IRAN'S PROBLEM

Keith Jones' Blog showed a video clip of the start of Iran's president speech at the latest UN conference (supposedly to address racism). My observation is/was that the Iranian was quite distracted and unable to maintain his concentration on his subhect. True, there were some hecklers and dissident walk outs, but, that did not fully account for his poor beginnings. So, I thought it might be a good idea to explore the possible roots of his poor performance.

History shows:

1. In (approximately) 400 BC, during the 2nd Persian invasion of Greece, a small force of approximately 300 Greek Spartans withstood an assault by the entire Persian invading force at Thermopylae for a few weeks, and were dislodged and destroyed only after being betrayed.

2. Between 334 and 331 BC, Alexander, the Macedonian King (who had united the Greek City States (most of them) fought a series of battles in Persia against King Darius. The Macedonians maintained military forces around 35,000 men (maybe up to 42,000 by some accounts) who soundly defeated the Persian armies 3 times. At that time the Persians had an army engaged against Alexander estimated at between 40,ooo and 450,000 (total size was unknown due to rather poor record keeping); but still, a vastly superior force.

3. Between 1980 and 1988, Iraq and Iran (modern day name for Persia) fought a war of attrition that was finally settled by a UN sponsored cease fire. During this conflict, both sides lost approximately 1 million men and ended the conflict without either side gaining much ground.

4. In 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait and occupied the entire country. Between early Jan 1991 and Feb 24, An army consisting of a colition of western and Arab countries dislodged the Iraqi's from Kuwait and the Iraqi armies were generally destroyed while the Allies lost relatively few soldiers in the fighting. It should be noted that the bulk of the forces engaged were American.

5. Between March and May 1st 2003, American and British forces invaded and destroyed Iraq's military structure, captured and eventually executed it leader and occupied the country.

6. Soon, (supposedly), all US combat forces will be withdrawn leaving behind a much different Government in Iraq.

If I were the President of Iran, and knew a little of this history, I think that I might be nervous about the Americans and Western powers as well. Bluster may get the soft politically weak Americans to back down, but, in the end, if pushed too far, Iran could also suffer the same fate as Iraq.

Remember, Iran and Iraq fought a war for 8 years with not positive results, while the Americans (and Allies) destroyed the fighting ability of Iraq in a few short weeks!