Of course it is and it was back then too. It just has to be willing to use nukes, chemical and or biological warfare, even in a tactical way. US failures in Korea, Vietnam, and Afganistan are related to its unwillingness to apply total war tactics... You can't fight a war with the hands tied behind your back if you want to obtain total victory. Still, even without putting assets on the ground and even using its nuclear, chemical or biological capabilities I can see US fracking over Iran and reducing its infrastructure to pre-medieval levels using just air and naval assets...
The use of the word 'fracking' suggests that you are a relatively young man grown up on Battlestar Galactica, and only a distant historical knowledge of the Iranian hostage crisis, Vietnam, Korea and the mythos which has grown up around WWII.
From a different vantage point, I see your views as rather unnecessarily bloodthirsty.
First, while you seem to be an advocate of 'total war tactics', I would suggest that for the most part, 'total war' is a very rare thing in history. The vast majority of wars involve fairly limited commitments by one side or the other, sometimes by both sides.
Total wars are generally counterproductive. They are extremely destructive of the economy and society of the total war society, even when they win. At the very least, expect radical social changes, major economic dislocations. Victory is often pyrhic - World War I and II put paid to the British, French, Dutch, Belgian, Austrian, Ottoman and Russian Empires. The United States came out well in both wars, particularly the second, because it's commitments were almost peripheral in both cases.
No society commits to total warfare unless its crucial interests or survival are at stake. End of story.
A nation which commits to limited wars does so on a cost/benefit basis. ie, the scale of its commitment has to be commensurate with the benefits it anticipates. There's all sorts of ways to lose a war like that, ranging from the enemy outspending you, to cutting your losses when the cost exceeds the benefit, to spending yourself into ruin or prejudicing your overall position pursuing a worthless victory.
The notion that we didn't try hard enough, or fought with one hand tied behind our back in Korea, Vietnam or Afghanistan is mythical, and amounts to 'stab in the back' folklore. It's just nonsense.
The notion of declaring war on Iran in this circumstance is ill advised under the circumstances for a number of reasons, the proportionality of response and cost benefit is just the beginning. There is, for instance, the fact that such a war would almost certainly have endangered its objectives - the hostages might well have been killed or injured. The US was not at the time prepared to go to war, physically or economically. Finally, the outcomes of the war would almost certainly have been massively counterproductive, from destabilizing the entire region to inviting soviet domination.
It's all very fine to flex muscles, strut and talk tough. But... not every problem is a nail, and not every solution is a hammer.
