PROLONGED AND ESCALATING COSTS
Meanwhile Iran’s strategic posture is rooted in decades of preparing for precisely this scenario. Since the 1979 revolution, Tehran’s military doctrine and foreign policy have been shaped by survival in the face of potential external attack.
Rather than building a conventional force able to defeat the US in open combat, Iran has invested in asymmetric capabilities: ballistic and cruise missiles, the use of regional proxies, cyber operations and anti-access strategies (including missiles, air defences, naval mines, fast attack craft, drones and electronic warfare capabilities). Anyone who attacks Iran would face prolonged and escalating costs.
This is why comparisons to Iraq in 2003 are misleading. Iran is larger, more populous, more internally cohesive and far more militarily prepared for a sustained confrontation.
An attack on Iranian territory would not represent the opening phase of regime collapse but the final layer of a defensive strategy that anticipates exactly such a scenario. Tehran would be prepared to absorb damage and is capable of inflicting it across multiple theatres – including in Iraq, the Gulf, Yemen and beyond.
With an annual defence budget approaching US$900 billion, there is no question that the US has the capacity to initiate a conflict with Iran. But the challenge for the US lies not in starting a war, but in sustaining one.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan offer a cautionary precedent. Together, they are estimated to have cost the US between US$6 trillion and US$8 trillion when long-term veterans’ care, interest payments and reconstruction are included.
These conflicts stretched over decades, repeatedly exceeded initial cost projections and contributed to ballooning public debt. A war with Iran – larger, more capable and more regionally embedded – would almost certainly follow a similar, if not more expensive, trajectory.