Actually, they may want to provoke a war. I wouldn't put it past that moonbat of a "president" they have now. The country is ripe for revolution; the population is young and sophisticated compared to other Muslim countries, and chafing under the iron rule of the mullahs. I wouldn't doubt that the nutburgers running the country might decide that provoking the Great Satan to attack them would be the best way to crush internal dissent and unite the populace behind them in patriotic fervor. And it might work.
We could defeat them, but Iran is a huge country with a big population. Defeating them would be one thing; if we had to do it, occupying them would be another.
}:-)4
Why occupy? They'll be in the stone age. Hostile, yes. But bombed into the 7th century.
Why bother occupying them? Just keep utterly defeating them every 5 years or so. Soon the world's favorite line will be "There go those crazy iranians again."
We could defeat them, but Iran is a huge country with a big population. Defeating them would be one thing; if we had to do it, occupying them would be another.
I couldn't agree with you more. As a matter of fact, there is an article in this month's Naval Proceedings (one of the professional journals of the US Navy) about the difficult terrain and climate in Iran. It's also twice the size of Iraq, with a much larger population.
I'm not saying we couldn't do it, but it wouldn't be a walk in the park, particularly if we had to occupy the country after an invasion, which we almost certainly would.
The main obstacle may be political, and as usual, political concerns trump military ones. The popularity of the war in Iraq is at an all-time low, and I don't believe the American people would get behind a new war in the Middle East. If Iran found a way to attack America in a big way(perhaps by sending terrorists into this country, perhaps by sinking one of our ships in the Persian Gulf), then people might support a war, otherwise, I'm not sure they would.
Still, as you say, there are some very good reasons for the Iranian leadership to start a war, and they may end up forcing us to attack - or giving us an excuse to attack, depending on how you look at it.
- ThreeTracks
Young yes, 65% under the age of 30. Sophisticated? Absolutely not. Politically, most are even naive. I would guess you are making your assessment on the young Iranian ex-pats you have met or seen in action overseas and not the 99% or so of the Joe Six pack youth inside Iran.
Even the students are very "unsophisticated" and even what there is to be found is skin deep. That's where so many analysts go wrong. Specially in situational scenarios they create. Simple literacy at a national level (forget national level education including any international knowledge) was only just over a generation old by the time the Revolution happened.
This also a reason for all the conflicting "solutions" being submitted to governments by their intel agencies and military analysts. Few are based on "reality" or realistic comprehension of the populace demographics, mindsets, probable reactions or capacity to think at a level "assumed" by the submitters as it presently exists.
We all forget that it was only in the last 10 to 15 years of the reign of the late Shah (1965 onward) that Iran BEGAN to emerge from the Dark Ages. In all fairness, it took him that long just to get the door open for them. Only to fall back into the darkness when Khomeini took over in 1979.
And they were intentionally sunk deeper into supersition and Islamic dogma. Don't be fooled by the two or three million out of a population of over 70 million, inside Iran, who are the "skin" under which lies the rest of a decent enough but very ignorant population. Again, intentionally kept that way by the Mullahs.