I appreciate your reply. Thank you. While I respect your opinion and agree we should avoid another conflict, again sometimes we don’t have a choice if the other party continues to attack. As I posted to you earlier, I think in this case we should let the nation that was attacked lead in getting skin in this fight. But we also have to be prepared for further escalation now.
Only three things can happen now. 1) Iran caves peacefully, not likely 2) we, as in saudis, us, everybody, do nothing which will lead to Iran escalating, and 3) saudis counter punch with or without us, in which case we find ourselves in an escalation anyway as we have to many US interests (companies, workers, yes even oil) in the region that will be under attack.
It’s not a great set of choices. I am not looking forward to it, but we need to be ready and sober about the likely next steps. I don’t see any of those next steps involving sending in boots, but a very high probability, if we do get involved, of several days of strikes.
The only problem with the scenarios you presented, based on what I’ve seen on other threads, is that Saudi Arabia is pretty much incapable of projecting military force. Apparently they deliberately keep their military in a poor state of readiness because a military coup is a much bigger threat to their leadership than Iran is.