I thought Israel having nukes was unconfirmed.
It is all but confirmed they have nukes, or at least all the components for nukes. What they do lack is the current infrastructure to produce more; they have "research" labs that could be quickly converted to producing fissionable material at levels that aren't particularly high, but enough to build a weapon.
LOL. In a stand up war with known emplacements the US utterly crushes pretty much anyone, excepting probably russia. The problem the US has is that it doesn't want to just kill everyone after dismantling the government and military, so either you leave a big power vacuum or you babysit murderous tribes (or you just kill everyone, but we don't like to be that evil)
Iraq's military was nothing. It might as well have not existed. If the US knows where the target is, the target is dead. Soldiers with weapons are irrelevant.
Eh, sort of.
Final G-Psperg post on this:
When I say invading Iran would be more costly than invading Iraq, to be fair this is like saying something will cost more than something at Dollar Tree. But that doesn't mean the US won't get some pretty serious scrapes if it went toe-to-toe with Iran.
In 2003,Iraq's defense infrastructure had never recovered from Gulf War I, which at the time was also in bad shape from getting pounded by Iran in the Iran/Iraq war. The US had air supremacy from the get-go and air dominance in a matter of hours. Iraq also had significant internal issues due to minority rule, and they couldn't risk redeploying too much of their military to the border because they needed to keep the south under control.
Iran, by contrast, had been on the upswing when the Iran/Iraq war was finally stopped by all of the proxy players agreeing to stop playing. They have intact defensive sites, which they have been upgrading as best they can with help from Russia/China, doubly so since Obama cucked under. They also have a better airforce than Iraq, in that they have planes that fly. (Apparently the planes & pilots are good, but they are a few generations behind on missles, EW, and avionics). So at the start, the US will have air superority, and it would probably take a few days to get air supremacy. Air Dominance might not be achieved at time scales that matter because of the nature of Iran's defenses. Iran is also not exactly restive, but the ruling group is the majority. They won't be hamstrung by internal conflicts, and also have a large civil force they can use to keep the feistier regions under control in the event of invasion.
Iran will know the invasion is coming, and they'll have quite some time to be ready, and have a good idea exactly where it will come from. Iraq has several hundred miles of desert it shares with Saudi Arabia who allowed the US to stage there. Iraq had no access to private satellite data, so while they knew the US was coming they didn't know exactly where or exactly when. Iraq won't let us stage from them. Pakistan won't. Afghanistan...lol, they might be willing but they don't control the border regions. The only country bordering Iran who might let the US stage troops would be Armenia, but they might not want to be involved. It would probably come down to if Russia really wants to stop the invasion or not (if they do, they apply political pressure and Armenia would cave. They don't...Armenia might allow themselves to be used as a support base for invasion, and the dollars that brings). Saudi Arabia is also questionable, even though they would benefit from it immensely. See, here's the thing. Even just regular ol' nuclear bombs change the equation. No one wants to be next to Iran and be a valid nuke target.
So invasion will be from the gulf, maybe some paratroops from Afghanistan. Iran will have warning, and they will know, or have a good idea, where the target will be, so they will have the ability to deploy as much of their military there as possible. They won't be able to stop it with their conventional arsenal, but they will be able to make it costly to get off the beaches. It wouldn't be like Iraq where you lose a handful of vehicles and a couple of supply convoys who took a left at the white donkey, and have 2-3 battles that are better than orderly withdraws by the enemy. Its going to be proper fighting, even if Iran is being pushed back constantly. They have a bunch of fanatics. Just read up about the later stages of the Iraq/Iran war, especially about the Martyr Brigades.
Even if Iran doesn't use their nukes,the US will lose aircraft. Ships will get damaged - possibly lost. possibly while loaded with soldiers. There will be a high day-0 body count. Minus someone forcing the US to limit the use of airpower (lol), even if Iran is dedicated to fighting to the very last, the war would be over in days or weeks. Even forgetting the monetary and human cost of rebuilding, it just won't be worth it. And that's really Iran's whole strategy.
tl;dr
Save the world, glass the middle east
