Could the United States Invade Iran? 

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“Convince your enemy that he will gain very little by attacking you; this will diminish his enthusiasm.” - Sun Tzu

Hopefully, USA would learn from its experience in Afghanistan and just let the country break itself from inside before committing any troops to it. Military interventions have a tendency to unite the people against the "invader", even if said invader was there to try to help them in the first place.

As an Iranian now living in North America, the worrying thing for me is how desperate the men in power are to stay in power. They will never let Iran go if they can help it, even if it means sacrificing everyone. They do not even pretend to care about their people anymore, it's just about their status. America would absolutely win head-to-head, but the cost to both U.S. troops and the Iranian people does not seem worth the fight. The government needs to go, but military conflicts are not the best way to make that happen.

The US days of winning a war on the ground ended with WWII. Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan proved this.

Just because it could doesn't means it should.

این بدبختا واقعا فکر می کنند ایران و ایرانی و ارتش ایران رو می شناسند، خنده داره نظراتشون تو کامنت ها 😂😂👌🏻

My father is Persian he went to Colombia after the fall of the Shah. He was part of his body guard detail in Panama. But I remember in the 80s Iraq invaded Iran. This unified the Iranian people behind the government. Any attacks would have the opposite effect, uniting the people against an external enemy. A war is not the solution.

Weeks of air strikes and Iran just sits there watching 600k+ troops in UAE/Saudi until they invade 😮

I think the US would rather go for targeted strikes on specific locations rather than all out invasion for exactly how this scenario plays out. Given the issues in the government the only way I see a quick passing of a war declaration and invasion would be if Iran did a first strike on the US similar to Pearl Harbor. Otherwise there likely is deadlock between political parties because somehow it will become a partisan issue even if its not and shouldn't be. Ultimately I think the US's main policy would be invasion at this stage as a last resort, but if time is indeed a factor here then large scale airstrikes would be their main goal of stopping a nuke being obtained. After that I think they'd attempt to destabilize the government of Iran further in the hopes their people would rebel while mainly staying well clear of the country outside of ferrying oil through the straight of Hormuz past Iranian boat attacks. If time is a factor they'd have to more or less paratroop in in some capacity because I would think the southern invasion build up and then slow grind up the country would take way too long to be viable. Really depends on time and honestly I think it would be drastically low before the US government would finally agree on a way forward.

1 minute silence for those who even imagine the American invasion of Iran. Dude, it's 2023💀

Don't try it. Iran has advanced hypersonics plus they they pretty good at cyberwarfare. One nation fully prepped for this global war economy age.

Could.... PFFT.. hold our beer. Should is a whole different question.

The likelihood of the US engaging in a land war with Iran is minuscule. Imagine the Straits of Hormuz shutting down for months. The effects on the world economy would be utterly devastating. I'm guessing the Pentagon is aware of everything you've brought up. There are all kinds of ways to handle the "Oh no, they have the bomb" scenario short of an all out invasion. I think the Iranians have a pretty good idea about what would happen if they actually did make a nuclear strike. Their leaders are maybe crazy; but, not that crazy.

The change in the conditions wasn’t because the leadership was “unhappy with losing”. The entire purpose of these sorts of war games is to test different scenarios. The point of changing some of the conditions is to figure out what the US would need to be able to do to defeat such an adversary. In this case, it would need SEAD (to stop the planes from getting shot down) and better intelligence (to know where the enemy troops were) and to neutralize certain weapons systems (to prevent them from being used) in order to fend off such an attack. If blue wins every exercise, you haven’t learned anything and holding it was completely pointless.

he didn't consider proxy armies outside Iran, and the most important thing, that Iran is a part of the Shanghai defense pact.

Short answer: yes. Long answer: probably not.

There are too many factors that were not included in this analysis. The very fact that Iran's allies (Axis of Resistance) or other allies such as Russia or China were not included makes this analysis - in my opinion - somewhat dubious. Because you can actually be absolutely sure that they will not keep their feet still. And there it is not only Kataib Hezbollah but even more factions, which also in turn ensure that U.S. allies or even the U.S. forces are attacked directly from other sides. In short, it would set the entire Middle East on fire.

One thing Simon didn't mention is that the first target after securing the beaches won't be an immediate thrust North but instead, will be a large attack towards the nearest port city. Any amphibious invasion MUST capture a deep water port fairly quickly.

