Israel, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran … War

[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by jem

Yes, OK, arguably right. But then what?

Suppose the US carry out a decapitation strike, kill the ‘Supreme Leader’, many if not all of the government - what do you think will happen? There is no opposition party (presumably pro-western) ready and organised to take over. Most likely the entire country will collapse into anarchy, unless the US is prepared to ‘put boots on the ground’ in large numbers and, basically take the country over and run it.

And that is easier said than done, although people may have no real love for the existing regime, they tend to resent a regime forced on them from outside. I do fear that this will make Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan look like a bad cold in terms of US and Iranian casualties.

Always, always have a clearly defined exit strategy, not just ‘oh this isn’t working and the polls are against us, so we are basically going to just pull out and leave chaos behind us, and naturally this wont foster a load of terrorist groups, all of which now have a hatred on the US - well it’ll be something for a future administration to deal with’.

For the US, removing the current regime in Iran is fairly easy, dealing with the consequences, isn’t. Unfortunately, I'm not convinced that the current US administration has the foresight to understand this.

You make an excellent point. It boils down to the question as to whether or not the USA has got the ducks lined up for managing Iran in the short term after unseating the mullahs.

The Shia/Sunni thing could well stand in the way of that in terms of finding a solution that has a chance.

It may boil down to bringing back the Pahalavi bloke under a plan that is internationally endorsed.

So yes - we have a serious problem looming. But still, the mullahs need to be offed in every sense.