In modern times, can large countries be conquered by bombings alone?
This is a big question that must be on the minds of America's and Israel's strategic planners as they bomb Iran and its military infrastructure. Iran is the seventeenth largest country in the world both in population and size. There are currently over 93 million people living in Iran and Iran is larger than France, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom combined. The combined armed forces of Iran numbers over a million soldiers.
Even if all their ships, planes, drones and missiles were knocked out by bombing and missiles, that still leaves over a million armed soldiers guarding their homeland - not to mention the tens of millions of fanatical Iranian Shiah Muslims that cling to them, headed by their Shia clerics.
If one looks to modern history the answer is that bombings alone cannot compensate for a combined land invasion to conquer the enemy completely.
Immediately after the Second World War (1939-1945) ended, the United States sent military investigators to find out how Germany could have been fighting so effectively even after it was bombed relentlessly by the American and British air forces.
A key question was: how could Germany keep building, launching and activating military equipment, including fighter planes and even the first jets and both stationary and mobile rockets launched rockets and missiles such as the V1 and V2 rockets that pummeled Britain right until the end of the war?
The answer was basically that Nazi Germany had perfected the technique of digging and building underground facilities and factories that British, American and Russian bombs could not reach, no matter how explosive the bombs were. The only way Nazi Germany was really conquered was by land invasions of territories it controlled in Europe, most notably by the Red Army that turned back the Nazi hordes in Eastern Europe at great human cost, and then later by the Americans and British that invaded Italy and France.
Hitler and the top Nazi commanders survived to conduct Nazi counter-invasion operations until the very end when they were flushed out by Russian, American and British soldiers fighting on the ground.
During the Korean War (1950-1953) the North Koreans and the Communist Chinese dug underground tunnels and facilities but they were overrun and pushed back by the American and United Nations counter invasion that moved all the way up the Korean Peninsula to the Chinese border. A strong ground offensive by the Americans fought the North Koreans and the Chinese to a standstill and brought them to a ceasefire, armistice and the agreement to divide Korea into the Communist North and the pro-Western South.
In the Vietnam War (1955-1975) at first the French were defeated by the Communist Vietnamese and then after American ground forces got involved in 1965 reaching a high of over 500,000 American troops, they were unable to defeat North Vietnam and the Vietcong in South Vietnam. The Communists in the former French Indo-China including the Communist Vietnamese in both the North and South and on the borders of Vietnam resorted to digging vast networks of underground tunnels to hide in and use to ambush French and American forces.
This was in spite of massive bombing by America of North Vietnam and of the Communists' supply routes through neighboring countries such as Laos and Cambodia. Even though America held a strategic advantage in the air and conducted the most intensive bombings of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, including the use of napalm, it was to no avail as long as America refused to launch a large scale land invasion of North Vietnam and/or resort to the use of atomic weapons - as it did in the case of Japan, which was what finally forced Japan to surrender unconditionally at the end of the Second World War in 1945.
After America began to fight back against the Japanese and evict them from the countries and islands that the Imperial Japanese military had invaded and occupied, America famously deployed its Marines to fight on land and use every means, including flame throwers to flush the Japanese out of their bunkers and tunnels. This was even though the Americans would use bombers, battleships and cruisers to mercilessly pound Japanese to "soften up" Japanese installations day and night, it was still not enough to destroy either the Japanese will to fight or their ability to fight to the last man standing in defiance of America unleashing its Marines to liberate the Japanese occupied islands in the Pacific.
In fact American strategists correctly assessed that an American invasion of the Japanese homeland islands would extract too high a price in American lives because the Japanese would fight to the death in door to door combat. Thus the decision was made by America to drop not one but two atomic bombs on Japan, and if need be, more would have been dropped on Japan but they came to their senses and finally quickly surrendered unconditionally to the Americans.
During the 1973 Yom Kippur War the Israeli Air Force faced a devastating onslaught from Soviet manufactured and supplied Egyptian Surface to Air Missile (SAM) batteries that were dug in and fortified, often also manned by military personnel from the USSR. To put a stop to this, Israel's leaders deemed it necessary to not just take back lost territory in the Sinai Peninsula but to launch a counter-invasion of the Egyptian mainland and knock out the SAM launching sites and finally surround and defeat the aggressive Egyptian army that had launched its surprise attack, together with Syria, against Israel on Yom Kippur of 1973.
After Iraq under Saddam Hussein invaded and conquered oil rich Kuwait in 1990 during the ensuing Gulf War, also known as the First Iraq War (1990-1991) US President George H. W. Bush (1924-2018) sent in a force of approximately 500,000 US soldiers to successfully evict Iraq from Kuwait and destroy its army. After about one month of bombing of Iraq by the Americans, a 100 hour ground invasion was launched that brought Iraq to the negotiating table and stopped the fighting.