I think the more likely scenario would not involve troops on the ground, it would be more air battle precision bombing, a key, infrastructural defence and governmental facilities, pretty much like what they did in Libya 1986 only now precision, bombing and intelligence is much more advanced

People in my area of the US basically saw Afghanistan as the last straw. No one wants to join and rightfully so. The authority lost many generations to fight wars for the years to come.

This all assumes that Russia will not back Iran completely, which they are very likely to do. This would especially complicate taking Tehran as it’s in the north, closer to Russia

Such a funny comedian, america can't even win against Afghanistan iran is 100times harder to defeat

All conflicts are difficult, but the question to always ask is: Is it worth it?

Thanks for articulating meticulously all the many reasons Iran would be impossible to invade successfully. The title of this video should thus have been "Why the US will never invade Iran"

The real question would be why invade? Why not just use air strikes and cruise missiles to hit their military capabilities and infrastructure (dams, bridges, power grid, water supplies, oil refineries, airports, etc.), government buildings, and so forth. Let them mire in a total hellscape without having to invest a trillion dollars and countless American lives. Might actually give us more leverage when dealing with other countries thereafter, given that they'll realize we won't give two cents about nation building.

this is like an episode about the possibilities of terraforming Mars. It's funny to think about it but it's simply impossible. Just as the sun will remove every released oxygen atom from Mars' atmosphere because it lacks a magnetic field, Islam will destroy any attempt at democratization in Iran.

I agree with the fact that invading would be really, really rough and this is a bit nit picky of me but using Millennium Challenge 2002 as a reference is just really, really bad. Riper did a great job and its possible that his strategies could have worked to some degree or another in a real war but the challenge was so poorly set up to begin with that nearly no useful information could be gotten from the challenge (prominent exception being Riper's ways of securely communicating). The small boat swarm in particular is hard to judge for certain but probably wouldn't have worked to nearly the degree it did if at all. This is because the US didn't want to interrupt shipping and thus was closer to shore than they would realistically have been. There simply wasn't the standoff distance one would expect if that had been a real war. Plus all the issues with congestion in the area from the traffic (sea and air) still going on around them in relatively close proximity due to it being a peace time exercise near shore. This severely hampered several defense systems in the exercise (particularly automated ones) and caused the exercise to have extremely cautious rules of engagement for blue team. Red team took advantage of that and did well but taking advantage of a completely unrealistic scenario simply can't provide any useful info. Anyway, a lot of people complained that rule changes after red team did well ruined the exercise but it was a giant waste of money before it even started. That said they wouldn't have even had a chance to get anything out of it if they hadn't done that. Riper may have done well in a realistic scenario but there is virtually zero chance he would have done that well. Basically, he complained about the game being rigged for blue to win but red only did well cause it was rigged against blue at the start. I know that is basically the 3rd different way I've said the same thing but it REALLY needs emphasized that blue was not able to perform as well as it would have in a realistic scenario. Saying his superiors were simply upset with losing makes for a more entertaining sound bite for articles and videos but is more than a little disingenuous. I get that its more entertaining to say the US military leadership here simply had a tantrum and pretended to win but its really annoying to see people who should be better informed talk about this and not emphasize (or often even acknowledge) the horrible initial conditions being the main (and likely only) reason for red teams initial, wild success. At best, people seem to usually just casually gloss over the initial conditions like it wasn't a big deal overall. Again, its possible red's strategies would have worked and a naval invasion would certainly be rough but Millennium Challenge 2002 didn't tell us anything really due to being a quarter billion dollar boondoggle from the start.

The blue team vs red team thing was also a result of red team taking advantage of the simulator. The red team general basically meta games the simulation and there were alot of gamisms that resulted in red team doing so well.

Yes we can invade but at what at cost.

Great video You didnt really touch on the massive realignment of America’s racial profile- nearly half the country would now view a war with Iran as yet more white imperialism - unpleasant consequences on the home front

Wonderful work as always. As an American all I can say is the prospect of trying to invade Iran has always given me serious Afghanistan and Iraq vibes and I am not eager to go through another one. After watching this video, I am thinking an invasion of Iran would likely be even more of a nightmare than the other two combined. While I do not like the idea of Iran having a nuclear weapon I am not sure there is much we can really do about that would be worth the cost. We might have to settle for making it clear if they launch at us or our allies (particularly Israel) we have our own missiles with "Tehran" written on them in sharpie.

