THEY HAVE GOT TO BE INSANE! Look at this and tell me they aren't. I dare you! Iran's HUGE Military!

This is just a SMALL sampling of Iran's military capabilities. If you wish to see more, follow the links and look at the pictures! :scared: This administration's ARROGANCE and warmongering is going to destroy the world. WTF are they thinking?



http://www.iranmilitaryforum.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=46&Itemid=57

http://www.iranmilitaryforum.com/pictures/IMF/Boats,ships,subs/small/pht2lt_small.jpg

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If we invade Iran, we will get a rude ass whipping.

In amounts we have not seen....

This is already out of control and I don't know who's going to be able to stop these ROGUE warmongers. Congress? What if the psycho and Cheney say..."Go fuck yourself, we're going into Iran and you can't stop us." What then? Impeachment? BY THEN, it's too damn late. The damage is done.:(

Iraq, Iran and Syria to get to the Med Sea port - Cheney will stop at nothing to complete this.

from the time the Taliban in May of 2001 would no longer negotiate with the US so we could build it, and months later we did not have to worry about that anymore.....

Three times the size, organized and supplied.

They want America to be buried - not the Iranians, not the terrorists, the CRIMINALS IN THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH and their enablers on the Hill and in the SCOTUS!

against a few research facilities, to send their regular army across the Iraqi border. That's gotta be the wet dream over there in the White House if not the Pentagon.
All that sand, just waiting to be turned into glass...

They don't want to go to Iran probably at all, they want Iran to come to us.

They are very clever and entirely unprincipled.

Consider:
1) It will not be Chimpy's admin or any of their loved ones in the firing line.
2) Bush and Cheney are heavily involved in the oil market.
3) The botched invasion of Iraq has driven the price of crude to record highs.
4) An invasion and botched occupation of Iran would drive the price even higher.

The objective is NOT to win the war(s), the objective is simply to tie up the country in such a way that it can't pump any oil, driving the price ever higher. Yes, dividing up and selling off the oil fields is worth billions but simply tying up the ability to pump oil is potentially worth trillions.

This misAdministration has never done ANYTHING- right, wrong or otherwise- based on the
actual interests of the USA as a nation.

They serve ONLY the interests of the wealthiest elites. And for
that tiny group, B*sh has been a monumentally successful pResident.

The question of how many troops would die or how badly the US would lose misses the point. The Chimp Administration doesn't care in the slightest how many die. In fact, the more who die the better because that means the talking heads in the media will support them ever more viciously. They don't care if the US would win or lose because the whole objective is stalemate. If you look at it in a very Machiavellian way, everything the Bush admin has done makes total sense, you just have to divorce yourself from the notion that they're even trying to benefit anyone other than themselves and the very select elite that Chimpy once described as his "base".

with a martial-law police state and la-la-land media in the USA to keep the proles in their place.

Most of which has almost been achieved.

The unilateral militarization of outer space will be the final twist in this gordian knot.

Marx was wrong, religion isn't the opiate (in fact, these days, it's starting to resemble crack). The opiate is TV and a dumbed-down media. The more the people focus their mental energy on American Idol or Desperate Housewives or whatever else they're watching (I watch very little TV), the more the mass media has a ready built excuse for not covering politics and the less the public know about political matters. The public are not necessarily bad but they are easily distracted and so it goes, in ever decreasing circles.

Bread and circuses to entertain the plebs while the patricians do what they like. Hardly revolutionary tactics but time-tested ones.

The flowers are colitas and the candy is oil

Welcome to Hotel Middle East

These short sighted "towering geniuses" are just out doing themselves AGAIN.

The complicit media ain't helping at all. This bellicose foreign policy is unsustainable for sure.

May it end ASAP and may wiser hearts prevail.

handcuffs soon, or the world is about to come tumbling down in one huge bang. This dip shit is delusional.

ww

nt

And Big Bears nearby aren't likly to sit on their thumbs in such a fight.

