Iraq... Iran... whats the difference?

[Lunar]

How much of Iranian oil do we import?  It seems most of it goes to Japan, China, and Italy.  Iraq was great in terms of oil because we imported almost none of it, making it much more valuable than Saudi Arabia, whose oil fields we already squeeze and cheap prices.

Iran is also likely to collapse into a democracy, making conquest unnecessary.  Like John Ford said, it would be much harder to conquer.  We do have a border with Afghanistan but that half of the country is barren and has extremely difficult terrain.  I would estimate that we'd need five to eight times the amount of soldiers for Iran than we needed for Iraq.

If you think the Iranian and Syrian borders have been porous, imagine the Iraqi border had we gone after Iran first.  Guerilla fighting would be more intense and the ubiquitous mountains and large coastal cities would make them that much more effective.