[genocidicbunny]

Trouble is, there's a good chance that a large portion of the population will then be in favour of ending the war by escalating it to the point of flattening Iran. And that portion of the population has somewhat of a correlation with the political base of the current administration.

[applicative]

It is impossible to affect the Persian empire by such means. They might as well have tried to take the Soviet Union or China by like means. There is no such thing as 'flattening' China or Iran

[genocidicbunny]

Notice I said that it's the populace who will gain an appetite for flattening Iran, not that it's actually practical to achieve that. You could very well find yourself extending the war for much longer than it would otherwise go on, because there will be increased political support for it.

Look at what 9/11 did - for quite a while after the attack, which was heinous but in the grand scheme of things nothing compared to the scale of destruction that was visited upon Iraq and Afghanistan afterwards; And at least for a few years, very many Americans were in favour of those conflicts.

[ChoGGi]

What's he gonna do? Nuke Iran?

You know, I said that as a joke, but...

It's getting hard to tell jokes from reality with this administration (excluding roasts at the WHCD).

[swat535]

How are you going to flatten Iran? A country twice the size of Texas with 90M people.

You would have to fire your entire nuclear arsenal and commit mass genocide.

Even then, you may not be able to destroy the missile cities, many of them were built to be nuclear resistant.

[genocidicbunny]

I'm not saying it's possible to accomplish that, just that directly harming the comfort of the American populace is a good way to unify large parts of said populace in wanting to destroy you. There's a non-zero chance of increasing America's appetite for war rather than reducing it with such actions.