China's military and economy, all supported by American Consumers.... ironic.

They own our ass even without waking their army up.

they need the American Consumer....

They will use the factories we sent there to provide for their own people.
Remember,There are over a billion of them over there.That is a huge market.Bigger than what they have here.

Meaning, the average American consumer has about 12-13 times the purchasing power of the average Chinese consumer.

So, if the dollar crashes and China's trillion dollars or so of US Treasury holdings loses a huge amount of value, it will have a huge impact on China's economy, to the tune of 1/4 to maybe 1/3 of it.

How does the US Gov't finance it debt? Through T-Bills. T-Bills are bonds. When one buys a bond one pays a set price in exchange for periodic interest payments then one gets the principle back. T-Bills have varying maturities (months to years) depending on how the gov't felt when it was issued.

There is NO mechanism for the holder of the bond to for payment of the principle faster. The T-Bills are payable in...wait for it...US Dollars. Not gold, not Euros, not nachos or anything else. They can be paid off by literally running the printing presses or the electronic equivalent.

So China refuses to buy anymore T-Bills. Fine. Then we offer a better interest rate, causing some inflating of the US Dollar and thereby reducing the value of the lower interest rate T-Bills already in Chinese possession - reducing the value of their own assets. China would be nuts to do that.

Or China sells all their bonds at once. That is a great way to minimize the value of Chinese assets (pre-owned T-Bills) during a fire sale. Again, China is screwed.

Like it or not, China has every interest in keeping their relationship with the US stable. China wants to be a regional hegemon and nothing more - as China has always been.

:toast:

As you say, "Like it or not, China has every interest in keeping their relationship with the US stable."

There may at most be a slowing down of the rate of purchasing of US T-Bills. As long as the US continues to pay the bond-market interest rate (ie does not default); with all the transfer of international purchasing-power that that entails.

Of course, nobody wants to see the US Dollar (or any other major internationallly-exchangeable currency) fail.

Peace. Faith. Om.

Maybe we'd blow them away like we did with Iraq in both wars, maybe not. I was never worried about the conventional war back when Bush was first starting to talk about Gulf War 2, I was worried about what we'd be facing in the occupation. You'll note that Saddam's Scuds, tanks, planes and artillery really haven't done that much damage to us. Guerrillas using improvised explosives and small arms have been bleeding us white. Containment is one thing, occupation is another. Saddam was contained after the first Gulf War. While we were not happy with him remaining in Iraq, at least he kept a lid on the violence. If Iran got frisky and started firing cruise missiles at tankers, we could reduce their airfields to rubble and remove that conventional threat. But occupying them? That's a whole different issue.

The point I really wonder about are the guided missiles. Israel got spanked silly by the latest generation of antitank missiles. The hezzies used some very effective tactics to cause the Israeli advance to stall out and absorb unacceptable casualties. They were stopped before they they could even become occupiers. So what kinds of antiship missiles do the Iranians have to play with? How effective are they? And are the USN's antimissile systems up to scratch? Hell, how many times has AEGIS even been used in a real life combat situation? I know of one downed Iranian airliner. How many navy ships have even endured cruise missile attack? There's the Stark and I don't think they even got a shot off. The point I'm making is that the USN talks a good game but their defenses are not battle-tested.

it would be a very bad idea to strike Iran. They are a very sophisticated nation with an equally sophisticated military.

Too busy yelling "We're Number One!" to notice the rest of the world is not barefoot, pregnant, living in mud huts, and wishing the Great White Father would come teach them to read.

Have I told you lately?
:loveya:
Happy Valentine's Day.

BHN

The US military is built as a force of destruction unrivaled in this world but it is not one of occupation which is why such occupations almost always fail.

with them.

much end civilization as me know it. I'm not sure even in a conventional war the US could withstand both Russia and China and who knows what other countries might join in on the Russia/China side of the coin.

ww

Russia, China and India are said to be joining together to perhaps stand against USA if need be.

Why would you expect a win against Iran?

