I don't think you see any boots on the ground. I think you see more bombings again and again until Iran is as cucked as Ukraine. Then maybe the IDF will kill the Ayatollah on their own.
Between this and Ukraine, you should all be able to identify by now the way war is being fought. War is a blitzkrieg and pre-emptive strikes from drones now. Whoever strikes first, wins. You're blowing up multiple targets simultaneously and it takes a very long time to recover and adjust from.
Totally get the logic: drones + precision strikes wreck fixed sites and buy time. Iran’s air-defense grid is already coughing up melted circuit boards, but “shock-and-awe until they fold” only works when:
(a) the regime’s command network is thin and
(b) the population is small enough to cow fast. Iran flunks both tests.
You’re talking 90-plus million people with revolutionary guard units embedded in every city and a terrain that makes Afghanistan look like Kansas. Knock out air bases and enrichment bunkers all you want the IRGC still controls ports, militias, and the strait’s shoreline. Mining Hormuz is a rowboat and diver job, clearing it is Navy EOD crawling for months under fire.
The minute oil stops, Tehran’s leadership can hunker in hardened tunnels while proxy cells hit tankers and Gulf terminals.
So if the real objective is regime change (not just “get them to stop developing a bomb”), somebody’s boots , drones, and specialized teams have to seize whatever major ports are nearby to the strait, slice up IRGC command nodes and sit on Tehran long enough to install a replacement government. Think years, not weeks. Otherwise the bombs end, the Ayatollah or his replacement stays, and the strait stays a chokehold.