training camp, the attacks did not significantly disrupt al Qaeda's operations. Though targeted in the attacks, senior al Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden, who was not present at the camp during the attack, survived. Though they targeted six of Hussein's presidential palaces, among dozens of other sites, the 1998 air attacks in Iraq failed to produce any meaningful change in Iraq's behavior. Hussein continued to evade and interfere with conditions imposed by UN resolutions until the U.S. invasion in 2003. Airpower can damage and destroy, but it cannot conquer-perhaps the biggest lesson from the history of its use.

The results of airpower in Libya were also mixed, particularly considering the reason for the military intervention was to protect civilians. Barely six months after the start of the NATO air campaign, Gaddafi was captured and killed by Libyan rebels, leading to the overthrow of his regime. However, the rebels that benefited from his downfall included a "militant Islamic extremist element." The effects on the civilian population in Libya are also not wholly positive, with over 70 civilians killed in the strikes. Airpower certainly contributed to the weakening of Gaddafi's regime, but it did not, and still has not, produced peace and prosperity for Libya's people-though it is doubtful they would have had that were Gaddafi still in power today. It is perhaps too early to judge the long-term effects of the Houthi and Nigeria strikes in 2025, though the early signs are not positive. The Yemen strikes may have strengthened the Houthis' grip on power, while the strikes in Nigeria could strengthen the hand of violent extremists.

But airpower by itself has brought about some stunning results-and consistently done so given the right objectives and operational constraints. Airpower excels at striking quickly and without warning-more often than not, that means blowing things up. This strength routinely took center stage during two decades of the war on terror, with U.S. aircraft reaching into enemy-held territory and carrying out precision air strikes. Israel's drone strike against one of Iran's top nuclear scientists in June 2025 and Ukraine's Operation "Spider's Web," using small drones to attack Russian strategic bombers while they sat on the tarmac of airbases across Russia in June 2025, are more examples that testify to the strength of airpower. Whether air strikes succeed or fail to meet the specified goal comes down to what that policy objective was in the first place.

Q3: What could air strikes achieve in Iran?

A3: Using history as a guide, operations relying mostly on airpower can be effective at achieving all or part of a military objective when the objective is aligned around the strengths of airpower-Operation Midnight Hammer in Iran is a spectacular recent example that proves the point. Yet airpower alone has not proven able to achieve more complex policy objectives, particularly ones whose success depends on what happens after the explosions. Because airpower leaves no boots on the ground or other persistent leverage-it is essentially ephemeral in nature-which can be used to compel the adversary to take the desired action, by itself, it struggles with achieving political goals.

There is little historical evidence that airpower by itself has brought about the collapse of a regime, nor that airpower alone can prevent a tyrant or terrorist group from perpetrating brutality against civilians. The closest example to that happening was Slobodan Milošević's decision to settle in the Kosovo War, but this came about not because the air campaign was entirely effective at destroying Serbia's military power, but because Milošević was concerned about rising war-weariness among the Serbian people and the lack of Russian support for continuing the war. Iran's leaders confront a very different landscape today. The people of Iran are already demonstrating on the streets, and the Iranian regime knows it does not expect support from another nation.

In situations where a despot has a strong grip on power, air strikes can sometimes strengthen the regime, because surviving air strikes is a demonstration of a regime's endurance and, thus, a propaganda victory. To decide outcomes, airpower should be paired with forces operating on the ground-not necessarily military forces, but a force that can seize ground, storm buildings, or occupy territory. But the regime in Iran today is weak. It is quickly losing its grip on power. Because of this weakness, one can discern a certain logic for U.S. airstrikes in Iran that could achieve a policy aim without using ground troops. Air strikes alone will not stop the Ayatollah from shooting protesters-but what if, because it is so weak, air strikes can bring about regime collapse? Seems reasonable that such a result might end the ongoing violence against civilians.

Air strikes could possibly bring about regime collapse through two mutually reinforcing effects: (1) embolden protesters to push harder and endure more, and (2) create a critical mass of doubt in the regime's enablers-the policemen and front-line enforcers wielding guns and batons against protesters-that the regime can endure blow after blow. Strikes would need to target visible elements of the regime's authority, showing solidarity with the protesters and instilling doubt in regime supporters, while avoiding targets that could give the regime ammunition for propaganda. Strikes should avoid destroying infrastructure that makes life even harder than it already is for the average Iranian. More cracks have developed in the regime's foundations over the last year than at any other point over the decades since the overthrow of the Shah. Like the collapse of the Soviet Union, which came suddenly, partially in response to protests due to economic conditions, there comes a point when one more crack in that foundation is one too many. The regime in Iran may be near that edge, with just a nudge required-a nudge that airpower might be able to deliver. But should the regime collapse, what comes next for Iran's people is an open question and one not decided by airpower alone.

Clayton Swope is the deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project and a senior fellow in the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

Critical Questions is produced by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a private, tax-exempt institution focusing on international public policy issues. Its research is nonpartisan and nonproprietary. CSIS does not take specific policy positions. Accordingly, all views, positions, and conclusions expressed in this publication should be understood to be solely those of the author(s).

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