Author Topic: Max Boot: A war with Iran would be the mother of all quagmires  (Read 234 times)

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Offline TomSea

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Opinion | A war with Iran would be the mother of all quagmires
By Max Boot Max Boot Columnist covering national security Email Bio Follow

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The United States could, of course, bomb Iran — though it wouldn’t be as low-risk as bombing Iraq in 2003. Iran has the most advanced air-defense network that U.S. aircraft have ever faced — the Russian-made S-300. The U.S. Air Force and Navy could no doubt prevail, but it would not be easy and could result in greater loss of pilots and aircraft than we have become accustomed to.

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Unfortunately, the United States lacks a realistic ground option in Iran, which is much bigger than Iraq in both area and population. (Iran has 83 million people and 617,000 square miles; Iraq in 2003 had about 30 million people and about 170,000 square miles.) Counterinsurgency math — premised on 20 troops per 1,000 inhabitants — suggests that the United States and its allies needed some 600,000 troops in Iraq. (There were never more than 180,000.) By that math, to control Iran, you would need more than 1.6 million troops. That’s more than double the active-duty end-strength (656,403) of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps combined, and few if any U.S. allies would help. You could probably topple the Iranian government with a lot fewer troops. But if you leave immediately afterward, as Bolton favored doing in Iraq, the result could be either Libya-style chaos or the emergence of a new anti-American regime.

Even if you don’t put a single U.S. boot on the ground and stick simply to airstrikes, the war would not be an antiseptic, push-button exercise for the United States. A 2011 report from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments outlined how Iran could hit back with “asymmetric” tactics.

Article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/05/20/war-with-iran-would-be-mother-all-quagmires/?utm_term=.22b4c8d2b07b

I know WaPo has a paywall; I know a lot of people including myself, don't really like Max but he lays out a lot of good info. I'm not sure if I agree with Max on all of this.  It sounds like Boot says we should reenter JCPOA.