after Iraq was pacified (for the most part) in May 2003, what would have happened if the US invaded Iran?
Deaths would be in the tens of thousands, ISIS would probably be able to contest with western nations.
>>28283493
>>28283505
nukes
>>28283493
With or without coalition?
>>28283515
would be pretty interesting to actually find out if Iran has nukes.
>>28283518
where the US goes, the UK gets dragged along.
>>28283598
Depends, the UK has never fought anywhere that they didn't already have interests
Imagine the Iraqi occupation but where no matter what the surge would not have worked because Iran is 3x the geographical area of Iraq.
>>28283493
ISIS would have begun sooner and would be far more powerful
>>28284887
Debatable.
Depending on how much external support Assad got from Iran, the FSA MAY have been able to actually oust him from power before he killed off all the prodemocracy leaders.
Pacified?
How exactly?
>>28283505
>destroying Shia government would anger and incite a Sunni group
Stop posting before you reveal your true power level.
>>28286186
Not anger them you retard, allow them to expand.
>>28283493
US would lose, they're not set up for conventional war anymore.
>>28283493
>what would have happened if the US invaded Iran?
Absolute fucking suicide
>>28286204
>>28286204
>I'll take I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about for $500 Alex.
>>28283493
Nothing good
>>28286239
>people go into Afghanistan
>get btfo by dirt farmers
>entire military structure changes for guerrilla warfare
theyd be slaughtered. US isn't good for it right now. Or ever will be again lol
>>28284887
ISIS started when America cut and ran, leaving the power vacuum that they filled. Had we left sooner, you'd have seen al Qaeda in Iraq grown to those proportions (they were too badly mauled to retain a hold on the militant factions).
Had we stayed in Iraq, there probably wouldn't have been an ISIS at all. Just continued skirmishes with militants, increasingly dependent on foreign fighters from saudi arabia, syria, chechnya, and elsewhere. "Flypaper strategy": we wanted to fight the global militant network in iraq rather than afghanistan, which is where the foreigners would have gone had there not been iraq.
Iraq was sufficiently pacified that Obama was bragging for years about how peaceful and stable it was. Maintaining a peace once won is much easier than establishing it in the first place, and both are easier than restoring it once we've proven that we'll walk if the college kids hold up too many signs.
>>28283493
It would have been much harder. Iran is a very different country from Iraq. Culturally, the iranians have their acts together in a way that the arabs don't. Also, the terrain there is much closer to afghanistan in terms of ruggedness than what you have in the sunni triangle. It would have been a very, very hard slog.
The strain of occupying all three would way more than offset the fact that Iran wouldn't be available as a safe haven and supplier for the militants.
You'd have the problem that you'd be fighting both shiite and sunni radicals at the same time. Iran's willing to help sunnis when expedient, but an invasion of Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan would have been a logistical nightmare and lead to a deeper pan-islamic alliance against us.
Finally, the reason America lost was political weakness at home. Invading Iran wouldn't have changed that-- the antiwar activists were already doing everything they could-- but it wouldn't shorten it, either. Fundamentally, America fought the war on a time limit and lengthening the war only gives us less time to complete our mission and leave.
>>28286204
Nigger what? look up the battle of 73 eastings retard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBG_G678Trg
>>28285748
Assad already has direct military support from Iran. As in Iran sent boots on the grounds and are directly fighting alongside the regime troops.
>>28283493
iraq insurgency would have been way shittier in the following years without the iranians to help them, all the 2008 gains from the insurgents would have never happened and iraq would be pretty quiet today.
global prices of oil would have shot through the roof, iranian intelligence assets in america would have attacked soft targets, our power grid would have gone down from hackers hurting economy, iranian airforce would be decimated but russian anti aircraft systems would have been sold and placed in iran, countering US bombers. massive casualties from invasion would have ensued because iranians arent pushover fruitcakes like iraqi haji, nothing would really have been gained politicallly since invasion would have unified iranian opposition against ayatollah, and iran would be more cohesive politically
dont forget at the time, iran was having problems with riots and unrest, they were squashing the green movement revolt
>>28287068
green movement was in 2009.
Occupation would've been a goddamned nightmare.
>>28287068
Don't totally agree, but you do have a point. Except for this:
>iranian airforce would be decimated but russian anti aircraft systems would have been sold and placed in iran, countering US bombers
Russian anti-air systems are drastically oversold, and have NEVER worked anywhere near as well as advertised against Americans. Especially if you're talking about building, shipping, delivering, deploying, and training their air defense officers after our bombs have already started falling.
