Let’s ignore the political aspects of attacking Iran. For the purpose of this discussion we will assume that the decision has already been made and the US is planning to attack Iran a country three times the size of Iraq.
Iran in contrast with Iraq and Afghanistan has a real military that is not crippled by UN sanctions or years of unnecessary war. Currently Iran has 540,000 soldiers with 350,000 reserves that include the Basij, Iran also has about 1,600 tanks, 3,200 pieces of artillery, 306 combat aircrafts and 3 submarines.
Despite all the talk about Iran building a great military force, Iran’s military expenditure has been in decline since 1989. Even rise of oil prices in the past few years has not caused an increase in the military spending, in fact in 2003 Iran spent only 2.4% of its GDP on the military as opposed to 6% in 1989. In contrast Saudi Arabia spent 11.3% of its GDP on defense in 2003.
To compensate for the small budget the Iranian government has concentrated on a few key areas, missiles, artillery, mines and unconventional weapons of war. Let’s look at each one of these and the problems they could cause for the US on the battlefield.
The artillery is really more of a defensive weapon than anything else, Iran does not have the capability to quickly and easily move the artillery to forward locations, rather they are meant to be used in case of an invasion from secure locations with minimal amount of movement. While they might make tempting air targets the fact that they are widely dispersed and across a difficult geographic area detracts from their value. They could significant problems for any ground force moving into Iran from the west or the east.
One of the major causes of concern for the US has been the Iranian missile programs. Iran with help from N. Korea, Russia and China has created a self-sufficient missile program. The number of functional missiles is a matter of speculation however in 2001 Iran fired 60 missiles in about 3 hours at 6 MEK bases inside Iraq this surprised many outside observes who suspected Iran had less than a hundred missiles. While the missiles by themselves could not change the course of a war they could reach US basis not only in Iraq but also in Bahrain, Qatar or Saudi Arabia. The consequence of such an attack is left as an exercise for the reader.
Mines have long been a favored weapon for countries with small budgets, and Iran is no exception. Iran has invested significant amount of money in modern marine mines that are not easy to detect, estimates range from 2000 to 3000. Many of these mines can be set to activate only in response to certain sounds or at different times of the day. It is doubtful these mines would be effective against modern US/UK ships but they would pose significant problems for tankers going in and out the Persian Gulf. Iran can deploy the mines via submarines, ships and helicopters. The mines are also distributed along many different small and hardened bases along the Gulf and on some islands which makes advanced targeting impossible.
By unconventional weapons of war I am refereeing to the Iranian intelligence service that has contacts and bases in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iran would not have any difficulties in recruiting volunteers in either one of those countries and in case of an all out war they would cause significant hindrance for the US troops.
The US forces order of battle currently stands at 150,000 troop and 500 planes. This is barely enough to keep control of Iraq and parts of Afghanistan. These forces would have to at least be doubled before the US could take any sort of overt military action in Iran. Discounting the cost I seriously doubt the ability the US military to provide these numbers. It would also leave US basis in Japan and S. Korea seriously depleted which would provide an incentive for China to finally “unify” with Taiwan.
Let’s take a step back and look at the economic view, while it’s summer time and traditionally oil demand is lowered at this time the closing or partial closing of the Gulf would cause a serious disruption in the global economy. Globally Iran ranks number 4 with 3.6 million barrels of oil produced per day, any disruption in this would be felt world wide.
In a conventional sense Iran would eventually lose the war to the US, but Iranians have always had a more cohesive spirit than Iraqis and in case of a US invasion Iranians are much more likely to band together and fight back than Iraqis. Let’s not forget that while the Iranian leadership might not be viewed favorably by Iranians it’s still a much more popular regime compared with Saddam or the Taliban. And a prolonged war with yet another country is not something the American people would tolerate, not when the war would cause a major spike in gas prices and a slump in the stock market.
So in conclusion while the Bush administration might not have any ideological issues with invading Iran but the logistics of such an invasion make it all but impossible.