This did not stop Saddam Hussein's and Iraq's bellicose posturing and acting on its delusions. A big mistake by America was leaving Saddam Hussein in power, as he dug in his heels and did not stop his anti-American and anti-Israel propaganda and activities. Eventually, after the attack by radical Arab terrorists against the USA on September 11, 2001 that triggered the Second Iraq or Gulf War (2003-2011) when US President George W. Bush (born 1946) launched a combined War on Terrorism and eventually sent in US forces to, this time, invade and defeat Iraq proper and capture, try and hang Saddam Hussein.
Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon built hundreds of miles of underground tunnels. They had learned from Nazi Germany and North Korea and North Vietnam that one can not just hide but also launch successful large scale military operations from within a network of underground tunnels and bunkers, as if from a netherworld of terrorists from Hades. In addition to bombing, Israel was forced to send in the IDF into Gaza and South Lebanon and launch operations to locate, fight and destroy the network of underground tunnels in Gaza and Lebanon and it is still a far from finished military project and undertaking.
From the above cases it is very clear that overwhelming air and technological power by a superior force of a nation against a militarily depleted and inferior power that is evidently "losing" - will not bring the weaker power to its knees and force its surrender when the so-called weaker power has dug in its positions dug in in both either or the actual and metaphorical sense.
Nazi Germany did not surrender to the allies when it was obviously losing even though it had a depleted air force and its cities were razed to the ground by allied bombing. Instead it moved its military, industrial and key civilian elements into well-fortified underground facilities and bunkers reinforced with steel and concrete. There it innovated and even invented new war technologies like rockets, missiles, jets, not to mention the use of Zyklon B poison gas to murder Jews in industrial type death gas chambers that had never been used in war before that time.
Both North Korea during the Korean War and North Vietnam during the Vietnam War dug an extensive, deep tunnel system to protect them from American bombers, fighter jets and artillery. In the case of North Korea it took a counter-invading American army to over-run and dislodge the enemy hiding in tunnels. It is a great mistake of history that America did not do the same to North Vietnam when it won after the Americans withdrew. In the case of Japan during the Second World War America had learned bitter lessons from having to fight dug-in Japanese soldiers on "island hopping" fights even after the Japanese positions and hardware had been blown up from the air and from bombardment by American warships. The Japanese never surrendered until faced with American power on the ground right in their faces.
In the Middle East, during the 1973 Yom Kippur War Israel had no choice but to invade on land and conquer Egyptian territory to stop the devastation the Israeli air force was suffering from the deadly Egyptian, Russian supplied and even Russian manned dug in SAM missile batteries.
The United States was partially successful in the First Gulf War against Saddam Hussein's Iraq in throwing Iraq out of Kuwait and devastating the Iraqi army, but made the big mistake of leaving Saddam Hussein dug in and in power, as written above. It was only after the attacks of 9/11, 2001 that American launched its War on Terror leading to the Second Gulf War that saw America invade Iraq itself and topple Saddam Hussein and his Baathists from power once and for all.
And tragically for Israel, it has had to pay a high cost in lost lives following the war that Iran's proxy Hamas prepared, undertook and launched against it from underground tunnels on October 7, 2023. In Lebanon, Iran's proxy Hezbollah has continued to launch missiles and drones from the protection of its own underground facilities that it has been digging and building and preparing for decades in order to fight and attack Israel.
The conclusion can only be that in the case of the radical and hateful nature of Iran's Islamic leaders and the people who follow them blindly, that this will not be another Maduro event - the rounding success of US special forces in Venezuela.
If regime change is the goal, ground invasion by America and/or its proxies like the Kurds and other ethnic minorities on Iraq's borders will be needed. The Sunni Arab nations who are now suffering from Iranian bombardment by Iranian UAVs and missiles of their own lands should also contribute to the prospects of a ground invasion of Iran to stop the aggression emanating from the Iranian Shiites. Otherwise this will be a case of spinning of the wheels or even worse the prospect of a prolonged war of attrition and a state of siege that will go on for far too long leaving Iran to fight another day, unless American and Israeli military strategists learn the lessons of history as to how to bring down an obstinate, fanatical, dug in enemy. If destruction of nuclear facilities and missiiles, including the ability to manufacture them, is the only goal, time will tell if airpower suffices.
Rabbi Yitschak Rudomin was born to Holocaust survivor parents in Israel, grew up in South Africa, and lives in Brooklyn, NY. He is an alumnus of Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin and of Teachers College-Columbia University. He heads the Jewish Professionals Institute dedicated to Jewish Adult Education and Outreach - Kiruv Rechokim. He was the Director of the Belzer Chasidim's Sinai Heritage Center of Manhattan 1988-1995, a Trustee of AJOP 1994-1997 and founder of American Friends of South African Jewish Education 1995-2015. From 2017-2024 he was a docent and tour guide at The Museum of Jewish Heritage - A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in Downtown Manhattan, New York. He is the author of The Second World War and Jewish Education in America: The Fall and Rise of Orthodoxy. Contact Rabbi Yitschak Rudomin at izakrudomin@gmail.com