It always brings a smile to my face seeing Iran flying old f-4’s and f-14’s 😂

A video I didn't know I wanted. Thank you for this amazing gift.

USA with their failed theoretical Invasion and dumb practical invasion and never winning a war since WW2😂😂😂You hypothetically calculated Russian cost in war but what about USA?? USA is out of shell?? Their air defense system doesn't work!!! USA armies equipment is most hard to maintain than Soviet one and doesn't have long life time!!! Please discuss things in real way

The Paul Riper controversy was a bunch of nonsense that was caused because Riper tried to break the rules and was told off for it. The entire wargame was plagued with unrealistic and insane things that would have never happened in any war scenario. There are more but one example comes to mind; The Cruise Missiles strapped to Patrol Boats It should take anyone with a reasonable mind seconds to deduce that tiny patrol boats could not lift the cruise missiles, let alone carry the infrastructure to fire them at a Carrier Task Force. There are more examples of just straight up insanity happening at the Millennium Challenge 2002 but they don't come to mind at the time of writing. I do suggest people reading this to look up the Paul Riper story and verify or disprove this, as I am just a commenter on the internet and your opinion shouldn't be 180'd by a purple F.

After they join BRICS? 😂😂😂 we couldn’t even defeat the fking taliban. People will say we did, riddle me this then how did They got stronger after 20 years not weaker?

Long live Iran from Tajikistan 🇮🇷 🇹🇯

It’s ok for USA to invade Iran but not for Russia to invade Ukraine 😂

Could the United States invade Iran? Yes, however, I can see it playing it out very similar to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with a bloody stalemate. While the U.S military is the best in the world, the Iranian terrain is tough and the fighting spirit of the Iranian people will be intense. Not to mention Iran has a formidable military and the U.S would have to have a massive ground invasion force to even make it feasible. We wouldn't have many allies in the fight other than a few Arab states and Israel, but the fight will largely be unilateral. The U.S hasn't fought a conventional force head-to-head in decades, just as Russia hasn't until now. The bloodshed would be too much for both sides and the American people would not stand for a prolonged conflict.

What a dumb question. Of course the US could invade Iran. The US can invade anywhere they want. We have the manpower and military tech plus NATO backing us. That doesn't mean that it would be a good idea or that the US would prevail like Iraq and Afghanistan.

There were 2,456 United States military deaths in the War in Afghanistan. 1,932 of these deaths were the result of hostile action. 20,752 American servicemembers were also wounded in action during the war. That was against enemies without aircraft, a navy, armored vehicles, or advanced firearms so just imagine what would happen if the United States invaded Iran which has those things.

It amazes me that millions die in wars that other people start or declare. Yet they usually survive.

I think if the U.S. truly wanted to "defeat" Iran, it would not duplicate the issues it faced in Afghanistan. I'd expect a much higher focus on missle strikes and bombings to both military and infrastructure targets. Key roadways, bridges, dams, railways, airfields, harbors, power plants, industrial sectors, and so on would be raised. It'd primarily be an economic and industrial siege against the country, crippling it to the point of total failure. Ships can't move without fuel, tanks over rough terrain would be paralyzed without roads, bridges, supply lines, etc. When trying to defeat a pack of wolves, sometimes it's best not to fight them directly but simply trap them and wait for them to starve.

😂😂😂😂😂 We Fight Till we DIE.... We wait for u dogs 🗡🗡🗡🗡 We the real Power in middle east 🇮🇷🇮🇷🇮🇷🇮🇷🇮🇷💪🏽💪🏽💪🏽💪🏽💪🏽💪🏽💪🏽

The American public has a short memory and a relatively strong appetite for war. Our Afghanistan/Iraq hangover won’t last long.

Before I even watch this, I ask "should we?". Now I'll watch...

Iran: exist America: Tom Cruise has entered the chat .........

America could try,but will it succeed??i don't know.......but it would surely be bloody & costly for the Americans.........

John Bolton has entered the chat.

Yeah I definitely agree with the ending. The United States could win, yes, but it would cost so many lives and so many billions that it wouldn't be worth it at all

0:50 - Chapter 1 - Back into the fray 2:45 - Chapter 2 - Ideal geography 7:50 - Mid roll ads 8:45 - Back to the video 10:05 - Chapter 3 - Weighing the odds 13:30 - Chapter 4 - The US invasion of Iran

I beleive the USA has peaked in power and now either its going down or the other powers are making a concerted effort to close the gap. china, russia, india. usa just cant afford full on invasions like iraq, afghanistan, vietnam.

