Air defense is afforded by missile batteries which they have been upgrading regularly with purchases from the Chinese and Russians and which will impact our effort. The Serbs figured out out to detect the F-117, so I would have to assume that the Iranians have the knowledge. The mountains of Iran are not the easy target field of Iraq. I will assume that cruise missiles will be the lead elements and there is a lot of Iran to overfly before you get to the airfields.

While I have ties to the Air Force, this will be a Naval and Army show. The oil facilities are out in the open along the coast, and they look down on the Strait of Hormuz from the coastal mountains. Even without their guided stuff, they have tens, hundreds of thousands of long range rockets to rained down on the area.

The Iranians used human wave attacks during the Iran-Iraq War, so they don’t have a problem with dying for Iran.

Our slim hope is for sanity among the brass and a willingness of Robert Gates to resign.

That said, they are threatening total war against both the U.S. and against any Gulf state that allows themselves to be used by the U.S. to strike Iran, and even though they have no air force and their air defense system wouldn’t last more than a few days before our stealth aircraft finally managed to blow the last of it to smithereens, what they do have are 30 million fanatical men of military age and a *ton* of those damned anti-ship missiles. Much as the U.S. viewed the Japanese attack upon Pearl Harbor as a declaration of war, the Iranians would view an American attack upon their soil as a declaration of war, and react accordingly. Maybe they don’t have the ability to threaten the U.S. directly, but they can certainly make life difficult by attacking the (doh) O I L.

Not that this logic will stop the neo-cons. They don’t believe in logic, just in belief.

-Badtux the War Penguin

Threatening the Iranian religious leaders with bombing them back to the 12th century doesn’t have much bite because most still live in the 10th century intellectually.

As Steve says, CG, you’ll have to offer long odds to convince anyone to take that bet, and if you win it will not be enough to buy a gallon of gas afterwards.

Steve, I think he lost the thread after 2000. He is trying to be the alpha neocon with his rhetoric.

I’m still trying to wash the stain from my hands, the one that has been there ever since I voted Lieberman for veep. But in my opinion, he has gotten much worse since then.

Ellroon, the bridges in Iraq are being bombed which reduces our mobility. If the Iranians enter Iraq in response to an attack there is not much we can do. The Turks are already ticked off about the PKK raids from Iraq, so our troops will be isolated. If we bring carriers into the Gulf, the Iranians have antiship missiles that will definitely cause losses, and they can block the Strait of Hormus without much effort.

When oil hits $500/barrel what happens to the world economy?

Besides, Lieberman’s Droopy Dog delivery still has impact around the world. Iranians hear this and get mad. Iraqis hear this and get mad. Muslims around the world hear this and get mad. Al-Qaeda hears this and laughs because Iranians do not like al-Qaeda.

WTF???

This is about men who think they are tough because they can talk casually about getting other people killed.

This is how we end with with Castro long after the Cuban people would have thrown him out. This is how the Iranian people will be stuck with Ahmadinejad long after he has outlived his popularity. Attacking these people provides them with more support than they could ever win on their own.

Idiots. From everything I’ve read – and surely everything these nuts should be reading – the Iranian people are NOT our sworn enemies.