[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by afreespirit

Israel wouldn't be invading Iran. Airstrikes are what they are thinking of. That's a difficult mission when one considers geography, but not an impossible one.

Iran has a delightfully advanced SAM defense system, which is precisely why Israel hasn't just bossed up before. They couldn't pull it off without losing a lot of planes. Further, Iran would retaliate significantly, and Israel do defend themselves from this would have to take the fighting on the ground to Iran in order to push it out of Israel. This is why Israel hasn't acted yet, they know it would be the very annihilation they claim to want to prevent.

When one considers the possible consequences of an Israeli strike versus a nuclear armed Iran, I'll bet the Israeli's reluctantly accept the former rather than face the latter. There really isn't any other option for them. Besides, nobody in Europe or Russia will do more than shed a few crocodile tears and pull a few hairs over it. The Islamic Republic of Iran just isn't that important to the Europeans or the Russians.

What? You're crazy, Iran is in the top 25 economies in the world, and is a crucial like in the energy strategies of Asian and Eastern European countries. In this regard, Iran is worth a dozen Israels in the economic analysis.

Saddam didn't lose. The war was effectively a stalemate, although at the end of it Iraq had won several significant victories and it was Khomeini that came begging for peace. Had Iraq actually lost that war, it's army would not have been in a condition to invade Kuwait a mere 2 years later.

Saddam had dreams of crushing Iran, and in the long arc, Iran is a thriving nation and Iraq is in shambles. Iraq has been essentially occupied by foreign forces for 20 years, meanwhile simply nobody wants to fuck with Iran. Further Saddam is dead, I'd say its safe to say that Iran feels like saying, "Duh, Winning."

The reason why the US did not continue it's offensive into Iraq was because the Congress had only authorized the expulsion of Iraqi forces from Kuwait. Republican presidents might like to go to war, but at least they do it with Congressional approval and within the bounds set by Congress.

The reason that Congress didn't approve such is because they understood that in 1990, Iraq had the fourth largest standing military in the world, and simply put, they were nobody to fuck with. Why did we see so much militias and sectarian violence in Iraq in the 2000s? Because so many people had been trained in the military, were veterans, or otherwise had military experience because again, they were in the fourth largest military in the world!

In fact the 2003 invasion of Iraq was in military terms fairly easy, it was over in six weeks. It was the occupation period that was difficult, but even that large scale insurgency was ultimately defeated.

There were just a hundred people killed last week in multiple bombings across Iraq, I'd say the insurgency is far from defeated.

based on several of your comments lately, I think perhaps you've been following the wrong thread, maybe you'd prefer this one?