In a conventional war, against a conventional nation-state enemy, we would not lose to a relatively small nation like Iran. It might not be a cakewalk, but we would win. Iraq is an entirely different situation: a guerilla war against a faceless and stateless insurgency, caught in the middle between two or three warring religious factions, and trying to maintain stability in an occupation.

If the Iranian Army crossed the Iraq border, we could take out huge numbers of them in air strikes. A single tactical nuke exploded over the real estate where their army sits would take it out in one strike (not that I'm advocating that, at all!).

It may be that this is one reason the Bushies are so pumped to strike Iran -- to get a do-over for the botched Iraq occupation.

Bake

Population 70 million, the size of Western Europe, with two separate alpine-height mountain ranges, one of which is 1,000 miles long?

Capital Tehran, population 25 million (larger than any US city except for NY and LA)?

Tehran sits 700 miles from the nearest US airbase or aircraft carrier, on the other side of said mountain range, surrounded by 15 other cities pop. 1 million or more?

For comparison, only two or three cities in Iraq have pop. 1 million or more.

Iran also has much more woodland cover than Iraq, in the populated areas.

The unpopulated steppes of eastern Iran are the size of the American Southwest.

Methinks you just proved the point about Americans not knowing what they're up against.

With a smaller army and no nukes.

Bake

Are you suggesting that the U.S. could field 25 million troops in Iran?

Are you planning on volunteering?

How do you seize a nation's oil fields without occupying it?

But then, we haven't been in a conventional war in quite a while.

Bake

So I don't see what point you're trying to make.

The OP was all about how Iran is a great military power, and we should be shaking in our boots. Well, I'm not. The Iranian army, navy, and air force is no match for the US. Would we take some losses in a conventional war? Certainly. Would we "lose"? I doubt it. What we would likely lose, as in Iraq, is a post-war occupation.

Although frankly, I think if we get into a war with Iran, it'll end up going nuclear and there won't be anything left to occupy. And there are plenty of good reasons, totally apart from that, for us NOT to go to war with Iran or anybody else for that matter.

But I'm not in awe of the Iranian military. I would not want to see us go to war with China, or with Russia as those are end-of-the-world scenarios.

Bake

This was war-gamed and the results were discussed here on DU.

The only occupyable part of land is the narrow strip along the coast where all the oil is.

This strip is sandwiched between high mountains (where bunkers can easily be set up to launch cruise missiles against our ships and rockets against our troops) on the one side,

And the Iraqi city of Basra (pop. 1 Million, 100% Shi'ite, controlled by Iranian-armed and trained Iraqi militias with their hand on the levers of the Iraqi Army) on the other side of a porous, swampy, Saigon-style border.

Iran is FAR more populous than Afghanistan, and we don't have friendly support bases with easy access over the border into friendly areas, like we did with the Northern Alliance. We were UNABLE TO INVADE Afghanistan from the south, which is where Al Qaeda's bases were, and where they still flee to.

The part along the coast where all the oil is. Convenient!

How will Americans feel about a war where a front line exists in the mountains, Iran is not overthrown and continues to fight us while our troops spend their times defending oil wells in the narrow occupied strip?

Fight to the last man while their military command and entire state apparatus goes into pre-prepared hideouts in the mountains, as Hezbollah did. "We will never surrender. We will fight them in the fields, we will fight them in the cities..." Anyone remember that?

In other words, we would not be able to defeat Iran except thru nukes.

(which is to say we could not win a conventional ground war with Iran, and we would lose the war on terror by using nukes).

An air-only war will achieve nothing except massive civilian casualties, producing millions of volunteers willing to infiltrate Iraq, hide out in Shi'ite homes, and fight us there.

Iran is an island behind its mountain ranges.

We'd never be able to occupy Iran, nor could we invade them in a ground war successfully. I think my point was, should the Iranians try to send a couple of divisions into Iraq, they would be unsuccessful. Further, I think what Bushie has in mind is massive air strikes, if not tactical nukes.

