The top brass was sufficiently alarmed as to have created cheat codes for a rematch. Countries the U.S. could likely not defeat militarily: China, Russia, Iran.
A war against Iran would likely not be funny. And it’s probably the reason our leaders have blathered about one for so long without instigating one … Underestimate Iran At Your Peril
You missed the point of the challenge you posted. Those were the ones we could annihilate in days. It's the lesser ones like Afghanistan and Iraq, where we have to go door to door doing urban warfare, where we don't fare so well. It's like fighting cancer vs a bear. One bullet kills the bear; the cancer must be targetted and eliminated, without killing off the good tissue/cells.
You mean it's why Iran hits from behind others, trying to buffer the blame. They know damn well they'd become one with the sand that surrounds them if they pissed us off enough.
Half the snowglobe has him on ignore. I buck heads with him more than I agree, but appreciate his fresh and unique perspective. My ignore list is a who's who in snowglobe redundancy. Hence I'd suggest de-ignoring him, for the sake of diverse perspective. Fwiw.
The onus is on you. How would we annihilate Iran in days ? Would we park our carriers right off shore and fly over Tehran with impunity ? Would we airlift in hundreds of thousands of troops and hope we don’t get shot at ?
We have a nuclear arsenal sufficient to annihilate the world. Several times over. Surely we could deploy a small fraction of our arsenal, and turn the quasi civilised areas of Iran into rubble. But even without resorting to nukes, we could achieve air superiority in a matter of hours, destroy their infrastructure within a matter of 2 maybe 3 days, and surgically pick apart their military bases, fuel depots, power grid, etc. Send them back to the stone age in 3 weeks time. You're not being serious, are you? Note: we're only talking about the US going over to Iran, and stomping their ass into dessert sand. Want to talk about Iran invading the US? LOL!
The early nineties called and want their American bravado back. And regarding the use of nukes, even limited …
Why not? All's fair in love and war... Tell me why your fictitious war must be waged in a manner that disallows the US's use of actual weapons it possesses, while permitting Iran to "teleport" motorcyclists up to civilian aircraft and water craft, arm them with mythical weaponry from the ether, while disallowing any US intel to pick up on any movement of armaments, communications, etc... LOL!
For starters, we’re not the only country in the world with enough nukes to destroy the world. And at least one we know of has more than we do. But back to non-nuclear war on the Iranian people … The problem is that, while the US military is substantially weakened since its high-water mark of dominance in 2002, the Iranians are significantly more formidable in every category of asymmetric advantage Van Riper exploited in 2002 to sink an entire US fleet. Lessons Never Learned
Obviously, the intelligent battle plan would involve bombing Iran with F-35's until there were few missile installations left, before attempting any type of landing force. It would have to be something similar to the first invasion of Iraq, with weeks of bombing. I have no idea why they did not try that the first time around--the general's response was fairly predictable. Everyone knows Iran has a large collection of missiles. We could even bomb their factories that make weapons and an invasion might not be necessary for them to learn a lesson. We could also bomb their oil wells and refineries and cripple their economy at the same time. So far, no country has been able to demonstrate that they can reliably detect and target the F-35. There is probably a lot we could do with a fake landing ship fleet to attract their missiles so we can identify and destroy their missile sites. Let them decide if supporting terrorism is a worth the cost. Not every military action has to be an invasion that ends with regime change.
And watch gazillion dollar F-35s fall flaming from the skies ? I doubt that the U.S. would want to risk such a massive reputational hit. Gone are the days of bone-tired and poorly-trained Iraqis and their ack-ack guns.
