I'm more worried about China. When I say "all things being equal", I mean it. Pragmatically, a war with Iran would be disastrous right now, even if you ignore the inevitable fallout. But what happens when an opportunistic totalitarian China sees this as a golden opportunity for weakening the U.S., for land grabs (Taiwan? Nepal?), or doing any other number of terrible things. The truth is, an Iranian-American war would be a golden opportunity for them. Iraq, as a war, is not so bad. It's nasty at times, but if we just keep a stiff lip and our chin up and stay the course, we'll do fine. Iran is a nightmare. It's larger, it's more organized, it's more homogenous, it has a modern military (though precious little modern anything else). They -do- have WMDs. Etc. Etc. Etc.
Russia won't intervene to help the U.S. in reality, whether it's given assurances or not. Even if it wanted to, it has its own severe problems. Ideally, I'd love to see Europe deal with the E.U., which would be great for several reasons. Unfortunately, it's not going to happen. The truth is, what is likely to happen is that Israel, with implicit U.S. consent, is going to try to bomb that program. Or the U.S. will do it itself. Then Iran will start funding terrorist groups hardcore (chemical weapons, bio weapons, proper military training, military grade explosives: think of what terrorists could do with Semtex-H or C-4 instead of just TATP). And then, we will be in a bad situation. That pretty much guarantees a war is coming if Iran is traced back to that. And Iran cannot be dealt with with just 100, 000 troops. Not without bombing their cities back into the stone age. Which would be impossible to do in the global political climate.
As I said, we're in a very bad place, and Iran knows it. Noone else is coming to help us, and this problem does not seem likely to resolve itself either cheaply, quietly, quickly or peacefully.
Long story short: prepare for some hard times. It won't be the worst America has ever faced, but without a united country, it could very well become very difficult to deal with.
So, what I intend to do is pray that Europe wakes up. Or maybe that the U.N. does something. It's a long shot, but I see few other pragmatic alternatives in this situation. Our resources are stretched too thin, our political capital is largely spent, and we lack the national political will for a cohesive, decisive action.
"So, what I intend to do is pray that Europe wakes up. Or maybe that the U.N. does something."
That sounds like an awful idea. I just finished reading the Guardian's latest articles and the posts from the citizens in the UK concerning Iran. Europe is all but lost!
What makes you think we only have 100,000 troops that could go into Iran? I am not even sure boots on the ground in Iran would be necessary for quite some time. We can do alot of damage to the little dictator from 50,000 ft.