Bake

If Iran sends regular troops into the open plains of Iraq,

They will be mowed down and lose pretty badly to US forces.

That is the mistake they made against Saddam (they tried to retake the Iranian part of the Tigris river delta by assaulting Saddam conventionally with human wave attacks, because neither Saddam nor the Iranians could get tanks over the mountains without resistance...)

Einstein said that repeating an action and expecting a different outcome was a sign of madness, no?

Neither Vietnam nor Iraq were/are conventional wars in the sense the previous poster explained.

What I worry about is the aftermath. There is a big difference between attacking and occupying a country, as history shows us again and again.

Will they attack Iran's nuclear facilities? What would that mean for the millions of people exposed to the fallout? What would this mean for us in Iraq? Is this administration even aware that Iran supports a lot of the same elements that we do?

So many scenarios, most of them BAD.

*Edited to thank whomever it was that gave me a heart. :hug:
I cannot afford to hand any out atm, but thank you immensely! Happy Valentines Day!

You know a whole bunch of people will think that.

those consequences.
Thats why kicking Bush out is imperative.

I've lost hope ....

Unless they're old enough to have been sold to the Shah, in which case they're obsolete.

trading arms for hostages.

So they do have somewhere over 1000 American-made anti-tank TOW missiles from the 1980s, according to Wikipedia.

so we could send arms to the contras in Nicaragua so they could find those evil Sandinistas, who were threatening the borders of Texas, Arizona & New Mexico.

The F-14 was feared once and that was with American air crews and an American flight program. Wanna guess how many hours US pilots get a month? Want to guess how many Iranian pilots get?? Want to guess what happens when US Pilots in F-22's with lots of flight time go up against Iranian pilots in F-14 with next to no flight hours???

So you will say the AIM-54 Phoenix missle........How many kills does the Phoenix have to its name?? 0!!!!! That's right, the Phoenix has never shot down another jet in combat, it is only a killer in Tom clancy's mind. It is heavy, expensive to maintain (ha! Iran maintain weapons) useless in close combat. Sorry not attacking you, I just take my former experience as an Intel analyst seriously (before I was a combat MOS) and laugh when people try to boogeyman me with Iran's "capabilities
'

why we continue to deal arms to such countries, regardless.

we'll sell to anyone I guess....... :(

Money, Trumps, Peace.

but how many civilizations took peace over a chance for growth during war? Not my bag, but is his quote very radical from others in history except for the fact that he said it out loud??

Some things might be obsolete but in a somewhat relative way which we don't want to find out about.

They may have the the ability to destroy 50% of the worlds petroleum export market. Overnight, for all practical purposes.

Yes, this will require that they either attack outright or forment attacks against facilities in KSA, Kuwait, UAE, Qatar. A very dangerous escalation.

The thing is, if we have pushed their backs to the wall, this level of escalation may be considered an acceptable last ditch effort to inflict damage against the attacker.

And as for the damage, think we will still be able to import that 12.4 Mbbl/dy of SUV go-juice with the Chinese, Indians, Japanese, South Koreans, Germans, French etc. all using those dollars they have accumulated to bid against us in what remains of the export market.

On the plus side, we still produce a lot of oil (40%) domestically. We won't starve. But with a 10 gal/month gasoline ration, I think SUV sales will be down.


Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.

- Sir Winston Churchill

Than Iran's military. Their aircraft are much older than ours, our ground troops are much better trained than theirs. Yes it will be a fight, but our military would end up on the winning side of ANY battle be it in the air, on the ground or on the sea.

:eyes:

Iraq had NO military power and we're losing. HTF do you think we're going to take on Iran when we don't even have enough troops to win in Iraq?

