Invading would be easy as the Iranians seemingly admit, but pacifying a large country like Iran would take more troops than we have available even if most Iranians would be happy America marches in to overthrow the mullahs. So I'm not going to address the article on those merits. I'm confused however about this:
Iran’s places are also of significant concern in regard to Iran’s irregular and unconventional strategy to defend itself. This strategic combination of physical geography (places) and strategy (things) attempts to leverage Iran’s geography and its control over it in a mosaic defense. This includes the ability to project force to close the Straits of Hormuz and, as retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey pointed out in 2012, potentially sink a US aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf, as well as to pull as much of the Iranian population as possible out of the cities and into the mountains in order to create civilian cadres to conduct a strategy that incorporates asymmetric, irregular, and unconventional warfare against the United States. Iran’s strategy is one of attrition that seeks to leverage the human geography of Iran to bog the US military down and inflict high casualties as quickly as possible in order to destroy support for the war in the United States and severely damage the morale of the troops fighting it on the ground. [emphasis added]
If Iran's strategy is to wear out the invader, that pretty much assumes Iran can't stop an American invasion.
But again, I don't think America has the horses to pacify Iran. Even a largely friendly population has to be protected from insurgents and terrorists which means you have the 2% of population rule (yes, it is a guideline more than a rule but it is a good starting point) for occupying troop strength. And while in time the locals can pick up the slack, in the short run it has to be American or allied forces going in who provide the numbers.
At about 80 million people, that means 1.6 million troops. With ideally 3.2 million more troops for rotating the occupation force.
With ideally no other potential war that could require troops to deal with for the duration of the occupation.
Certainly we could focus on key territory only rather than the entire country, and expand control out to the rest of the country as local forces are raised. But this is still a big country to occupy.
So yeah, I'm not in favor of that. Although I suspect that the idea that America is uniquely vulnerable to casualties is questionable given enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan hoped to do the same to us and failed (indeed, North Vietnam tried to do that and failed--rescued by Congress which then abandoned South Vietnam). Iran has its own demographic problem that makes me doubt whether its reputation from the Iran-Iraq War for sustaining casualties is any more valid than Russia's reputation based on the carnage of World War II.
Also, while I won't question the series of problems highlighted by the article that the American military has, the notion that this cripples our military is ludicrous. We just have to be better than our enemy to win (although fixing the noted problems reduces the chance of losing as well as reducing casualties and time needed to win), and if we don't have that at our level of spending (discounting our unique logistical tail necessary to fight far from home), we have serious problems.
Remember, Saddam's at best adequate Iraqi military did beat Iran on points in the Iran-Iraq War when Iran's military power was greater.
But while those are interesting questions, I'm digressing.
My questions are about sinking carriers and evacuating cities for mountain-based insurgency.
On the carriers, WHY ON EARTH DO WE PUT CARRIERS IN THE PERSIAN GULF!? Just stop that. It's insane. Keep our carriers far from simple weapons on or near the shore and use our aircraft's range to take the fight to Iran, eh?
But the Iranian plan to evacuate cities and put people into the mountains to wage an insurgency is just puzzling beyond measure.
With all the hype about how megacities are so dangerous that we must refocus the Army on fighting in them, why would Iran evacuate their cities (as much of the Iranian population as possible!) where they have food, eyes and ears, and shelter to go off into the alien mountains where they'll starve or freeze and be farther from targets they may want to strike?
Although you know my views on megacity hype.
And if we have to fight in cities, please define controlling a city as the militarily useful part.
Okay, I'm done. The original article is basically interesting, don't get me wrong.