I agree that the terrain, training, and morale of the persian soldier makes him far more formidable than Saddam's arabs, but Iran would still be utterly destroyed in the air war. Probably before such hypothetical AA weapons systems arrived.
(Not to mention that we'd probably enforce a no fly zone on any ships approaching Iran via the Caspian Sea. Once inside Iranian waters, even a russia-flagged transport is fair game.)
>>28287314
True, the real danger would lie in the massive amounts of angry Iranians with G3 rifles and cheap-yet-effect anti-tank weapons.
>>28286907
that was over 20 years ago.
>>28287314
i thought those russian s300 anti aircraft missiles defeated all but our latest F-22s? why were we trying so hard with sanctions to prevent russians from delivering them to iran then? also, i keep reading about their threat to oil shipping, is irans navy really that dangerous? i know most of their strategy lies in mining shipping lanes and small hit and run vessels, but wouldnt our air force be able to deal with that? WW2 showed that air power trumps naval power
>>28287434
They can fuck with oil shipments because the airspace is so crowded that they can get the missiles launched before US fighters can get authorization to fire back. And because we won't shoot first at their ships, at least not usually. They have immense ability to annoy us in a situation short of war.
That entire equation changes in a straight-up war. At that point, we roll back the entire Iranian air defense network. Hard fighting != massive casualties, at least on the american side. These kinds of big conventional maneuver wars are precisely what America's best at. Their navy would be eliminated utterly, and probably very early in the conflict to avoid a "scorched Gulf" scenario.
Iran may or may not be able to get terrorists into the US to hit civilian targets. ISIS has already been trying and lack of resources is balanced by their decentralized (and therefore harder to monitor and counter) organization. Even if the Iranians did hit American targets... that shores up America's biggest vulnerability, its anti-war movement.
I'd prefer that the Iranians not have the s300, sure, but Russian air defenses have always been grossly exaggerated.
Iran would be stomped flat in a conventional war. It would take longer than vs the arab countries, but it would happen. And then we'd have to pacify and occupy the country, and that's a whole different ball of wax. One that plays to their biggest strengths and our biggest weaknesses.
>>28287578
if they would be stomped in conventional war, why havent we already gone in and disabled their way of making nukes? serious question, you seem to know what youre talking about. im just wondering what the big stalemate is, if they are constantly defying UN requirements for nuke inspections and everything seems like UN has legal precedence to use military force instead of diplomatic sanctions if they wanted to. and diplomatic sanctions dont seem to be doing anything but making the west look like fools while iran develops a nuke
Would have been a much harder fight, Iran have a standing military and Hezbollah would be going nuts.
The US would shitstomp Iran, though ISIS or some such variant of Sunni extremists would have started up sooner and gained more traction.
>>28287578
I think you're drastically underestimating Russia's modern SAM systems, as well as overestimating the US air force. They gave us a very hard time in Vietnam, and our losses trickled off after the NVA ran through its prewar stock of missiles. In Yom Kippur, the israelies were suffering even higher attrition rates than we did in Vietnam. In Kosovo, those 20-30 year old systems stayed intact and dangerous for the duration of the conflict, despite SEAD operations similar in scale to the Gulf War. About the only times they haven't worked as advertised was when arabs using them didn't follow doctrine, and the US has never faced any of the more modern systems in a real shooting war.
>>28289932
Because Bush was occupied in Iraq, facing massive anti-war protests. And protesters who kept insisting that we were going to surprise attack Iran Any Day Now. Plus at that point we could credibly dangle the threat of an Israeli or US strike without a full-on war and strangle them with sanctions.
Obama was elected on a platform of a "diplomatic solution". He seems hell-bent on a paper agreement-- pretty much regardless of what that agreement says. He can always claim later that we were on the path to peace and that his successor botched it. The US is handing away all its negotiating leverage more or less unilaterally.
Honestly? I have no idea what he's thinking. It's not clear that there's anyone in the administration who's a real geostrategic thinker. But near as I can tell, they're screwing up due to a combination of ideology, PR, and ego.
They wouldn't be the first to fuck up this way.
>>28291120
You have a point, but the only way we'd really know is to fight it out.
You do point to another weakness the US has that we haven't talked about: intelligence-gathering. The US is excellent at SIGINT, of course, but we simply aren't up to par on human intelligence at either the operational or strategic level. Every war, we hear after the fact about bad intelligence on the target selection end, and terrible performance at BDA.
And yes that's necessary in a major land war.
>>28283493
The ayatollah would have been fucked by the big dick of freedom and his last words would have been "مرگ بر مقعد من"