Remaking Iraq as a stable, peaceful democracy isn't going to happen if the people haven't the power or desire to make it happen, and we're certainly not helping that along. The tools of the resistance there (as everywhere) are small arms and IEDs. Those are the sort of weapons we would have problems with if we were to occupy Iran, and I'm sure they have plenty of them. But the weapons in the OP are the kind of weapons that our military is best equipped to handle-- they're big, difficult to maintain, impossible to hide, and laughably obsolete. As with Iraq, the initial fight with the state military would be relatively easy. Staying and occupying, especially with our "small" volunteer army, would be insane. Of course, this should all be moot, since we have no compelling reason to go to war with Iran anyway.

The US Military has already war-gamed this. There is no way to set up a battle-front capable of occupying any portion of Iran other than Khuzestan, an Iraq-like region in the Tigris valley where all the oil is.

We will stay there, surrounded by mountains bristling with enemy forces, just like Saddam did when he invaded Iran in the FIRST Gulf War.

(you know, the one many DUers don't know anything about, the one where one of our ships got *accidentally* sunk, the Persian Gulf was successfully mined, and planes taken out of the sky).

The rest of Iran is hidden behind large mountain ranges.

We could move in an Afghanistan-size airborne force into the Iranian part of Kurdistan. They wouldn't just be fighting desert nomads with conflicted loyalties. It would be like invading Pakistan or India.

for the same reasons that the Iraq occupation was doomed to failure. You can't force a nation into becoming a peaceful (i.e. friendly toward YOU) democracy. Especially not with as few troops as we have to spare with our volunteer army. But reducing their military capability back to infantry equipped with small arms only wouldn't take that long.

Next door to Basra, where all the oil is.

Convenient to all those rear-guard Iraqi militia fighters who we equipped and trained, the ones who promised to defend Iran in an attack.

Beyond that, we would have to extend our military enormously to hold territory or even get to the outskirts of major cities away from the coast.

Much of our advance weapons are negated.

on our advanced weapons (shaped charges capable of destroying Abrams tanks, the most powerful tank in existence.)

But there is a difference between a military verses military conflict and an occupying army fighting guerillas.

With spy satellites and air supremacy, a US-Iran war would be like playing chess with a blind man. US greater mobility is also a significant advantage.

The US dominated the Iraq military (before the "mission accomplished"). That too was a military verses military.

Once you move in and face an insurgence it becomes a completely different situation. Satellites and F16s don’t do you any good as you face an army that hides among the civilian population.

The Iranians, unlike the Iraqi generals whose loyalties were divided against their totalitarian leader and considered Saddam doomed anyhow, would direct their troops to "use it or lose it".

Not a single Republican Guard battalion attempted to move against us on the ground in either Iraq war. They all surrendered after the air assault (translation: they survived the air assault, but were unwilling to fight).

The ones that didn't moved against us in uncoordinated "human wave" tactics they learned from the Iranians. These posed a serious threat during our initial assault, but we outnumbered them sufficiently in tanks vs. humans to allow the tank column to split up and outflank the entire Iraqi army on the road to Baghdad.

That is not possible in Iran, because there is nowhere for the tank column to go, and we don't outnumber their irregulars even if you use the 1 tank = 100 humans on foot discrepancy.

Bandar Abbas will be the center of a naval battle to protect our carriers from being cut off and sunk in the bathtub known as the Gulf, and that is the only city with a wide-open road to Tehran.

Unfortunately it is 1,000 miles from Tehran thru unpopulated steppes -- too far for our gas-guzzling Abrams tanks. We would bog down at the first sign of a populated area, like the Germans did outside Moscow.

The Iranians came up with the idea of irregular "suicide" assaults on foot, in their effort to retake Khuzestan from Saddam. In our case they won't bother, they will simply rain down shoulder fired rockets on the oil installations we are trying to protect.

that we are going to lose our stature for centuries.

she would lick the Iranians raw...for PEACE. ;) She hates war.

Don't trust her. Looks like she'd turn on you in a heartbeat if they had snausages.

My pomie looks like this (minus the diaper) and I know she'd fink me out to Bush so long as he had bacon in his pocket.

Little Bailey....:loveya: You're probably right about the treats and finkin'. Isabelle lives for treats!