Interesting thought experiment, and I appreciate that the question asked is 'could', not 'should', but I hope to God that it never comes to this. If we've learned anything from the Ukraine war, it's that invasions are ALWAYS harder than you think. Also, I'd like to point out that it's not entirely fair to count all of the US military materiel against Iran, since they need to keep reserves for the other areas they have interests in, which is like half the globe. I can't imagine a hypothetical invasion of Iran would get to use many ships from the pacific fleet, for example, with the tensions around Taiwan. Again, the Ukraine war taught us about the dangers of comparing on-paper forces.

millennium challenge 2002 was reset cause a lot of the actions red team did were physically impossible (e.g. strapping antiship missiles to dingies, having motorcycle messengers travel at the speed of light) It was a horribly flawed test that only worked cause Ritter found oversites in the program and exploited them

Interesting analysis, but entirely inconceivable given the current state of world affairs. It's far from a secret at this point that the USA is sending what it doesn't need (and plenty that it may need soon) to support the Ukraine and bleed Russia dry, while building up what it will need (that isn't being sent to Ukraine) when China invades Taiwan. We don't have the time or resources to spare in messing with Iran. Even if Iran DID reach the point of imminently finalizing a nuclear weapons program, we would just pull a Stuxnet 2.0 and cyberwarfare our way through it. If that failed, Israel would step in and rocket any relevant facilities into oblivion before the US even has time to pursue an alternative course of action.

Jesus I hope not. I'd be much much worse than Iraq or Afghanistan. Iran has far more troops and money than either Afghanistan or Iraq. The country is also one big geographical fortresses.

US invading Iran will be like China invading Taiwan where both the parties would eventually win but with a very huge cost.

Long live Iran 🇮🇷

Here in Canada we do something similar each year it’s a huge readiness exercise that is conducted out west in Alberta. It is to verify the readiness of brigades to take over “ high readiness deployment” one year literally the day the exercise kicked off our red team infiltrated communications and shut it all down and effectively won the war game right then and there shortly after capturing the head quarters . Oh they promptly informed us we would be restarting the exercise ..

Could the US or will the US? Yes on the former, very unlikely on the latter. Iraq had the 4th largest mil on the planet and were taken apart like a training exercise during Iraq One, lost more to friendly fire vs enemy kills, which really says something. Iranian mil would not last a week. Anyway, the costs and losses would not be acceptable no real value to it for the US. Let's hope they learned something from invading Iraq the second time, one of the worst decisions we have ever made, based on faulty (or simply invented...) intelligence, but that's another story, and a good topic for a vid for this great channel! Or has that one been covered?

Surprised Iranian Kamikaze Drones didn't come into your calculus. I refuse to believe these wouldn't rain down into US bases in the ally territory to disrupt training and the US supply chain to stall the invasion and buy time. They're easy-ish to develop at scale, or adapt commercial drones as Ukraine has. Wouldn't need to kill the US troops at meaningful levels, but demoralise and delay troops housed in that region ahead of the offensive assault.

Invasions are easy. Occupations are hard and take centuries and almost never work. That being said, we need to make sure local support is valid and install a strong puppet government that hands over power to friendly citizens in a measured, and visible timeline.

The important point is that the US may not even reach Iran to start a war, Iran has Syria and Lebanon to the west, Yemen to the south, and Russia to the north. There are two enemies close to Iran, which are Saudi Arabia and Israel, which Iran was able to force Saudi Arabia to agree and neutralize, and Israel, which has been heavily attacked by Hezbollah forces. Even from the east, the work is very difficult, maybe the Taliban is an enemy of Iran, but the common enemy of both of them is America.

Stop breaking your sentences with sporadic breathing. It's absolutely annoying.

You forgot to mention that Millenium Challenge 2002 gave an unfair advantage to the red team as they cheated by using the existence of regular civilian ships to their advantage. With so many civilian ships around (because this was a wargame and so not an actual warzone), the blue team couldn't use standard automatic defence systems, in case it was a civilian ship. Red team was aware of this and used it to their advantage, but this would not work in an actual warzone where the rules of engagement are different

Timestamps would help your nice videos! 🙂

The ballistic middle attack on our airbase after the assassination was not even mentioned

We could. Just look at Iraq. However. We shouldn’t. Enough problems at home.

