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Originally Posted by Quillan
I'm quite certain that if it came to a head up conflict between the Iranian air force and any major western power's air force, the Iranians would lose. That's not really the problem to my way of thinking; it's rather a lack of political will on the part of the people or the government.
To date, I think we (the US) have had around 5000 soldiers killed in Iraq. The media makes a huge deal about the numbers, and many civilians think that's way too many. Contrast that with just 65 years ago, the combined US/English/Canadian dead in just one day was nearly that much during the Normandy landings. Then, it was expected. Today, it's unacceptable. The popular opinion seems to be that we should be able to wipe them out of the sky without a single loss, and I think that's frankly unrealistic.
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Yeah. It's not so much a question of "could we beat them;" the answer to that is obviously yes, pound for pound Western inventories and capabilities outclass Iran several times. Ask instead "could we beat them before we suffer an unacceptable amount of casualties as perceived by governments or public support." My guess, given the mediocre outcome so far in Afghanistan and Iraq and indecisive support for an incursion into Iran, is that this threshold would be relatively low.