I wish more people here would take this approach to this very delicate situation instead of being all gung ho to make Iran glow, or take them out, or whatever other term is used. Unfortunately, many people think that this would be easy when Iraq should show anyone with a brain that it most definitely will not be.
In fact, military action against Iran would be far more problematic than what we have faced in Iraq, and Iraq certainly hasn’t been easy. For one thing, we are already spread thin in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iran is a much bigger country with a population that is probably much more likely to rally around their leaders in the event of an attack. The economic ramifications would be disastrous for obvious reasons. We could never expect anywhere near the kind of support, militarily or logistically, we had going into Iraq. And finally, the mismanagement of the first few years of the Iraq campaign has turned off the vast majority of Americans to any further pre-emptive campaigns.
The problem with Iraq is that we are trying to “nation build”. We could send Iran back 50 years in about 10 minutes if we wished. We don’t need to occupy, just punish.