Didn't the red team of the challenge do things that were LITERALLY impossible, like physics-defining stuff?

"Invading is easy. Get off the horse to govern that's the hardest part." - A Rider of Steppe.

Love the hacker stock footage. Hoodies: absolutely required when doing anything shady even if you actually have no need to hide your face.

Iran 🇮🇷 is not Iraq or Afghanistan, it will be chaotic and hell for united states to take on iran...Iet pray it never happens.

Could they? Yes. Will they? No, probably not.

Warographics is always interesting and a bit controversial. Allegedly. Cheers

Seeing how we did in Libya, Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan I wouldn’t even trust our army to pass a military exercise let alone go to another country n fight

Are you f ing joking?? Usa dont have the bal to do that . I th ing you are wathcing to many Hollywood Bs 😂😂😂😂

I played BF4 in veteran this will be easy

I was born in the city of Shiraz. As a native of Iran and the United States I have to give you a valuable advice; Iran invasion is impossible as they proved it during Iran Iraq war. 25 countries were supporting Iraq with military intelligence and ammunition including German and French poison gad, but Iran did not loose One inch of their territory. Fighting with Iran make Vietnam war would look like a walk in the park!!!

The title should "could United States get out of Iran alive"

Yes,they can and thereford be crushed and defeated like in Vietnam or even worst...

Im suprised this video is not from 2020. I kinda miss those days

Every air accessable hard target, and command target gets precision guided munitions on day 1. Before a foot steps over their border they'd be well and truly softened from the air.

I like that Simon seriously floats invading a regional military power for... women's rights...

They could, but it would be easier to beat Iran into submission with air power, if need be.

Could they? Yes. Will they? Probably not

Interesting analysis, like others I would agree that the USA would not undertake a ground invasion. I could see however intensive airstrikes over a long period of time. If facilities to refine uranium had been developed to the point of Iran being able to build fission bombs then there could also be limited special forces airborne operations. These would be far more extensive than say, the operation to kill Bin Laden and would involve a substantial airborne force to destroy a facility inside Iran and associated extraction operations. A necessary requirement for any such operation of course would be complete command of the air, probably obtainable within a few weeks.

The reason they make rules to limit enemy actions in wargames is to see if they're at minimum prepared for conventional attacks.

Battle for Tehran? Nah, they wouldn't be able to move past the beaches. Russia can easily supply Iran with a million land mines... and that's a low estimate.

As a soldier in the United States Army….HELL NAW!!!!

Re: "In the invasion of Iraq, the coalition forces totaled nearly 600,000" This is an incorrect stat. The coalition forces sent in 160,000 for the initial invasion of Iraq with 130, 000 being US forces. I remember at the time of the invasion (I was about 21 at the time) learning that General Tommy Franks wanted to send in 400,000 US forces, but was shot down by DoD Secretary Rumsfeld. The original gulf war was about 600,000 coalition forces to push Saddam out of Kuwait. The 2003 Iraq War was 160,000 coalition forces. You’re confusing Operation Desert Storm (1990) with Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003).

One aspect of us power that's often overlooked is its airborne capability. Though dangerous it is still a viable option and I doubt the us would just start to slog northward without created a pinsor move or distraction to pull forces away from the coast.

I promise you Millions of people from Afghanistan will come to revenge hahaha

Don't even think about it😂 🇮🇷 ❤

Thanks for the analysis. But why not considering a situation in which US doesn’t rage a full scale war against Iran; and instead just make enough air raid and other operations to bring the regime to its knees? That makes it far easier for the US to win the war with limited casualties. One other thing is about the comparison between Iran and Iraq. The Iraq war was very easy in the occupation phase up until toppling the regime. But things start going south when it came to building a new government there. So, maybe this time round, the US just does the easy part and topples the regime, and let the Iranian opposition do the hard and nearly impossible task of establishing a democracy there?

I was in army 83 to 86 heavy field artillery. We would train in July at the Mojave desert in southern California. They told us back then we were training to go to Iran.

What westeners don't seem to realize is no nation can be defeated from outside if has a strong national unity.

My conclusion to any miltary US question is: Yes if the USA really, really, really, wanted to: they can do anything. The question is "is it worth the expended blood and treasure"

Simon, can you do a video on the Quasi-war fought between the United States and France? I always though the two countries had never fought each other until I learned about it.

The US learns geography through who their dropping bombs on.