That worked so well in “the run up to the war on Saddam”, but in the event, the Iraqis were no threat to the U.S. and allied Naval and Air Forces. In other words, they were invincible on paper and worthless in combat.
The Iranians, with three times the population and ecomomy, struggled for ten years to fight Iraq to a standstill. How long would they survive against the U.S.?
The lesson of the Iraq war is that we don’t do nation building, we do military conquest.
How many “Warthogs” do we have waiting out there to clean up those fast boats?