Notably, Isabelle doesn't think Bush's America is the winning team.

It would easily win the battle (literally steam roll Iran), and completely lose the war.

They burned Britain to the ground, but were unable to invade Britain, so they could not win.

Similarly, we can burn Tehran to the ground, but there is no reliable land route to Tehran from the Persian Gulf.

And Tehran has 25 million people, the size of Los Angeles.

we would see if we went to war with Iran...I don't think nearly enough people realize this - they probably assume Iraq and Iran are equivalent, in terms of military might. The general populace's reticence to go to war with Iran is probably based on the belief that an extended occupation is the worst consequence, but they have no idea what the battle itself would be like.

The U.S. military would take about 4 months (at most) to crush Iran's organized military. Afterward, though, we'd just fuck up and try to stay too long, and some sort of resistance would develop.
Occupation of a country with a well-armed citizenry is just absolutely impossible if you try to go with brute force and no diplomacy (and probably almost impossible even with diplomatic efforts), and if you care about limiting casualties. The only reason we had a peaceful occupation of Germany and Japan after WWII was that they had been beaten to a bloody pulp and were too afraid of the Soviets to be squemish about being occupied by the West.

It took us four months of bombing to invade Iraq in Gulf War II (1991).

How do you propose to get troops and armor in country? Are you familiar
with the logistics of Iran? Do you know why our force in Afghanistan is
so small and unable to wipe out the tribesmen there, even if we wanted to?

The terrain prevents us from moving troops and armor INTO the country.

Geez, people need to read up on geography and history of the region. The only land we would ever be able to sieze is the narrow strip of land along the coast, where the oil is.

not the "HUGE" military that the OP is so worried about.

goes dark (nuclear). Otherwise, they are plenty big to do us serious harm. They could certainly repel an attack.

good is radioactive OIL? How could they steal their OIL if they NUKE Iran?

Thereby raising the price of oil and making tons of money for the oil companies not involved in producing Iraq's oil. I still don't think we'd go nuclear on Iran, though.

it'll be an air campaign. to begin with at least. with israeli help of course. then it'll get out of hand.

It is on the verge of being a world power.
We couldn't even take out a little third world country.

We can break things just fine and dandy like. Putting it back together on the other hand...

I'd cautiously take this with a grain of salt.

it is not about them being able to invade the US - that I don't think anyone is worried about.

It is about them using their technology and hatred to build nuclear weapons to hit Israel and/or the US (via smaller nukes brought in on ships/etc).

And anyone who thinks they are not a threat to their neighbors...well, think about the left and gun control and the arguments some make about me owning a single gun (and the damage I could do with it if I were a hate monger).

I think we can also agree the US does not have the ability to sieze any appreciable amount of Iranian territory away from the coasts.

It is not a flat, sparsely populated desert kingdom connected by US-built freeways.

It is a mountainous country with a mix of heavily populated areas and mountain wilderness, connected by mountain roads. Think Eastern Europe.

with my two cents and agree with you. I lived in Tehran during the 1970-71 school year. I still have family there. And unlike most who have posted here, have some idea of the Persian mindset and geography.

1. Almost everyone has forgotten the "home turf advantage". The locals know the terrain...much better than our military. And Iran is a big country.

2. The mountain ranges are very rugged and high altitude. Tehran itself is above 3000' elevation. We are not talking rounded hilltops with trees, but barren, rocky mountains, with nary a tree in sight.

3. The main plateau of Iran is high desert. To the south-east of Isfahan, is a huge desert. (I think that is the one that the ill-fated helicopter crashed in, so long ago.)

4. The country is a Real, Very Ancient Country; the people are very nationalistic and proud of their history and traditions. They were an empire before there was a Europe. Scratch any Persian Moslem, and underneath you will find a closet Zoroastrian. (Is that why my step-father has this thing about fires?) After the Revolution, the Mullahs tried to break the people from celebrating the old holidays, such as Nou Rooz, and finally gave up the idea.

