Puzzled by events

I’ve gone over a lot of analysis of the recent hostilities between Iran and the United States. There are some very good arguments that neither country really wants to go to war. The reasoning is fairly sound. The smart money says there’s going to be some posturing, perhaps some action between various proxy forces, and then it’ll all blow over.

The only problem with that is that the facts on the ground keep proving the annalists wrong. Some things don’t even make sense. One example: the whole idea behind using drones instead of manned aircraft is that no personal are at risk. Then Bolton gets all hot and bothered because Iran shoots down an unmanned drone and we are almost in a shooting war. I supposed if an American pilot had been lost we probably would be in a shooting war. Still, the bar towards full blown war seems pretty low if we are going to fight over Robby the Robot Plane.

A manned invasion of Iran is something that won’t happen. The country is too big, too mountainous and with too large an army. Sure, the US could conquer it, but the butchers bill would be higher than would be acceptable to Americans.

Instead is looks like the idea would be to bomb Iran into submission. Bomb them enough and either the government will change or they’d come to the negotiation table to give the US what it wants. That’s exactly what Germany did in WWII. Remember how the Luftwaffe got the English to sign a peace treaty with Germany? Me neither as it didn’t happen. The bombing didn’t work. Just to make things interesting, there’s a good chance that if Iran’s government changed it would be replaced with a more conservative and hostile one.

So who would really win should the US and Iran go to full scale war? Israel and Saudi Arabia would be delighted to have their major enemy weakened. It would also give Russia and China more room to maneuver. With US forces committed to Iran, there would be fewer resources available to keep other adversaries in check.

Logic and reason tell us that the Iranian situation won’t get out of control. However, logic and reason appear to be in short supply.

-Sixbears