The Continuing Push Towards The Inevitable War with Iran

[CountArach]

They are using the nuclear excuse again? At least this time the people in question actually have some vague capacity...

I would be surprised if this goes much further, but it is already too far.

[GenosseGeneral]

I think Iran knows well that the West cannot afford an invasion at the moment. Europe is struggling with its economy and financial system, the US have overstretched their military in Afghanistan. Some bombing might be affordable, but Iran is huge and has a lot of mountains so they can easily dig in and hide their facilities (as they already seem to do), so a war only conducted by air and missiles might not achieve this aim.
A raid by special forces might be appealing on the first view, but even SEALs cannot take out a huge, defended bunker complex quick enough. Just look at Tora Bora, which took more time to take than just some hours. In this time Iran could send in regular forces and the guys would have to get out of there... the necessary air support which delivers the firepower to special operators would be difficult to send in, since the Iran has decent air defence, at least compared to Taliban or the Libyan army.
A large scale invasion is even more unlikely since it would simply be too expensive, Europe would not take part in it and the US cannot afford it either. As Cube already pointed out before, regular warfare in Iran would be painful. The country is huge and harder to invade than Iraq. Also, from where should the US invade? Only Iraq would be an option, though it might be questionable if the Iran-influenced Iraqi government would let the US do this.
The best option for the west would maybe an invasion by an Saudi-Israeli coalition with support by US Navy and Airforce. The Saudis could may have the military power and of course the money to do so; however the question is if their military is capable of crossing the Persian Gulf. I guess they would need US assistance here, but joint operations have to be carefully trained. Also it is questionable, if this invasion would be successful, since after crossing the Gulf, the troops would need to cross the Zagros mountains to reach Teheran or Quom, which would be nearly impossible, if the revolutionary guard entrenches there. It would be the longest lasting conflict on that scale since the First Gulf War.

[gaelic cowboy]

Reading between the lines I get the feeling Iran is not actually going to build a bomb at all, they will just prove they have capability and it will be a deterrent.

The West and Israel is goosed on this one Iran can prove ability and achieve hegemony without the all the bad stuff like war.

[Centurion1]

Reading between the lines I get the feeling Iran is not actually going to build a bomb at all, they will just prove they have capability and it will be a deterrent.

The West and Israel is goosed on this one Iran can prove ability and achieve hegemony without the all the bad stuff like war.

the concern is whether or not they will sell weapons and information to other rogue states or terrorist organizations. If they tried to bomb or drop an icbm on the US they would be the laughingstock of the modern world.

[GenosseGeneral]

As stated above, Idon't think the Iranian bomb can be prevented by military means. If the Iran wants to build a bomb by all means, it can and the West can do hardly anything against it. The question is though, how much of a threat this is: Even if the Iranian government is inspired by ideology, it might not mad enough to start a nuclear war if not under attack.
On the other hand (German) history prooves, that governments can be more than just mad...

[Hax]

Depends on who is in power in Iran. We can't really make a really good statement here, simply because we have no idea what is going on in Iran right now. Ahmadinejad in particular has been influenced by the pragmatic conservative politician Esfandiar Rahim-Mashaei, but his close allies have recently been arrested and tried over fraud allegations.

We all know that the real power lies with ‘Ali Khamenei. We also know that some of his closest allies, such as Mojtaba Khamenei (his son) and Ayatollah Jannati are dangerously mad people, who in essence have no idea about how reality works. They are also horribly uneducated on the subject of international politics. On the other hand, Ahmadinejad and Khamenei still appear to be close, but nobody really knows what is going on right now. When it comes to dealing with Iran on a political level, there are three important people:

1) Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, who virtually controls everything that is going on in the country. The Quds Force (led by Qassem Sulaiman) as a special part of the Revolutionary Guard, and the Basiji (religious police) answer directly to him, leading to the second person
2) Mojtaba Khamenei, Khamenei's son. He basically controls the basiji and is a big political player. He also apparently holds major assets. In particular, he is known not to be in the least afraid to use excessive violence against anyone.
3) Mohammad Ali Jafari, commander of the Revolutionary Guard. He replaced Safavi a couple of years back in a move apparently constructed by Khamenei to remove some of Ahmadinejad's closest allies from political power.

These three people are probably the most dangerous when it comes to international politics. The problem with Iran nowadays is that there used to be a very strong pragmatic conservative group (led by people such as Hashemi Rafsanjani), but Iranian politics are now dominated more and more by fanatics, which is a very​ worrying development.

For more information:

http://<a href="https://www.youtube....QQKh5wmK9g</a>

[Noncommunist]

As stated above, Idon't think the Iranian bomb can be prevented by military means. If the Iran wants to build a bomb by all means, it can and the West can do hardly anything against it. The question is though, how much of a threat this is: Even if the Iranian government is inspired by ideology, it might not mad enough to start a nuclear war if not under attack.
On the other hand (German) history prooves, that governments can be more than just mad...

Even if they don't start a war, their power of deterrence would deter us from invading at some point later. That and it might inspire some of the other middle eastern powers to obtain them as well as it'd be another thing to keep track of in the event of regime collapse in Iran.