5. Iranian roads: from what I have seen on the internet, they seem to have improved since I was there (I should hope so), but many are still like our 2-lane country roads...populated with the most manical drivers on the planet. They make Italian drivers look sedate.

6. The US miliatry could bomb the country, but remember, the place is huge. The mountains are defenseable from the ground, and the deserts are just plain miserable, not to mention -big-.

7. Oh, and as I posted below, population of around 70 million, approx. 66% of whom are under 30. That is around 46 million people under 30. Think about that for a moment.

So what part of this is a really bad idea do some folks here not get?

Then worry about all the unsecured ones in Russia, with its badly deteriorated command and control systems, not the imaginary ones in Iran.

In calculations of weapons as a conventional Army maneuvers the United States wins. Non-linear war is the achilles heel we (nor) anyone else has figured out a winning strategy. When it it comes to an occupation, irregular (guerrilla) war or winning the hearts and minds of those occupied, winning will not occur. For the same reason Vietnam, and now Iraq is a hopeless mess our efforts a war in Iran will lose.

Spazzing out about Iran's military like the OP did is unnecessary. Their shit is a generation behind, maybe more.

Iran's population is 70,049,262 (2006 est*)

under 15 male & female....
females 16 & over
men over 65

equals 44,554,514


that leaves 25,494,746 men between 16 and 64..

one could easily assume that if one's contry were to be attacked, that most of those men would be conscripted into service ..

Of that number, there already are many who ARE milityary and already trained & ready to go.

and then there's Iran's terrain,,

George needs to let go that Tiger's tail he's been clutching..and go back to playing Nintendo.

providing them all with arms and training capable of giving the U.S. military a problem in open battle would be impossible.

much of that. Look at Iraq..Look at Viet Nam..Look at Somalia..

Determined people whose homeland has been invaded, usually rise to the occasion..

We even did it to the British :evilgrin:

If occupying Iran with the intent of installing a pro-Western democratically-elected government is the goal, then the only outcome would be total, utter failure. But not, as th OP suggests, because of Iran's "HUGE" military.

Did we invade yours? Or was it in fact already some(several)body else's? :evilgrin:

Does Iran have the ability to feed 25 million soldiers in the field? Does Iran have the capacity to keep its society and economy running with 25 million men in the field? Does Iran have the ability to transport 25 million men into battle, Does Iran have any way to fight a successful war trying to arm, feed, transport and manuever 25 million men under murderous American Air attacks, cruise missles, artillery, MLRS strikes etc. all before they hit our Armored columns.........

Ponder this, Iran with 2-3 times an Army the size of Iraq's was unable to defeat Iraq in an 8 year war that devolved into trench warfare. The US by happenstance sliced through the Iraqi army twice. I was in the 2nd war and I don't care what the internetz says the Iraqis fought us in 03.....We sliced through them like knife through butter.

People that are not military experts crack me up when they post things like "OH NOES Iran has 70 million people"......

Iran is a third rate power that could not defeat another third rate power. Iran does not have modern equipment.....Iran does not have training on par with any western military. Iran in a conventional war with the US would collapse so fast it would be comical, Iran in 4th Generation Asymetrical warfare would be nigh impossible to defeat. Of course if we invade them we have a short conventional war that we win, followed by a 4th Gen nightmare. If however Iran invades Iraq through US provocation, Iran gets smashed for 50 years.

Pray tell, what conventional aspect of Iran's military should I fear, and why????

and comparison between the Iran/Iraq war is not apples-apples.

We could never "occupy" Iran..just like we cannot "occupy" Iraq.. well we CAN, if we are willing to endure a neverending "insurgency".

Having the ability to "blow them all up" or "bomb them to the stone age" is so "twentieth century blowhard".:hi:

The problem is the huge hit it would have on the American economy. Iran is well invested by Multi-National Corporations, most based in Europe, some American companies using European subsidiaries.

