I considered saying that if Patton was in charge in Iraq, that once he got to Baghdad, he would have then set his sites on Tehran.
Exactly correct, or Syria.
The problem with Iran is that most of the people can't stand the current government. Not exactly true in Syria. An army can literally pass through Syria like 'crap through a goose' as Patton would say and you really aren't hurting many friendlies.
In Iran, you certainly would. An invasion of Iran would take a tremendous amount of covert work to do successfully and have the right people on your side. Not so with Syria, I would suspect.
...and we wouldn't have known it until it was a fait accompli...