After a decade of exhausting and demoralising conflict between the United States and two of the weakest, most impoverished countries in the world, Iraq and Afghanistan, many within the US political establishment are calling for the country to engage in yet another conflict; this time with a relatively powerful enemy in Iran.
In the past week alone, top Republican figures such as John McCain and Joseph Lieberman have called for increasing belligerence towards the Iranian regime, bringing the two countries closer to the brink of armed conflict. The heightening standoff with Iran over its nuclear programme, curious in itself for its recent rapid escalation given that leading American and Israeli intelligence estimates have both concluded that Iran has neither developed nor is planning to develop nuclear weapons, is leading to increasingly belligerent rhetoric out of Washington calling for war with Iran.
Leading members of the House and Congress from both parties as well as the closest advisers to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney have called for attacking Iran, with some high-ranking GOP advisers even suggesting that the time is now for a Congressional resolution formally declaring war on the country. Romney and many other leading Republican figures have called for pre-emptive war against Iran, and have continually upped the ante in terms of threats of military action throughout the election campaign. This alarming and potentially highly consequential rhetoric is occurring in a context where the American people are still recovering from the disastrous war in Iraq and winding down the US occupation of Afghanistan, while at the same time coping with the worst economic drought since the Great Depression.
Public statements claiming that the extent of the conflict would be limited to targeted airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities are utterly disingenuous, ignoring the escalating cycle of retribution that such "limited" conflicts necessarily breed. As did the war in Libya start off with calls only for a benign "no-fly zone" to protect civilians and seamlessly turned into an all-out aerial campaign to topple Muammar Gaddafi, any crossing of the military threshold with Iran would also likely result in a far bigger conflagration than the public has been prepared for by their leaders.
War with Iran would be no quick and clean affair, as many senior political and military figures have pointed out it would make the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, which cost trillions of dollars and the lives of thousands of soldiers and civilians, seem like "a cakewalk". The fact that it is becoming increasingly likely, inevitable in the eyes of many, and that it is high on the agenda of so many leading political figures warrants exploration of what such a conflict would really entail. Conflict on an unprecedented scale
Not a war of weeks or months, but a "generations-long war" is how no less a figure than former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy describes the consequences of open conflict with Iran. In comparison with Iraq and Afghanistan, both countries with relatively small populations which were already in a state of relative powerlessness before they were invaded, Iran commands the eighth largest active duty military in the world, as well as highly trained special forces and guerilla organisations which operate in countries throughout the region and beyond.
Retired US General John Abizaid has previously described the Iranian military as "the
most powerful in the Middle East" (exempting Israel), and its highly sophisticated and
battle-hardened proxies in Lebanon and Iraq have twice succeeded in defeating far
stronger and better funded Western military forces.
Any attack on Iran would assuredly lead to the activation of these proxies in
neighbouring countries to attack American interests and would create a situation of
borderless war unprecedented in any past US conflicts in the Middle East.
None of this is to suggest that the United States would not "win" a war with Iran, but
given the incredibly painful costs of Iraq and Afghanistan; wars fought against weak,
poorly organised enemies lacking broad influence, politicians campaigning for war with
Iran are leading the American people into a battle which will be guaranteed to make the
past decade of fighting look tame in comparison.