Our banks and world banks built their shopping malls, highways, office parks, hospitals, oil pipelines, bridges, subways and high rises.





It would be like going to war with ourselves. Our investors wouldn't stand for it. Europe wouldn't stand for it. The White House knows that. It's just noise and excuses to deflect from the giant screw-up in Iraq.

I would be more scared than I am.

I had no idea Iran's military was so organized!

Isn't that what a lot of them want - just flatten the Middle East and turn it into a nuclear wasteland?

They probably regret not doing that with North Korea in the Korean War and with the North Vietnamese later on...

These guys have FLYING planes, MODERN missiles, REAL UAVs and the technology to control them.

If attacked, they will put up a fight.

They know we would pummel them in division size warfare. They are learning the details they need to grind us down to a bloody stain using assymetrical tactics. We can't get a handle on Iraq. Iran will be exponentially worse. And, as an added bonus, do you think your friendly neighborhood Iranian is going to take our carpet boming (or nuking) of his friends and family lightly? I doubt it. I wouldn't. So, sure, nobody could beat us in standard warfare. Which is exactly why that won't be the fight they bring to us. It's a no-go.

military occupation if there will be any. They will wage guerrilla war against any occupation force from the US and win barring mass genocide by the US gov't.

Their air force and navy would be destroyed in the first hours of war, and their army would not dare go toe-to-toe with US formations. They would, instead, wage a guerrilla campaign rather than march out onto a field to face American gunships, warplanes, and tanks.

could well take out one or a few of our ships and several planes and dozens of helicopters. We would likely see casualties in the hundreds on our side before the inevitable guerrilla war and citizen insurgency even begins.

completely halt oil exports from the Persian gulf... What tanker would take that kind of chance?

Iran has the advantage in every other category. We'd never win a ground war in Iran.

Remember the Tet Offensive? Military-wise, it was a defeat for the NVA. Morale-wise, it was the beginning of the end for us. Iran could easily launch their own Tet Offensive into Iraq.

confrontation, ours is that much better. But, as you point out, this will not be another Iraq and the casualties will quickly mount up. It's the war after the war that we cannot win, nor would any sane leader try.

That's my fear. We ALL know this man is a psychopath and Cheney (a psycho too) is too damn arrogant and self absorbed to give a crap about what an invasion of Iran would do to us as a Nation. Can you just IMAGINE what the WORLD would think?

As long as there is still a man standing that needs a gun or a bullet, they will continue to seek reasons to fight over there.

and look at the mess Iraq is right now.

:scared:

Nothing would turn all those Western-oriented, freedom-loving Iranian youth into dedicated patriots faster than a U.S. invasion. Even Stalin was able to get the Russian people to fight for him, because people have an almost instinctive desire to protect their territory from outside invaders.

Some posters above have noted this, but there are some seriously tall mountains in Iran. I don't know if some people here think Iran is just flat desert land or what, but they should do their homework. Here's a start:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Iran

The country has MANY peaks that range between 12,000 - 18,000 ft.

I actually had an ex-army general tell me once that he believed that there are 4 nations on Earth that can't be defeated in a ground war. These are the ones he listed and the reasons:

Iran: Climate, geography.
China: Climate, geography, and population.
Russia: Climate, and population.
United States: Climate, and population.

the interior plateau is relatively high elevation, Tehran is around 3000'. The Elburz mountains go Up from there. I know... my bedroom window in Tehran looked out on the mountains. All rocks, no trees, and very rugged.

if he even THINKS for a second about a pre-emptive strike against Iran. In Selim's words, Bush hasn't a clue regarding the culture he is provoking. The Iranians are a long line of fierce and conquering people. The Middle East will never be the same should this happen. And then we both said at the same time, but the Middle East hasn't been the same since 3/03 anyhow.

I just hope this dumb fuck Bush isn't hearing voices again. :crazy:

heard while listening to BBC.

...(given that we neutered its natural enemy -- thereby enabling the level of power Iran now enjoys).