I agree with each of your points in your 14.The article phrasing is an echo of the predictions of 50,000 body bags after fighting the battle-hardened Republican Guard.
Pre-war air strikes took out Saddam's air defense radar grid and command and control capabilities.
The article smacks of whistling past the graveyard altogether with a paper deterrent.
"Ooooh, you don't want to make Iran mad--Iran might send suicide commandos--" As though they are not doing that now.
"Iran might sink some ships to block the flow of oil."
Make our day, Khamenei and Ahmedinejad--you drive the cost of our gasoline up another dime and soccer moms will enlist to take you out.
If Iran were secure in its "alliance" with Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac, and Gerhard Schroeder against the cowboy at 1600, this press release attempt to dissuade our military option would not be needed.
Iran faces an 85%+ Strongly Disapprove at home and a U.S. commander-in-chief who is not flinching.
What it has left is hiding behind the Franco-Germanic Anti-American Bund.
Which bought Saddam fourteen months of freedom, a period of spider-hole fugitive status, and a trial for crimes against humanity.
Can the Revolutionary Guard fight the American military machine and its own people simultaneously, a two-front war on its own turf?
Can the Islamic Republic fight an enemy with global reach and state-of-the-art technology while its people watch for every exposed flank, bitter from years of repression?
If the Ayatollah felt the answer to be yes, there would be no need for the extant article.
The Parliament which last September chanted "Death to America! Death to Israel!" will be bits of protoplasm amidst the rubble and their fanatic leaders will be issuing defiant videotape to Aljazeera from an undisclosed location when the secular democratic hurricane makes landfall in Tehran, its strong points/centers of gravity having been destroyed by cruise missiles, JDAMs, and a new line of bunker busters.
No, we will not present targets for "insurgents"--the regime will be said targets for indigenous "insurgents": students, women, mad as hell.
The inmates will slay their wardens once the walls are breeched and the towers are down.
There will be no "ground war", no U.S. occupation.
There will be another democratic ally in the state formerly known as the Islamic Republic.