Two words: Millenium Challenge.
THE biggest wargame ever conducted....and the evil middle eastern dictator won.
http://www.warblogging.com/archives/000593.php
In reference to this diary.
http://dailykos.com/story/2005/7/22/164841/163
Cheney has given orderthat in the event of another 9/11. iran is to be invaded regardless of who caried out the bombing.
AN interesting discussion ensued in that diary with Shadowthief insisting that the Iranians would roll over and esentially be as inept as Saddam Hussein in the 1st gulf war. Alot of other people insisted "we'd LOSE WE'd Lose".
Well my take on it is... If the iranians try to fight a connventional war. they'd lose, badly. The USA has just enought remaining troops to pull of a limited invasion to seize the SW oil fields. and I dont think BushCheney is adverse to using tacnukes on the rest of Iran. OF course it would leave the US with absolutely NO reserves against say N Korea.
OTOH. if the iranains have been paying attention. they'd know that AMerica is HORRIBLE at guerilla warfare. and if they have some resourceful field commander and dedicated troops they could cause a lot of damage.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,787017,00.html.
The game was theoretically set in 2007 and pitted Blue forces (the US) against a country called Red. Red was a militarily powerful Middle Eastern nation on the Persian Gulf that was home to a crazed but cunning megalomaniac (Van Riper). Arguably, when the exercises were first planned back in 2000, Red could have been Iran. But by July this year, when the game kicked off, it is unlikely that anyone involved had any doubts as to which country beginning with "I" Blue was up against.
"The game was described as free play. In other words, there were two sides trying to win," Van Riper says.
Even when playing an evil dictator, the marine veteran clearly takes winning very seriously. He reckoned Blue would try to launch a surprise strike, in line with the administration's new pre-emptive doctrine, "so I decided I would attack first."
Van Riper had at his disposal a computer-generated flotilla of small boats and planes, many of them civilian, which he kept buzzing around the virtual Persian Gulf in circles as the game was about to get under way. As the US fleet entered the Gulf, Van Riper gave a signal - not in a radio transmission that might have been intercepted, but in a coded message broadcast from the minarets of mosques at the call to prayer. The seemingly harmless pleasure craft and propeller planes suddenly turned deadly, ramming into Blue boats and airfields along the Gulf in scores of al-Qaida-style suicide attacks. Meanwhile, Chinese Silkworm-type cruise missiles fired from some of the small boats sank the US fleet's only aircraft carrier and two marine helicopter carriers . The tactics were reminiscent of the al-Qaida attack on the USS Cole in Yemen two years ago, but the Blue fleet did not seem prepared. Sixteen ships were sunk altogether, along with thousands of marines. If it had really happened, it would have been the worst naval disaster since Pearl Harbor.
It was at this point that the generals and admirals monitoring the war game called time out.
.......................................
http://www.exile.ru/2002-December-11/war_nerd.html
what van Ripen did to the US fleet...that's something very different. He was given nothing but small planes and ships-fishing boats, patrol boats, that kind of thing. He kept them circling around the edges of the Persian Gulf aimlessly, driving the Navy crazy trying to keep track of them. When the Admirals finally lost patience and ordered all planes and ships to leave, van Ripen had them all attack at once. And
they sank two-thirds of the US fleet .
That should scare the hell out of everybody who cares about how well the US is prepared to fight its next war. It means that a bunch of Cessnas, fishing boats and assorted private craft, crewed by good soldiers and armed with anti-ship missiles, can destroy a US aircraft carrier. That means that the hundreds of trillions (yeah, trillions) of dollars we've invested in shipbuilding is wasted, worthless.
That was the real lesson of Millennium Challenge II. And that's what has the Navy so furious at van Riper: he blew their cover. He showed all the hicks back home that the carrier battle fleet can be sunk by "small planes and boats." As weapons become smaller and deadlier, big targets just won't survive.
The signs have been there all along. In the Falklands War, the Argentine Air Force, which ain't exactly the A Team, managed to shred the British fleet, coming in low and fast to launch the Exocets. And they did all this hundreds of miles off their coast, with no land-based systems to help.
Suppose the Iranians use van Riper's method: send everything at once, from every ship, plane and boat they've got, directly at the carrier. Give the Navy the benefit of the doubt and say they get 90% of the incoming missiles. You still end up with a dead carrier.
At any rate even if the Iranians do fight conventionally...the USA would never be able to hold SW Iran. The Iranians spend 8 years using human wave attacks to drive the Iraqis out. Sure they;d take enormous casualities. BUT considering that the short Kosovo war by itself seriously depleted the AF's stores of smart bombs. I thinik at some point the USAF will simply run out of smart ordinance and be reduced to WW2 style bombing runs. Dont forget any Scuds or Scud types that Iran has. and who knows what SCIRI and Al Dawa in IRAQ will do.
Though I think the blockading of Hormuz may be a little far fetched for the Iranians to pull off. They may very well TRY it though.
OF one thing I am certain an invasion of IRan will be the second to last war the neocons fight. Becuase the one after that will be the one they lose as the US military breaks